Six-and-a-half years after Amazon opened the first employee-only Amazon Go store in Seattle, the company has brought its Just Walk Out technology to the Southern Hemisphere.   Over the past year, the retail giant has been working with the AFL and Delaware North, a global hospitality company, to install two checkout-free venues at Marvel Stadium in Melbourne. Known as The Runner, the outlets enable customers to grab something to eat or drink and return to their seats without having to queue up at a cash register to pay. Instead, they simply tap their payment card or mobile wallet to enter the venue. Then, a combination of cameras and artificial intelligence is used to track the products they pick up and charge them when they walk out. “That’s what’s so magical. The power of this technology is in the customer experience,” Rob Pickering, AFL’s general manager of technology, said at the launch of The Runner in May. The Runner at Marvel Stadium. Photo by Heather McIlvaineStadiums are just the beginningAmazon’s vice president of physical stores technology Barry Johnson said the company aims to roll out Just Walk Out technology in many more locations in Australia. “We wouldn’t come all the way to Australia and do one or two stores. Our aspirations are strong, and there is very strong interest,” he told Inside Retail.While he declined to name any specific organisations, Johnson said that Amazon is interested in expanding its partnership with the AFL, and open to working with other sporting organisations and types of businesses in Australia. More than 200 stores in the US and UK currently use Just Walk Out technology. They range in size from 250 square feet (23 sqm) to 44,000 square feet (4088 sqm) and include Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores, as well as over 50 stores that are using the technology on a third-party basis. So far, many of these third-party rollouts have been in stadiums, which provide one of the clearest use cases for checkout-free stores.“We think that there’s a great product fit in stadium venues,” Johnson said. “You really transform the customer experience, especially when there’s a cost to be [in-store]. There’s a cost in time, […] and really, the focus is what’s going on out there [on the pitch].”Beyond improving the customer experience, there are commercial benefits to eliminating queues and being able to serve more customers. After Amazon installed its technology at a stadium venue at Lumen Field, where the professional American football team the Seattle Seahawks play, customer throughput reportedly increased by 74 per cent, and transition volumes doubled. “The partner was so excited, we put in three more,” Johnson said.Say hello to the 24/7 storeStaffing challenges present another strong use case for checkout-free stores. “We consistently hear, ‘We can’t hire the people to run these stores,’ so this technology allows you to augment that,” Johnson said. Most businesses don’t use Just Walk Out technology to reduce their headcount, according to Amazon, but rather to free up staff for tasks like serving customers and restocking shelves, as opposed to preventing shoplifting. “This technology is very good at counting – I saw you take two – and charging for that. And then, you relieve individuals from having to do that,” he said. Checkout-free stores can also operate late at night when it’s difficult to roster staff. US-based travel retailer Paradies Lagardere recently launched Just Walk Out technology at Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina for this reason. “They wanted to have staff during the heavy periods, but they also wanted to get the business that was there from airport workers and flights that came in late at night,” Johnson explained. According to him, the rollout costs vary based on the type of customer experience that the business wants to provide. “What we find is that in terms of schedule and cost, it’s usually construction that drives them. The technology is obviously not a zero cost, but overall, it’s other factors that drive that,” he said.Lessons learnedAmazon has continued to improve and update its Just Walk Out technology over the years. “When we first did this, we were reasonably focused on hitting the highest level of accuracy that we possibly could. We used a great deal of sensors to make sure that we missed nothing. What we learned over time was that we could use fewer sensors, and still not miss anything,” Johnson said. The new checkout-free venues at Marvel Stadium feature about 40 cameras, whereas older stores had a “sea of cameras.” “We’ve been able to do that with improvements in algorithms and improvements in how we recognise the space, which is more sustainable,” he noted. “There’s less power consumption.”