Dive Summary:

• Giant Eagle is trying out a new system that limits self-checkout access to loyalty-card holders, forcing non-members to use traditional checkout lanes.
• The move keeps many customers away from the streamlined lanes, but encourages card use and may provide the chain with valuable data about who opts to use the self-checkout registers.
• The desire to limit theft may also be a factor.

From the article:

"... Chains — and that's triply true for grocery — have always struggled getting shoppers to use their loyalty cards. To be fair, many of those difficulties have been self-inflicted. We've seen many associates offering to scan generic loyalty cards to give the discounts to non-cardholders. ..."