Liquor Stores Begin To Implement Amazon’s ‘Just Walk Out’ Technology; Inside the Future of Automated Alcohol

Amazon Fresh store in Sevenoaks. To shop in the store, customers use the Amazon app to enter (no Prime membership needed), put their phone away, shop for what they need, and can just walk out at the end of their shopping trip. (Photo: Lia Toby/PA Wire)

On August 10th, Downtown Spirits opened the doors to its new 4,200-square-foot liquor store in the heart of Seattle. Inside, you won’t find any cashiers or locked display cabinets in sight — rather, Downtown Spirits’ latest expansion is the first-ever checkout-free beer, wine and spirits store in the world to use Amazon’s much-discussed Just Walk Out technology.

The pitch is simple. Customers download an app, enter their personal information then swipe past a turnstile at the store entrance. Within the store, cameras powered by generative AI automatically detect what customers take and return to the shelf. By the time you leave, your receipt has already been tallied up and paid for.

Talking to Eater Seattle, Downtown Spirits owner Marques Warren described the technology as a gamechanger:

“Quite honestly, if you walk into any of our local drugstores that sell alcohol, it’s really not a pleasant experience […] We’re trying to focus on the customer experience, rather than having alcohol locked up behind the cash register. That’s what you get when you don’t have the technology that we’re implementing.”

In the rapidly-evolving landscape of automated checkouts, Just Walk Out is only the tip of the iceberg.

Coors Field, home of the Colorado Rockies MLB Team, recently became the first location to offer “Amazon One” age-ID technology — with the literal swipe of a hand, customers can simultaneously confirm their age and purchase alcohol. Amazon One has also been implemented at Panera Bread, Crunch Fitness and Starbucks in the form of ID and credit card verification.

Amazon Go and Amazon One, created in 2018 and 2020 respectively, have been slow to catch on. Though Amazon has deployed the technology in over 40 Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods grocery stores across the country, early adopters outside the company have been few and far between.

Some consumers are understandably weary. In March, a class action lawsuit filed against Amazon alleged that the company failed to disclose the biometric information it gathered within its stores:

“To make this ‘Just Walk Out’ technology possible, the Amazon Go stores constantly collect and use customers’ biometric identifier information, including by scanning the palms of some customers to identify them and by applying computer vision, deep learning algorithms, and sensor fusion that measure the shape and size of each customer’s body to identify customers… Amazon failed to post any signs at the entrances of any Amazon Go stores in New York City that would notify customers that those stores collect, retain, convert, and store consumer’s biometric identifier information.”

Assuming that the legal minutiae (and ethical reservations) eventually get ironed out, what does Amazon’s technology mean for the future of shopping?

In the world of alcohol, programs like Just Walk Out present a clear solution to the issue of underage buyers. Once again, Amazon’s technology is one of many; the UK government is currently trialing age-verification technology at self-service checkouts across the country.

Elsewhere, AI programs are moving in on breathalyzers. Researchers at LA Trobe University recently developed an algorithm that can reportedly determine an individual’s intoxication based on only a 12-second recording of their voice. In Toronto, a tech startup just began development on a mobile app that uses multispectral face recognition to identify intoxication.

All of this is to say, the world of fake IDs and field sobriety tests may soon become a thing of the past. Amazon’s technology, alongside a suite of competitors and collaborators, has the potential to permanently change the alcohol risk-prevention landscape. Whether the ends justify the means is for you to decide.

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