Five Below Joins Target, Walmart in Altering Self-Checkout Strategy

Five Below (Philadelphia) is another retailer to announce changes to its self-checkout strategy in store, by limiting the number of stations altogether, reports Retail Dive.

According to a transcript from the company’s latest fourth quarter 2023 financial results call, Five Below’s President and Chief Executive Officer Joel Anderson says, “The most significant change we made across most of the chain was to limit the number of self-checkout registers that were open while positioning an associate upfront to further assist customers … Specifically, we have now evolved to associate assistant checkout in all of our stores. In addition, in our high-shrink stores, the primary option for checkout is more of the traditional, over-the-counter associate checkout. We expect to have 75 percent of our transactions chainwide assisted by an associate with a goal of 100 percent in our highest-shrink, highest-risk stores to be fully transacted by an associate.”

Anderson outlined that in those same stores, they have implemented receipt checking and guards. Target and Walmart both announced changes to their self-checkout strategies earlier this week.