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Starbucks Pickup and Amazon Go have opened up a brand-new concept on the Upper East Side of Manhattan that will allow people to purchase and pick up food and drink without human interaction.
The store, at East 59th Street between Park and Lexington avenues, is employing the Amazon Go technology, Crain’s New York Business reports. The system — called Just Walk Out — allows buyers to walk out of a store and Amazon to deduct payment automatically, without checkout.
Shoppers will be able to buy their beverages via the Starbucks app. More cashierless Starbucks locations are coming to New York City, Crain's reports, with another set to open in a former Dean & DeLuca space in The New York Times Building.
Amazon opened Amazon Go convenience stores back in 2018, and it began selling the cashierless technology to other retailers last year.
Machine learning algorithms and computer vision are used to track shoppers, but an inability to properly track items had previously caused the e-commerce behemoth to pause the opening of the first store in Seattle.
Starbucks has been closing stores in the city as it shifts its focus to pickup-only concepts, but in late 2020 it said it planned to open tens of thousands of stores post-pandemic.
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