BayCare’s St. Joseph’s Hospital cuts café wait times and improves operating efficiency with Just Walk Out

Waiting in line to grab a quick meal is the last thing busy hospital staff and anxious visitors want to do. At St. Joseph’s Hospital in Tampa, FL, part of BayCare Health System, they no longer have to, thanks to an upgraded cafeteria featuring Just Walk Out technology by Amazon.

Just Walk Out is designed to simplify and speed up the shopping experience. It uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI), computer vision, object recognition, and deep learning models to accurately determine which items shoppers choose in any retail environment.

At St. Joseph’s, guests enter the cafeteria, Season’s Café, by using their credit card, mobile wallet, or team member badge at the entry gate. As they shop, the technology detects what is taken from or returned to the shelf and creates a virtual shopping cart. When guests are ready to check out, they can leave without waiting in line, and their chosen payment method is charged for the items they took. Season’s Café. Source: St Joseph’s Hospital

St. Joseph’s is the first hospital in the country to deploy Just Walk Out in a hospital-owned cafeteria. ” Everyone is happy with the convenience and accessibility this technology has brought to our campus,” says Erica Salgado, BayCare East region director of food and nutrition services. “Our staff, physicians, and even hospital visitors can quickly grab refreshments and spend more time where it matters most – whether that’s on their breaks or with loved ones.”

Saying goodbye to the checkout line

That wasn’t always the case. During the pandemic, the hospital faced staffing shortages that led to long checkout lines and more than 20-minute waits. That’s when Salgado started working with Craig Anderson, VP of innovation at BayCare Health, to design a faster, more seamless café experience.

“Patient care and quality are our North Star, and Just Walk Out technology helps us provide our patients and their guests with a streamlined, simple, and accurate shopping experience that saves them time,” Salgado says.

Delivering faster service and greater access

Today, customers move through the café’s food and beverage stations faster than ever. The average time spent in the café has been reduced from as much as 25 minutes to only three. “Our day shift employees actually get to take a break during their lunch because they don’t spend the whole time waiting in line,’ Selgado says. “We’re giving them a lot of time back.”

Season’s Café. Source: St Joseph’s Hospital

The hospital’s third-shift employees have also welcomed the upgrades to Season’s Café, which now serves fresh food around the clock. Previously, the café closed at 9:00 p.m., forcing some late-night workers to go through their entire shift without eating. “As a healthcare organization, our people come first, both our patients and those working hard to care for them,” adds Brenda Goralski, VP of applications at BayCare. “With Just Walk Out, we can offer café access nearly any time for our employees and, in turn, they can better serve our patients.”

Streamlining operations to increase efficiency

Removing the checkout line enabled the hospital to reassign employees working the cash register to areas like patient services and physician lounges, which had been closed since the pandemic. “Just Walk Out technology allowed us to rethink positions like cashiers or baristas and better optimize labor,” Salgado says. “This technology definitely alleviated a labor shortage we were not able to address after Covid.”

The resulting efficiency boost is helping the hospital increase customer throughput and meet ambitious revenue growth targets. Third-shift volumes have grown each week since the café re-opened, and managers are seeing people buy more items on average because it’s easier to grab them on the go. And, thanks to the checkout-free format, the café now has room for more merchandise. “We built a dry goods market where the cash registers used to be,” Salgado says. “We can see from the heat map that this has become a very popular space.”

The hospital also made it easy for employees to enter the café and pay for their meals using their hospital badge. This required the team to integrate Just Walk Out with Quickcharge, a division of Transact Campus, which offers a variety of cashless payment programs including payroll deduction, prepaid declining balance, meal plans, and loyalty rewards. “It’s rewarding to see how our cashless payment technology, integrated with Amazon’s frictionless checkout experience, is enhancing the healthcare environment where speed is essential,” notes Arun Ahuja, SVP and GM of commerce solutions at Transact.

Pushing the boundaries of what’s possible

Season’s Café. Source: St Joseph’s Hospital

Although it’s still early, Salgado is happy with both the café’s performance and the positive feedback from shoppers. She also sees the opportunity for constant learning. “When doing something that’s never been done before, there will be a lot of things you couldn’t have predicted or planned,” she says. Among the lessons learned: Plan for a “soft launch” (practice period) where employees can test out the store and make needed tweaks before the grand opening.

Overall, the team at BayCare’s St. Joseph’s Hospital is thrilled by what they’ve been able to achieve. “The fact that we’re even doing this is a testament to us pushing the boundaries, looking ahead, and being innovative and creative enough to make sure we’re offering the very best to our community,” Salgado concludes.

Bring frictionless, check-out free shopping to your customers. Does your business want to provide customers faster, more seamless shopping while optimizing and streamlining business operations? Contact us to learn how Just Walk Out technology can help.