Self-Checkout Adoption Falls 16.3% as Shrink Concerns Mount

Self-checkout use among retailers fell 16.3% year over year, according to new data from Toast.

Toast surveyed 340 decision-makers at US convenience stores, grocers, and bottle shops with 16 or fewer locations. Of those respondents, 36% said they used self-checkout this year, down from 43% last year.

The decline is hardly the first sign that retailer enthusiasm for the lanes is fading. Dollar General removed self-checkout from about 12,000 stores in 2024. CEO Todd Vasos said on an earnings call that the move was to reduce shrink, the catchall term for merchandise disappearing due to shoplifting and other causes. Only two years earlier, the retailer had announced it would operate 200 locations entirely with self-checkout on a trial basis.

Five Below also scaled back self-checkout in 2024, citing shrink. The retailer shifted to having associates handle 75% of transactions overall and 100% at high-shrink stores.

Independent research points to the same problem. A June report from ECR Retail Loss, a retailer-backed loss-prevention research group, found that in the year after grocery stores installed self-checkout, merchandise losses rose an average of 22%. Grocery stores with self-checkout had losses 33% higher on average than stores without it.

Some chains are limiting rather than eliminating the technology. Target and Schnucks have both restricted self-checkout to shoppers purchasing 10 items or fewer.

Regulators are stepping in as well. In August 2025, the city council in Long Beach, California, approved an ordinance requiring stores to limit self-checkout lanes to 15 items and to keep at least one employee-staffed checkout lane open while self-checkout was offered.

A month later, all four Vons locations in Long Beach and one Albertsons location closed their self-checkout lanes entirely.

For retailers still weighing the technology, the combined pressure of shrink data, competitor retrenchment, and local mandates suggests the self-checkout expansion era has given way to a period of careful restriction.