If retail tech had job titles this month, Grocery Outlet was the bouncer, Rhode Island was the hall monitor, and Sheetz was the person who redid the plumbing while everyone else argued about paint colors. This month's issue covers what retailers are doing to protect their stores, what regulators are doing to protect cashiers and customers, and what your infrastructure needs to look like to keep up with both. Let's get into it.

Smile! You’re On Camera

Grocery Outlet, a Bay Area grocer, has installed SAFR Guard facial recognition cameras with signage alerting shoppers. The technology photographs customers as they enter and checks those images against a "watchlist" of individuals previously flagged for harmful conduct, with all processing done on the camera and real-time alerts sent to staff. The deployment has received support from those focused on employee safety and organized retail crime, while also drawing criticism from customers and privacy advocates.

Expert POV from Jason Todd: Retailers have the right, and frankly the responsibility, to protect their employees, customers, and business from organized retail crime and repeat offenders. At the same time, individuals have a legitimate expectation that their privacy won't be unnecessarily compromised just because they walked into a store. Neither side is wrong. Retailers can already deploy tools like facial recognition. The real work now is drawing the line on transparency, consent, data retention, accuracy, bias, and oversight. Those aren't just legal questions anymore. They're design decisions that architects, product teams, and retailers make every day. Our industry needs to have this conversation now, before that line gets drawn for us by public opinion, legislation, or the courts.

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Sheetz's Backend Glow-Up

Sheetz is deploying the StorMagic SvHCI hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI) platform across its more than 830 stores, replacing legacy edge computing systems. More than 600 stores have already migrated at a pace of roughly 200 per month, with the full rollout expected to wrap in four months. The migration is happening remotely, with no hardware swaps or site visits required, and consolidates multiple single-purpose systems into a two-node HCI architecture supporting payment processing, loyalty programs, and store operations.

Our View: Kitestring’s Eugene Park called this back in May in "The Store Edge Imperative," pointing out that Broadcom's VMware acquisition, which sharply increased licensing costs for many operators, and other factors were pushing retailers toward a modern, virtualized edge platform. Sheetz's move off legacy VMware infrastructure to a single two-node HCI architecture tracks with that shift, cutting cost and complexity. In our opinion, it also builds the kind of platform that can eventually support edge AI and computer vision, capabilities that don't run well on legacy, per-store hardware.

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Rhode Island Says Scan Responsibly

Rhode Island has enacted the country’s first statewide grocery self-checkout staffing requirement, mandating one worker for every three active self-checkout stations, along with new accessibility and staffing rules. Supporters, including the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), argue it protects both cashiers and customers. They also point to Rhode Island losing $17.1 million in sales tax revenue to retail theft in 2022, with thefts 16 times more likely at self-checkout than staffed registers. Retail groups counter that the law unfairly singles out grocery stores when self-checkout is now standard across pharmacies, dollar stores, and craft retailers.

Kitestring’s POV: This legislation is challenging the basic economics retailers have used to justify self-checkout. For years, self-checkout was sold as a way to reduce labor costs and move customers through the store faster. Now lawmakers are forcing retailers to account for the tradeoffs that came with that model, including shrink, accessibility, customer frustration, and the need for more active oversight. Retailers and technology vendors alike need to be thinking about how to operate self-checkout more efficiently through better monitoring, AI-assisted interventions, and stronger loss prevention capabilities. The goal should be to preserve self-checkout as a meaningful labor-saving tool while still delivering the speed, convenience, and control customers expect.

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Podcast Pick: Behind the Counter with Eugene Park and Jason Todd

In this episode of Behind the Counter, host Vicente Yañez sits down with Eugene Park, Chief Strategy Officer, and Jason Todd, Practice Lead for Architecture at Kitestring, to talk about why strategy consulting is about perspective rather than storytelling, what a failed selection study actually looks like, whether vendor neutrality is actually possible, and more.

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Toot'n Their Own Loyalty App

Texas-based convenience retailer Toot'n Totum has revamped its TNT Rewards app with c-store loyalty provider Liquid Barcodes, combining fuel and in-store points, age-verified tobacco discounts, daily games, stamp cards, and a store locator into a single app now live across nearly 100 locations in Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, and New Mexico. This revamp replaces a patchwork of technology providers with one platform integrated directly into the retailer's Point of Sale (POS) system, bringing app functionality, tobacco loyalty, and scan data reporting into a single ecosystem.

Our Take: We've been advocating for connected POS and loyalty for a while now, and Toot'n Totum's revamp is a good example of why. Clean, connected data and integrated systems open the door to the kind of features that used to sound like wishlist items, like letting guests activate fuel pumps directly from the app and earn an extra 5-cent-per-gallon discount for doing it. We're excited to see what else this unlocks for Toot'n Totum as the platform matures.

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The Skinny on GLP-1s and Your Tech Stack

Nearly 1 in 8 U.S. adults now report using GLP-1 drugs (Forbes), and it's already showing up in transaction data. Grocery baskets are shrinking, category velocity is shifting toward protein, fresh, and functional products, and apparel return rates are climbing as shoppers resize their wardrobes. Our new article argues that GLP-1s are stress-testing something bigger. The real test is whether promotional engines, self-checkout thresholds, inventory logic, and loyalty programs can flex fast enough to keep up.

Our View: GLP-1s are just the latest version of a pattern we've watched play out for years, from pandemic-driven demand swings to the move to e-commerce to the rise of private label during inflationary periods. The retailers who struggled with those shifts struggled because their systems weren't built to flex. The real question is whether your systems can respond to any meaningful customer shift without waiting on a vendor’s timetable or a six-month overhaul.

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Quicker Than You Can Say “Hy-Vee”

Hy-Vee has launched a fast-fulfillment option chainwide, letting customers select "Get it faster" at checkout for pickup or delivery in as little as 30 minutes. In-store pickup carries no order minimum and is free for PERKS Plus members, while delivery starts at $4.95, with delivery fees waived through September 6 on orders of $75 or more. The rollout lands alongside Hy-Vee's new GLP-1 wellness program, a self-guided nutrition track pairing dietitian visits with video modules for customers newly on the medication.

Expert POV from Eugene Park:  Hy-Vee's 30-minute pickup and delivery rollout puts it in the same conversation as Walmart's own express delivery push, and it signals that ultra-fast fulfillment is quickly becoming table stakes rather than a nice-to-have. What's just as notable is how Hy-Vee is thinking beyond speed alone. The rollout arrives alongside a GLP-1 wellness program built to walk customers through nutrition guidance as they navigate that medication journey. That pairing is a real signal of where the industry is headed. It's not just about getting food to your door faster. It's about helping people figure out what to put in the cart in the first place.

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Thanks for Reading!

The bouncer, the hall monitor, and the plumber all had a busy month, and none of them are done. Grocery Outlet's cameras will keep testing where privacy ends and security begins. Rhode Island's legislation probably won't be the last. Meanwhile, the infrastructure work happening at Sheetz, Toot'n Totum, and beyond will set the tone for how other retailers modernize their own stacks. We'll be back in August with more retail tech updates.

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