Shoppers walk through the new AI gateways at Sam's Club in Grapevine, Texas.
Dominick Reuter/Business Insider
Sam's Club recently opened its first new location in seven years in Grapevine, Texas, near Dallas.
The store is the first in the chain to have no checkout lanes — but the tech doesn't stop there.
BI toured the store on opening day and got an exclusive behind-the-scenes view of how it all works.
I wanted to see what the future of brick-and-mortar retail might look like, so I traveled to the Dallas-area suburb of Grapevine, Texas.
The town is home to Sam's Club's recently opened store — its first new location in seven years — which is a showcase of a host of new tech that could soon appear in more of the warehouse chain's planned locations, as well as remodels of existing ones.
While the headline-grabbing innovation is the lack of checkout lanes at the front of the store, the tech doesn't stop there.
Business Insider toured the store on its grand opening day and got an exclusive behind-the-scenes view of how it all works.
The new location opened shortly after 8 a.m. on a chilly October morning.
The scene at the opening of the Sam's Club in Grapevine, Texas.
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A long line of customers was already waiting to get into the store, and a crowd gathered to hear remarks from local officials.
Shoppers rolled in past a custom mural made by a local Grapevine artist.
Shoppers enter the club shortly after opening.
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Signs at the front of the store instruct members to download the Sam's Club app, which they must use to scan and pay for their purchases at this location.
The member services area seems more like a tech help desk than a retail-returns counter.
The member services area.
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New members can sign up or get info at the desk, which also handles returns.
It's increasingly common to see people carrying their phones in their hands while shopping, and Sam's Club leaned into that trend — hard.
A shopper carries their iPhone at the Sam's Club in Grapevine, Texas.
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Sam's Club first introduced Scan & Go functionality to its app in 2018, which the company says has been downloaded 9.6 million times.
Customers wore promotional T-shirts with a phrase that reads both literally and figuratively: "Scan & Go checkout is the only way to shop!"
A customer tests out a barbecue grill.
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Several shoppers told BI they had been using the mobile app to scan and pay for purchases at other clubs in the Dallas area, while this one was under construction.
Instead of cash registers, the front end of the store now features displays of big-ticket items.
The new front end, with no checkout lanes.
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The redesign leans fully into the idea of letting shoppers try out products in the store before buying online and having them delivered.
The café is also run through the scan-and-go app.
The new Sam's Club café.
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Orders are placed through the app, and a screen on the wall lets shoppers know when their food is ready.
18 pizza-sized cubbies correspond to the monitor where shoppers can collect their orders.
Food cubbies at the Sam's Club café.
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The company says the kitchen's layout was entirely redesigned to make it easier for workers to handle large volumes of orders, and a pizza-making robot can prepare 100 pies per hour.
Behind the café is a super-sized e-commerce fulfillment area.
The e-commerce fulfillment area at Sam's Club.
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Some orders are packed for shipping, while others wait on barcoded flatbed carts for pickup.
A vertical carousel holds smaller orders, and an oversized overhead door leads out into the parking lot.
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The carousel nearly reaches the roof of the warehouse. A combination of RFID sensors and cameras keeps track of the flow of merchandise.
Battery-powered coolers will soon extend the delivery range for perishables.
Battery-powered coolers for delivery.
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The system is not yet in use, but once it is up and running, the units will allow Sam's Club to reach much farther during deliveries without running into food safety problems.
The curbside pickup area is huge.
The curbside pickup area at Sam's Club.
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Unlike many warehouse club stores, Sam's Club is leaning hard into the online pick-up strategy commonly used by retailers that usually sell in smaller quantities.
More than 30 parking stalls are reserved for pick-ups.
The curbside pickup area at Sam's Club.
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The company says most of its stores that offer curbside only have about half as many parking bays.
In the weeks leading up to the opening, Sam's Club used an interesting strategy to get shoppers acquainted with the app: car washes.
