"The conventional wisdom is that item-level tracking with RFID is ten years away," says Rob Simmons, cofounder of Freedom Shopping. “We've been doing this for two years, with a strong return on investment."

"The only practical way to do an unmanned application like this is to use RFID," says Simmons. "We were new to RFID, and had heard that you couldn't tag metals and liquids and you couldn't do item-level tagging profitably. But that wasn't true."

Today, the Freedom Shopping System is in production at more than 20 minimarts across the United States, including five customers of Fast Track Convenience in the Detroit area. At one customer location, sales have increased threefold and profits per item more than doubled since the introduction of the RFID kiosk.

Solution:

The Freedom Shopping Solution includes a self-checkout kiosk using RFID, universal tags, and optional gate-style readers. The kiosk includes on-screen marketing tools, such as the ability to present complimentary items during checkout. It is also handles the backend processes of accounting, merchandizing, reordering and inventory management.