No shoplifters: With “Pick & Go” the goods can also be stowed directly in a backpack in a Cologne Rewe – payment is made via app.
Image: Stefan Finger
In Berlin, Rewe is now testing how well surveillance is received in supermarkets. If you have downloaded a “Pick&Go” app, you can put your purchase straight into your backpack. A self-experiment.
IIn Berlin you can now take part in an experiment that could significantly change life that has not yet been digitized (also known as real life). The scene is a Rewe supermarket on Schönhauser Allee, a rather small shop right next to a sex shop that values pop and irony and a shop that recycles good old things and in whose showroom you can see a faded red sign with the inscription “Der The plan is our combat program”. The cozy Prenzlauer Berg neighborhood is important for Rewe’s plan: it’s about getting customers used to the idea that their familiar analogue world in particular is becoming even more attractive through digital surveillance.
In this store, the benefit is a “smooth shopping experience”: Anyone who has downloaded a “Pick&Go” app to their smartphone and also stored their credit card there can put their potato chips or chocolate bars directly in their backpack and have to go to the checkout to do so no longer pay. The company has installed four hundred smart cameras on the ceilings and more than a thousand weight sensors on the shelves, not to mention six kilometers of high-speed network cables, so the machines working in the background don’t miss the slightest movement in the store.