The Los Angeles Football Club has added Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” technology to an existing concession stand at BMO Stadium, the first such stripped-down deployment we’ve seen from Amazon in the stadium space.
According to a press release from the club, the King’s Hawaiian Grill stand on the main concourse of BMO Stadium now has the familiar checkout-free entry and exit gates in front, where fans scan some kind of payment technology for entry, grab their food and drinks, and leave with payment taking place later online.
The format of adding checkout-free technology in front of existing stands was first done last year by stadium checkout-free market leader Zippin, which called its format “Walk-up” stores. The idea behind the format was to find a cheaper and faster to deploy version of checkout-free technology, since bigger stores using the technology typically have both construction costs and costs for more of the cameras and sensors needed to detect purchases.
In some stores using the Zippin walk-up format, that company has built its cameras into a sort of straight pole for easy deployment. At BMO Stadium, it appears there is a small grid of cameras overhead (see photos). The simple drink cooler + grab-and-go hot food format at the BMO Stadium store is a similar layout to some of the Zippin walk-up stores we’ve seen photos of. Stadium Tech Report has not yet seen one of these types of stores live.
Christian Lau, chief technology officer for LAFC, said Amazon’s technology was chosen after several years of due diligence. In a LinkedIn post about the store’s debut at the LAFC Major League Soccer home opener this past weekend, Lau said “Performance exceeded expectations, guests were happy with the experience and we sold a lot of Thai Chicken Sandwiches😋”.
By our unofficial count, the new stand brings Amazon to 56 total stadium-specific checkout-free concession stands, second only to Zippin’s 82 stadium stores. AiFi, another provider of checkout-free technology, now has 21 stadium stores by our latest count. Stay tuned for more news on more new stores from all providers as we confirm them!
