Checkout-free market brings convenience, incremental sales to Dave & Buster’s

An evening or afternoon at the local entertainment center often includes refreshments, which is why many, if not most, such businesses offer on-site foodservice.

But taking a break from the action to get a snack often requires going to a service counter or taking a seat in the dining section.

Dave & Buster's in Hollywood, Florida has eliminated that friction point with its first "Game & Go," a checkout-free market located right in the main gaming area. Patrons can enter the walled-off market by tapping their credit card at a reader, grab a snack or beverage and exit at the designated walk-out lane.

"Innovation is critical in the entertainment business and our new Game & Go Micro Market is truly state of the art," Brandon Coleman III, senior vice president and chief marketing officer at Dave & Buster's, said in a prepared statement.

A store within a store

The market is a rectangular-shaped space sectioned off by Plexiglass walls and an "open" roof with security cameras attached. Signs instruct guests to swipe their credit card or download a payment app.

One wall has a beer cooler, two beverage coolers and a set of snack shelves. The opposite wall has additional snack shelves. There are about a thousand SKUs.

For age-restricted purchases, the guest shows their ID to an attendant. When unattended, the beer and wine cooler is locked.

A camera monitors each product being purchased as the purchase is added to the guest's virtual basket.

If someone enters the market without opening the gate, an alarm sounds and flashes green and red lights and automatically texts the staff.

A guest purchases snacks without having to check out.

A team effort

Dave & Buster's food and beverage team partnered with The Coca-Cola Co. and Zippin, a provider of contactless checkout solutions to sports arenas and other venues, to bring the "Game & Go Micro Market" to life this past summer.

Rachel Chahal, director of amusement/eatertainment partnerships at the Coca-Cola Co., said the concept has been a win for customers, for Dave & Buster's and for the numerous brands involved. Where guests love the convenience of a frictionless shopping experience, the retailer and brands have enjoyed a new revenue opportunity."If you didn't know, it looks like a game when you walk in, but it isn't. It's a store," Chahal told this website in a phone interview. "It's like a store within a store. They (guests) can pick it up (products) and put it down as many times as they want and then when they exit the store then their credit card is charged. They don't need to scan anything."

Coca-Cola, a longtime Dave & Buster's partner, came up with the idea for the Game & Go Micro Market as a way to better serve the customers who primarily visited to play games.

"People come in to Dave & Buster's and just want to play the games and they weren't buying any food and beverage," Chahal said. "We wanted to come up with an alternative to try to get more food and beverages.

"In order to do that we have seen a lot of success at our stadium accounts of people being able to 'zip in and zip out,' if you will, with the technology from Zippin. So that is how we chose to do a micro market with Zippin and be able to have the autonomous retail, and make it so that when we wanted to sell beer and wine we had a staff — and then, when we didn't, no one needed to be in there."

Guests peruse the beverage cooler without having to leave the game area.

Is it a 'micro market'?

The checkout-free market may not fit the description of the "micro market" that many convenience services operators have been offering for the past decade since it doesn't involve scanning a product at a checkout kiosk.

Coca-Cola, however, felt the term described the concept well and made it easy for the client to understand.

"We have called it 'micro market' because it's tiny, so that we can help the consumer and our customers," Chahal said. "It was much easier to explain to Dave & Buster's what we wanted to do when we called it a micro market, and then showed them at the stadiums, and showed them at the airports, what these were.

"We all looked at how it worked together," Chahal said, recalling how the Dave & Buster's team first visited sports stadiums with the Coca-Cola team to see the Zippin technology in action. "If you're going to see it, you've got to see it while it's working. They saw the high velocity of people going through the market."

While Coca-Cola also has a working relationship with Amazon's Just Walk Out technology, the team felt Zippin was a better choice for Dave & Buster's.

"They didn't need Amazon's branding to lend credibility to what they're doing because they're already a (technology) leader, so Zippin was a much better choice for us," Chahal said. "Nowhere in the micro market would you say that Coca-Cola or Zippin is the star; Dave & Buster's is the star."

In fact, all product manufacturers participating in the market, including Mars Wrigley and Kellogg, get data from Zippin.

While Zippin has a biometric identification option, the team chose not to use it due to possible restrictions with biometric readers, she said.

All incremental sales

Meanwhile, customers are loving it, and Dave & Buster's and the brands are loving it. "It is all incremental," Chahal said, noting that the market on average does about $3,000 in sales per week, about 20% of which are made using the app.

The most challenging aspect was learning all the parts involved in the project, Chahal said. This required cooperation of all the players, including the company building the market, the Central Group from Toronto, Canada.

The Coca-Cola Co. plans to test the checkout-less micro market in additional sites.

Photos: The Coca-Cola Co. and LinkedIn.