Advertisement

Will Tarrant County’s first H-E-B use a self-checkout that weighs carts?

Texas-based grocery chain H-E-B announced Thursday that it would build a new store in Mansfield, about 20 minutes from Fort Worth.

Groundbreaking on the 28-acre site is expected to take place January or February next year.

The Mansfield location will be the first H-E-B store in Tarrant County. The store, whose slogan is “Here, Everything’s Better”, started in the Texas Hill Country in 1905 but hasn’t made its way to North Texas until recent years.

Though renderings and store details won’t be released until the groundbreaking, one viral TikTok post showed some of the latest technology H-E-B has introduced into at least one of its existing stores.

H-E-B rolled out its new Fast Scan self-checkout option last month at one of its locations outside of San Antonio.

A TikTok posted by app user @hurricane_katriina shows two lanes for carts to roll onto scaled platforms during self-checkout.

With the Fast Scan service, shoppers can grab a scanner wand after entering the store and scan items as they place them in the cart. Produce items get counted and weighed at stations which prints out a barcode to scan.

Once finished, shoppers push their carts on the scaled platforms and scan the Fast Scan QR code to check-out. The scale is able to tell if an item was scanned or not based on the weight of the cart.

According to a report by MySA, the Fast Scan technology is in a limited pilot testing phase with one model at an H-E-B in Schertz.

Some TikTok users shared concerns about the new service.

One app user said, “HEB gets too busy, lines for this would be crazy.”

Another commented that the Fast Scan wands could go missing while one app user said the concept was complicating the grocery shopping experience.

Not all were critical about the program, with one TikTok user commenting, “Nice finally a store keeping up with the times.”

For now the Fast Scan technology is still being tested at select store, so whether it will come to the Mansfield location or not has yet to be announced.