Walmart Announces Cashier-Less Sam's Club Now Store Opening In Dallas Soon

In a major tech development in the retail sector, Amazon in January opened its first tech-driven, cashier-less Amazon Go convenience store. On Monday, another major retailer announced it would step into the ring. Walmart Inc. (WMT) revealed that the cashier-less grocery store Sam’s Club Now would open in early November in Dallas.

The store will enter an invite-only phase next week and possibly open to the public in the next few weeks, according to TechCrunch. Walmart will use Sam’s Club Now to test a number of technology initiatives to streamline and automate parts of the shopping experience.

Shoppers will need to be Sam’s Club members, as is the case with regular Sam’s Club stores. The chain already has a mobile app with a “Scan & Go” feature, which allows customers to scan items as they shop and pay on their phones, sidestepping the line to the cash register. “Scan & Go” is optional at normal Sam’s Club stores, but will be the only way to shop at Sam’s Club Now.

Sam’s Club Now will be a testbed for several other mobile app features the company is trying out before rolling out nationally. The app will use machine learning and a customer’s purchase data to build “smart shopping lists.” After that, the app can use a shopping list to show a customer the most efficient walking path through the store to get everything they need.

The retailer will also test out electronic price labels that do not require printing new ones to reflect price changes. Stores will only be 25 percent as big as a regular Sam’s Club, at 32,000 square feet. Though it will not have cashiers, there will still be human employees around to assist shoppers.

However, there will be 44 floor associates at Sam’s Club Now, far less than a traditional Sam’s Club store. These employees are being reclassified as “Member Hosts.” The chain said a member host will be like a “concierge of the club,” using tech to assist shoppers.

Sam’s Club Now is part of a larger modernization effort by Walmart, as it attempts to maintain its retail dominance in the age of Amazon. In September, Walmart relaunched its Jet e-commerce site with a focus on personalized shopping experiences for customers in big cities.

Amazon made a big effort to promote its Amazon Go launch earlier this year. A Bloomberg report in September suggested the firm plans on opening 3,000 Amazon Go stores nationwide by 2021.