The growth of checkout-free concessions stands at sports stadiums continues its rapid pace this fall, with market leader Zippin announcing three new stores using its technology at CityPark, the new Major League Soccer stadium in St. Louis.
The first checkout-free stores (that we’ve heard of) for an MLS stadium bring Zippin’s total of stadium deployments to 49, according to our unofficial totals. Amazon, the next-biggest name in the stadium checkout-free market, has 29 stadium stores by our count, while a third competitor, AiFi, has four stadium stores announced or open.
All three Zippin stands were open during the recent friendly match between St. Louis CITY2 and Bayer 04 Leverkusen, which served as the opening event in the new 22,500-seat venue. According to Zippin, two of the stores are located on the concourse directly behind the supporters’ section at the new stadium, one of the areas of likely highest demand for quick concession services.
If you’re not familiar with checkout-free stores, these are concession stands where customers enter stores by scanning a credit card or some other pre-authorization method at entry gates and then simply take items off shelves and are charged automatically as they leave the store. Since we wrote a feature story on the technology in August, Zippin has added 19 new stadium stores while Amazon has added 15.
