Hello Reader,

February is here, and there’s a lot going on in the retail tech space. In this month’s edition, we’re tracking Home Depot’s new AI tool that saves real time, Amazon’s decision to close Go and Fresh locations, and field service platforms moving from automation toward autonomy. We’re also back on two familiar pressure points: swipe fee reform and new Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) restrictions. You’ve got five headlines to skim, plus one podcast episode we’re recommending. Let’s get into it!

Home Depot’s AI Play: Materials Lists in Minutes

Home Depot announced Material List Builder AI, designed to help generate complete job material lists from natural language, voice-to-text, or existing documents. Instead of manual SKU hunting and spreadsheet rebuilding, the workflow is meant to take minutes and produce grouped lists aligned to the job’s intent. It’s part of a broader Pro-focused digital toolkit that includes project planning and order management options.

Expert POV: This is a great example of AI that actually fits a business case. It’s not “AI for vibes,” it’s AI that reduces friction in a high-frequency workflow where errors cost time, margin, and rework. Another takeaway is that the user experience matters as much as the model. Voice, text, and document input are smart because Pros work in trucks, on jobsites, and in motion, and the best tools meet them where they are. Expect more retailers to package AI as a practical assistant that creates structured outputs, not just another chatbot.

Take a closer look →

Amazon’s Go and Fresh Locations to Close

Amazon announced it’s closing its Amazon Go convenience stores and Amazon Fresh physical grocery stores as it shifts investment toward grocery delivery and expanding Whole Foods Market. Amazon said it saw encouraging signals in its Amazon-branded grocery efforts, but it still hadn’t built a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model to scale. These stores were also closely associated with Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology, the cashierless checkout system that uses cameras and sensors to track what shoppers take so they can leave without stopping at a register, with the receipt handled automatically through their Amazon account.

Kitestring’s Perspective: This is a useful reminder that great tech is not the same thing as a great business. Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology was cutting-edge and genuinely impressive, but “better checkout” does not automatically create demand for a store format, especially in dense, urban markets where shoppers already have plenty of fast grab-and-go options. If the store mission is unclear, or the assortment and food offer do not pull people in, the tech ends up optimizing a problem customers were not asking you to solve.

Dig Deeper →

Field Service Moves From Automation to Autonomy

DevPro Journal argues 2026 is the shift from “copilot” tools to agentic systems that can reason, plan, and execute work with minimal supervision. It calls out practical examples like detecting an issue via IoT telemetry, ordering parts, and scheduling work automatically, with humans moving from in-the-loop to on-the-loop. It also flags that security becomes a core feature as connected devices and AI agents expand the attack surface, and that low-code configurability is becoming table stakes for ops teams who want to move fast.

Expert Take: If you’re responsible for retail technology, Point of Sale (POS) hardware, or field service operations, this article is worth your time because it challenges how we think about “automation.” The next wave is not just faster ticket routing or better dashboards, it is systems that make decisions, prioritize based on business impact, and resolve issues with minimal human involvement. In retail, where uptime equals revenue and field teams are stretched thin, that shift from reactive workflows to intelligent, self-directed operations is significant. If you’re planning refresh cycles, managing service level agreements (SLAs), or trying to reduce truck rolls across a distributed store network, this reframes the conversation in a way that’s hard to ignore.

Read the full article →

Swipe Fees: Illinois Wins One (For Now)

A federal court partially upheld an Illinois law that prohibits swipe fees on taxes and tips, a decision backed in arguments by groups including National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS), National Retail Federation (NRF), The Food Industry Association (FMI), and the Illinois Retail Merchants Association. The reasoning highlighted is that interchange is set by networks like Visa and Mastercard, and therefore a state restriction is not necessarily preempted by federal bank law. Bank groups have indicated they plan to appeal, so this is unlikely to be the last chapter.

Our View: For retail tech leaders, this is less about one state and more about the direction of travel. If these rules spread, payment systems and processors may need to get more precise about how they calculate fees and how they separate taxable amounts, tips, and other excluded components at authorization and settlement. Your POS, pin pad, payment middleware, and reporting pipeline may all end up in the conversation. It’s another reminder that payments “policy” turns into “implementation” very quickly.

See the update →

New Podcast Drop: Behind the Counter (Episode 1)

We launched our new Behind the Counter podcast, and the first episode features Jesse Wolcott, Director of IT at Royal Farms, recorded at NRF 2026. The conversation focuses on keeping stores resilient, making smart choices about cloud vs. edge, cutting through AI hype, and building systems that protect uptime while still improving the customer experience.

Listen while you work →

SNAP Restrictions May Cause a POS Problem

States operating under USDA-approved SNAP food restriction waivers are creating a patchwork of rules retailers need to navigate. goEBT summarizes USDA guidance and emphasizes that restrictions can vary based on where the purchase is fulfilled, and that cross-border fulfillment can shift which state’s rules apply. Retailers are being pushed to update POS logic, item eligibility mapping, and cashier workflows quickly to stay compliant as more states come online.

Our Take: This is where POS flexibility stops being a nice-to-have and becomes existential. If eligibility rules vary by state, change on short timelines, and depend on fulfillment context, your POS needs a rules engine you can update fast, plus item data that is clean enough to classify correctly. You also need a clean way to push updates across locations. If you’re still weighing whether to replace a legacy POS, this is exactly the kind of situation that shows you what your current system can or can’t keep up with.

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Thanks for Reading!

That’s it for this month. If you only take one thing from this issue, it’s that AI, field service, payments, and compliance are not separate conversations, they all touch the POS and the store experience. Catch our podcast when you can, and we’ll be back with more next month.

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