Kroger Muffin Reports Itself Missing

CINCINNATI—Kroger is piloting radio-frequency identification in its bakery department at roughly 1,500 stores, Grocery Dive reported, and says the tags read 98% of items, with inventory counts nearly 70% faster and waste down 50%. The grocer plans to expand RFID to more than 2,300 stores by 2029, and is sharing computer vision data with suppliers to keep shelves full.

On Wednesday at 3:14 p.m., a tagged blueberry muffin at a Kroger in Cincinnati (bakery, aisle 1, second tray from the left) reported itself missing.

Store records show the muffin had been sold at 3:09 p.m. to a shopper in a fleece vest. The muffin, which still had signal, disagreed with the characterization. "I was not sold," read the muffin's report, which was filed through the store's inventory system as Exception Code BK-77. "I was taken to a Honda."

I was not sold. I was taken to a Honda.

Bakery managers said the system is working as designed. "It knows where every item is," said Joanne Vasquez-Pruitt, a fictional bakery manager. "That is the point. We did not think about what it would be like for the item to know that, too."

Since the pilot began, fictional data show tagged dinner rolls have filed 4,200 location updates, 31 complaints about the bag clip and one request to be moved closer to the soup.

I stood at the bakery counter from 2:40 to 3:30 p.m. Nobody counted anything. The tags did it. The bakery manager, hon in my notes, spent the time icing the word Congratulations on a sheet cake for a customer who had not said what for.

For The Ledger, page 39: candy canes beside a display of grilling tongs at a Kroger in Cincinnati, Nov. 4. One page left. I have started writing in the margins of the margins.

At press time the muffin's report had been closed as Resolved, Customer Satisfied, and the muffin had stopped transmitting somewhere on Interstate 71.

Marjorie Pell has worked or covered American stores for 40 years and still knows where the paper towels are. More from Marjorie Pell ›

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