The Sam's Club car wash.
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The carwash was plenty busy on the day of the store's grand opening.
By nudging people to use the app for car washes, Sam's Club members were shown how the checkout-free process works.
An employee helps a customer purchase a carwash.
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While many transactions were completed with an app or a kiosk, there were employees available to keep things moving along.
It uses the same strategy for customers filling up on gas.
The Sam's Club fuel station.
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By encouraging the mobile app to complete a transaction, the company says local shoppers were quickly acquainted to using the feature.
Even the tire center was high-tech, with a vertical carousel similar to the e-commerce fulfillment area.
The tire carousel at Sam's Club.
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Shop employees can key in the type of tire they need and down it comes.
The loading dock was full of tech, too.
A worker uses a forklift to lower a pallet of merchandise.
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As with any club store, the forklift is the quintessential piece of equipment.
Most of the lifts require human operators, but this autonomous unit is expected to save valuable time unloading trucks.
An autonomous forklift.
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This one wasn't in service yet, but it's another piece of technology that will be tested first here at the Grapevine store before potentially being rolled out to other Sam's Club locations.
AI-powered computer vision scanners also watch what's coming into the store.
An AI-powered computer vision scanner on the loading dock.
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Using similar tech as the big blue gateways at the front of the store, Sam's Club is bringing AI computer vision to the loading docks to scan inventory the moment it arrives off a truck.
Many of the store's latest innovations were made possible due to an autonomous floor scrubber that rolled out across the store fleet in 2022.
An autonomous floor scrubber in the maintenance closet.
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Each day, the autonomous floor scrubber glides through the aisles while its cameras and sensors check inventory levels and update the company's computers with the latest numbers.
There are also plenty of low-tech solutions, like signs that help demystify the treasure hunt.
Signs tell shoppers where to find products in the warehouse.
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Shoppers can expect no-frills descriptions that are direct and to the point.
But you don't have to look far to find more tech, like these RFID scanners on the ends of aisles.
RFID scanners track merchandise through the warehouse.
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RFID scanners help Sam's Club keep track of what (and how much) stuff is where. That allows the store to keep the company's suite of apps up-to-date for customers and employees.
This 3D printer was one of several display items that required shoppers to scan a QR code to purchase.
A 3D printer on display at Sam's Club.
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Scanning the QR code takes shoppers directly to the listing on SamsClub.com.
At the store's exits, several employees were equipped with tablets and credit card readers to help complete transactions.
An Sam's Club employee with a tablet to process purchases.
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If customers had trouble with a purchase, employees would step in to help.
However, many shoppers simply passed through the gateways without stopping.
A shopper walks through one of the AI powered gateways.
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First introduced a little under a year ago, the computer vision gateways are now in the majority of Sam's Club locations in the US. The company expects them in all locations by the end of the year.
Cameras on the sides of the gateways capture images of the cart's contents, as well as the area underneath them.
A sideview camera in the AI gateway.
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Carts aren't exactly necessary either. Several shoppers with only an item or two were able to carry their products out of the store.
Overhead cameras catch the top-down view of customers' carts.
An overhead camera in the AI gateway.
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The computer vision can differentiate between a jumble of products in a customer's cart.
The images are then processed to alert employees to any problems within the roughly three seconds it takes shoppers to get to the exit door.
The AI gateway at the Sam's Club.
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If an item wasn't scanned properly, an associate will step up to check the shopper's cart.
Sam's Club CEO Chris Nicholas experienced one such inspection.
Sam's Club CEO Chris Nicholas confirms his purchases with an associate at the exit.
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An associate with a handheld scanner confirmed the purchases made by Sam's Club CEO Chris Nicholas: a giant stuffed bear, a Lego set, and a package of raspberries.
"My hope is that Sam's Club, when you shop, feels like what it's like to shop in the future. That's what I hope, and so that's my job," Nicholas told BI. "This is a glimpse of that."
