[notatoad]

RFID chips are sufficiently disposable if you can find a use case for them, but they don't really add anything to the average grocery shopping experience. having to take every item out of your cart and pass it over a scanner is a desirable pattern for the grocery store, as it's a great way to prevent theft. They don't want to find a way to eliminate this interaction, so there hasn't been a whole lot of reason put RFID tags on everything in the grocery store.

[chockablock]

Great point about the item-by-item interaction deterring theft. And of course it's not clear how you can use RFID to smooth purchase of items sold in bulk/by weight.

Checkout lines must also be a real profit center with all the high-margin impulse buy items (magazines, snacks, etc) placed there.