CLOSED — The Mingo Junction Dollar General’s self-checkout kiosk bears a sign notifying customers it no longer functions as a self-checkout device. -- Christopher Dacanay
MINGO JUNCTION — Self-checkout has been eliminated from the Mingo Junction Dollar General as part of a broader move by the company to cut down on inventory loss.
The store’s self-checkout kiosk was installed in early 2022 and replaced an existing cashier checkout lane. It stayed in use until just weeks ago before being re-worked into an associate-assisted checkout lane, according to store manager Abby Crawford. Now, the kiosk is only used as a reliever, with help from another cashier, when the store’s other cashier lane is full.
Mingo Junction’s Dollar General is among many of the company’s stores seeing changes meant to combat shrink, or the loss of inventory for a store resulting from various types of errors and theft, either by employees or customers. Shrink is measured by the difference between recorded inventory and the actual amount of inventory.
During a March 14 conference call with financial analysts, Dollar General Corp. executives described proposed changes to self-checkout and the reasoning behind them.
CFO Kelly Dilts noted during the call how the company experienced a 1.38 percent decrease in gross profit as a percentage of sales in the fourth quarter of 2023, partially attributable to increases in shrink.
In response, the company was planning to take multiple actions this year that would affect a majority of the roughly 14,000 stores where self-checkout was available, according to CEO Todd Vasos.
As part of the shrink reduction efforts, some 9,000 stores would begin converting self-checkout kiosks to associate-assisted checkout, Vasos said, noting that kiosks were originally designed to double as as traditional checkout registers if need be.
“This is intended to drive traffic first to our staffed registers, with assisted-checkout options available as second or third options to reduce lines during high-volume times,” Vasos said.
Another portion of stores would begin limiting self-checkout transactions to five items or less. Finally, Dollar General planned to “completely remove self-checkout from more than 300 of our highest shrink stores” during the first half of the year, Vasos said.
Determining those high-shrink stores was done through Everseen, a retail solutions-centered AI startup, which monitored hundreds of thousands of Dollar General’s self-checkout transactions.
Other shrink reduction efforts include evaluating product lines, programs for store managers and owners and the removal of some high-shrink items in high-shrink stores.
“We believe these steps are in line with where the customer wants us to be, which includes increasing personal engagement with them at the store. Additionally, we believe these actions have the potential to have a material and positive impact on shrink as we move into the back half of the year and into 2025,” Vasos said.
The company’s adoption rates for self-checkout “have been high,” Vasos said, adding that “there’s truly no substitute for an employee presence at the front end of the store.”
Crawford said Mingo Junction’s re-worked kiosk will remain associate-assisted, noting that it hasn’t been determined whether the kiosk will be removed entirely in the future.
Dollar General’s pulling in the reins of self-checkout has been done alongside other retailers, including Five Below, Target and Wal-Mart, which announced in late April that it would be pulling self-checkout kiosks from two stores in Cleveland and St. Louis. Like Dollar General, Five Below has cited shrink as the cause for its efforts, while Target has limited its self-checkout to 10 items or less.
Sixty-nine percent of self-checkout users believe the kiosks make theft easier, while 15 percent of users admit to stealing through the kiosks, according to a 2023 study by the online lending marketplace LendingTree, which sampled 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 77.
The Mingo Junction Dollar General was a frequent target for shoplifting, according to Mingo Junction Police Chief Willie McKenzie III, who estimated that as many as 60 calls were made to the station for shoplifting at the village’s store within the last two years.
McKenzie said suspects are recorded on video using the kiosk’s recording function. Sometimes, but not always, the suspects can be visually identified and prosecuted for theft. On May 3, McKenzie was able to make an arrest in connection with a case of theft from 2023, visually identifying the suspect based off what he’d seen in the self-checkout kiosk’s camera footage of the incident.
Often looking to make sure no employees are watching, shoplifters employ a number of tricks to get away with the act, McKenzie said, including pretending to scan items, pretending to swipe their cards and simply heading out the door with a full cart. Stolen items vary widely, McKenzie said, adding, “It’s whatever they want that day. It can go from a piece of candy to a bucket and mop.”
Theft of materials with a total amount under $1,000 could result in a conviction for petty theft, a misdemeanor, McKenzie said, and anything beyond $1,000 would become a felony. Oddly, those who are arrested for shoplifting often have the money to pay for the item with them at the time, McKenzie said.
Regarding the elimination of self-checkout, McKenzie said, “I do see it being positive because since they stopped the self-checkout scan, I don’t think we’ve gotten calls for any thefts, not that there haven’t been any, but we haven’t gotten any calls for thefts there since they shut it down.”
Ridding the store of self-checkout is a necessary step, McKenzie said, noting that small stores like the Mingo Junction Dollar General do not have the staff to adequately monitor all individuals in the store or security cameras. With shoplifting, the store is the one that hurts, McKenzie said, and if enough damage is done, it may threaten the store that plays a vital role in the community.
“People don’t realize how vital dollar stores and other stores in your area are to our senior citizens or people who don’t have vehicles and really need stuff from the store.” McKenzie said. “You take that away and people can’t get to the small things that they need.”
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