Running mini-markets or even hypermarkets without any personnel other than a few guards, late in the evening or on Sunday afternoons, the subject is explosive.
Because it could ultimately mark the end of cashiers.
However, the movement has accelerated since the test in a Lyon supermarket in 2018 and especially the launch in the summer of 2019 of the first Casino hypermarket without cashiers on Sunday afternoon in the Roseraie district in Angers (Maine-et-). Loire).
Many stores are now open for free access to customers, ready to scan their products themselves, also during public holidays, such as January 1st.
How many exactly?
Difficult to take stock for independent brands like Leclerc or Intermarché.
The health context linked to Covid-19 has also sometimes changed the situation in recent months.
Thus, the three Carrefour stores in the Ile-de-France region, open “in autonomy” in Malakoff (Hauts-de-Seine), in the 7th arrondissement of Paris and near Beaubourg have been closed for a few weeks “because it is impossible for us to clean them sufficiently, often. in order to be able to respect barrier gestures, "recalls a spokesperson for Carrefour, who nevertheless underlines" that it is a model in which we believe. "
The alcohol and catering departments are closed
The Casino group is also betting on it.
It is even very early: as of June 30, there were 444 stores capable of activating "the autonomous mode".
Including a small half of Monoprix and Franprix, which however remained closed on December 25 and January 1.
Unlike 20 Monop'mais, above all, 198 Casino supermarkets (out of 323 integrated stores) and 62 Géant (out of the 90 hypermarkets in the group), which opened independently on those two days.
Or not far from two thirds of the park!
Once the employees have left, around 8 p.m. in the evening or on Sunday around 1 p.m., the stores switch to autonomous mode.
Clearly, only automatic checkouts work.
Payments are only made by credit card or using applications such as Casino Max, already downloaded 500,000 times.
The wine and spirits departments are closed, as are the catering departments (butcher's shop, fishmonger, etc.) since there is no staff.
Only a few security guards, subject to another collective agreement, are there.
In the event of a problem (cash register blocked, scan inoperative, etc.), customers can reach a hotline via an intercom.
In the case of Casino brands, according to our information, it is the Atos group that takes care of it.
Ongoing legal proceedings
If the extension of the almost unstaffed opening hours makes it possible to make the stores more profitable, the sign assures that it is “to meet a demand from customers for immediacy” that it has developed this concept.
"The turnover of these stores evolves as quickly on Sunday afternoon as on Sunday morning, a sign of the interest of our customers, who are looking for maximum flexibility," said a spokesperson.
Jean Pastor, the central trade union delegate of the CGT for the Casino group, disputes this view of things: “In our stores which have become autonomous, customers sign our petitions, and in Marseille, where I work, they abandon the brands that do not have more cashiers for the benefit of those who still have them.
Regularly, the unions, even the labor inspectorate, attack certain openings before the courts and sometimes obtain success, as was again the case in the summer of 2020 for three Casino supermarkets in Toulouse.
The sign appealed, the procedure is still in progress.
