New York’s City Council is considering legislation that might upend the way shoppers check out at grocery stores.
The council is considering a bill that would require stores with self-checkout lanes to limit those lanes to 15 items or fewer and to require employees to be present to help customers who have problems with the machines, according to PIX 11.
If passed, the bill would force grocery stores to have one monitoring employee for every three self-checkout kiosks. According to City Council member Amanda Farias — who introduced the resolution — the measure is intended not only to make customers' shopping experiences better but also to help preserve retail jobs and curb shoplifting.
“This is just to help address some of the real problems we’re seeing in our communities,” Farias told the outlet.
When questioned about the potential increase in labor costs for grocery stores using the self-checkout systems, Farias said any increases would likely be offset by what they save in reduced theft.
“Less workers means more retail theft, which increases the price of commodities people are buying," she told the broadcaster. "We’re seeing this with Target rolling back self-checkout kiosks, and we’re seeing this in other states where this is being implemented.”
Target implemented a change similar to what the city council is proposing in its stores last year.
In 2025, Target limited its self-checkout lanes to 10 items per person. A spokesperson for the company at the time told Fox Business that the change was driven by "internal testing that showed it increased customer satisfaction."
Target's stores were also a hotbed for shoplifting. The big-box retailer reported nearly $500 million in "shrink" — financial loss due to shoplifting and inventory errors — in 2023, according to Business Insider. The company's shrink losses have declined since then to pre-pandemic levels, though there's no data available to determine how much — if at all — changing self-checkout kiosk rules may have contributed to that change.
The Independent has requested comment from Target.
Both Walmart and Dollar General have, in some locations, completely removed self-checkout lanes as an option for shoppers. In Walmart's case, it said it removed the technology to improve customers' experiences.
Dollar General was direct about its reasons for removing the self-checkout lanes. The company said it was pulling the technology out of 300 of its stores that experience the worst shoplifting.
In 2024, Five Below's then-CEO Joel Anderson told investors that the stores would be removing virtually all self-checkout kiosks, especially in stores with high rates of shoplifting.
In addition to curbing shoplifting, Farias believes the bill will improve overall safety at grocery and retail outlets across the city.
“We’ve seen the consequences of removing workers from these spaces: increased retail theft, less oversight, fewer protections for both workers and customers, and generally decreased safety,” she said on Tuesday while introducing the legislation.
City Council member Joann Ariola, a Republican, is opposing the measure, accusing the bill's proponents of having their priorities backward.
“This is typical backwards leftist logic,” Ariola told the New York Post. “Instead of actually trying to punish criminals, my colleagues are pushing to make life even harder for businesses and consumers.”
Jason Ferraira, a board member for the National Supermarket Association, told the New York Post that he would prefer stricter consequences for shoplifters rather than any kind of regulation on grocery store self-checkout.
He called the city council's idea "horrible" and insisted it wouldn't help.
“You don’t prevent shoplifting by making me have a certain ratio of employees,” he added. “People shoplift in a lot of different ways. Some shoplift through self-checkout. Some through the regular cashier checkout. Some people bypass the checkout altogether, and go straight to the floor.”
