Sainsbury's trials new human free cashiers to accompany self checkouts

Sainsbury's is trialling a new self checkouts, featuring conveyor belts and bagging areas in a new hybrid design.

The new checkouts wouldn't completely eliminate humans from the checkout process, but give shoppers more options to checkout themselves if they want to.

They won't be too dissimilar to the standard tills you'd use with a human manning them, except for the lack of person at the end.

Like a self checkout, you'd just scan your own items and settle up independently.

The perk is that you'd have more space for a trolley, and the potential to pay for more food yourself than on a smaller self checkout machine.

Sainsburys is trialling more self checkouts in a new hybrid format (Credit: Getty)

It comes as part of a plan from CEO Simon Roberts to make stores ‘more efficient’.

The new hybrid self checkouts are currently being trialled across two Sainsbury's locations in Cobham and Witney.

And whilst self checkouts will always have their fair share of haters, the CEO told Grocery Gazette that the tills were proving "popular" so far.

Nothing has been decided yet about whether these new self checkouts will be rolled out more broadly, but Roberts' Next Level Strategy is planning to test more than 100 new formats at the Cobham store, with ambitions to modernise their branches.

Also being tested are digital touchscreens, which will allow shoppers to search for where exactly in a store an item is, meaning you don't have to go up to a worker and have them lead you from aisle to aisle. Pretty nifty, eh?

The checkouts are more like the human manned ones (Credit: Getty)

The screens could also offer recipe advise and tips for health and beauty products, per The Grocer. They're currently being trialled at stores in Talbot Green and Witney.

And it doesn't stop there. The supermarket chain is also trialling shelf weight sensors which would alert staff if any high value items were taken off shelves and replaced with something lighter.

Technology is really the future of supermarkets, it seems. Are you on board?

Featured image: Getty