Dollar General is continuing its pullback on self-checkout.
The discounter continued to convert thousands of stores away from self-checkout throughout its first quarter, furthering an initiative announced in March to combat shrink, CEO Todd Vasos said during the company’s earnings call on Thursday.
Throughout the last two quarters, Dollar General has removed or limited self-checkout in 12,000 locations with plans to only offer self-checkout at “a limited number of stores, most of which are higher volume and low shrink locations,” Vasos added. Prior to the changes, more than 14,000 Dollar General stores were equipped with the payment method.
“While this represents a significant change in our stores, we believe this is the right course of action to drive increased customer engagement, while also better positioning us to begin reducing shrink in the back half of ‘24 with a more material positive impact expected in 2025,” Vasos said.
Dollar General announced a three-pronged plan to pull back on self-checkout during its 2023 Q4 earnings. The retailer’s first course of action was to convert some or all self-checkout registers to “assisted checkout” options in around 9,000 stores, which Dollar General completed last quarter. The retailer hasn’t provided details on this checkout model, though Vasos’s references to self-checkout, staffed and assisted checkout modes indicate this is a hybrid model.
Second, Dollar General began limiting self-checkout to transactions of five items or less. Finally, over the first half of 2024, Dollar General said it would remove self-checkout from more than 300 of its highest shrink stores.
Moving away from self-checkout is a stark difference from the moves the retailer made two years ago when it piloted locations that only offered self-checkout.
The redirected course for self-checkout is due to the fact that shrink is Dollar General’s “most significant headwind,” Vasos said. Front-end adjustments are not the only place the retailer is tackling ongoing shrink problems. Vasos noted that Dollar General is also analyzing its supply chain merchandising as well as removing high-shrink SKUs.
