Odd Lots · Friday, July 3, 2026
Aldi's commitment to efficiency led to pioneering innovations in checkout technology, including bi-level scanners and multi-barcode packaging. Scott Patton revealed that Aldi was the last retailer to adopt scanning, initially relying on employees to memorize prices. The company then collaborated with manufacturers to develop faster scanning solutions and placed multiple barcodes on products to speed up the checkout process.
“So up until nineteen ninety eight, all of our employees memorized all of the prices and they would enter them by hand on an old fashioned ten key.”
“So that was one of the innovations that we were pioneering with our suppliers to say, look, how can we move memorizing prices. Wasn't the long term fit for sure, It's very difficult, by the way, but when you have these bi level scanners, says okay, there's a chance here.”
“So we came up with the idea and we're just gonna have multiple bar codes. So we measure everything we scan, right, so all of our associates they measure on items permitt it and we can we can track the items per minut it.”