York Benimaru Speed Up Price Checks by Half With Multi-Scanning

York Benimaru Co., Ltd. is a Japanese Supermarket Chain with over 245 stores in five prefectures*. The company philosophy is that “the store is for the customer” and it aims to make daily life richer, more enjoyable, and more convenient by selling fresh and prepared foods, as well as groceries, daily necessities, household goods, and clothing.

The retailer has deployed Scandit Smart Data Capture into two employee apps – the “Selling Price Check App” and the “Fresh and Fruit DigiPla App” – to speed up store operations processes and improve accuracy.

With Scandit’s bulk scanning capabilities, we have been able to reduce the time required to check selling prices by half. In the produce department where electronic shelf labels have been introduced, Scandit is being used to check DigiPla shelf tags, ensuring accurate and error-free price checking results.

Mr. Toshiya Gunji, System Planning Department Manager, DX Strategy Office, York Benimaru Co., Ltd.

Challenge

The retailer needed to ensure price changes were handled with speed and accuracy during daily store operations.

Toshiya Gunji of York Benimaru explains the challenges supermarkets face around price changes:

“When changing prices at a typical supermarket, after replacing the old price tag with a new one, the price is checked visually one by one and manually entered into a paper-based work sheet. Price changes are mainly carried out during the busy hours before opening, creating a heavy workload for store workers.”

“When errors occur in the updated price tag, store associates need to go to the backroom to reprint the price POP. Any pricing errors also cause inconvenience for customers. To prevent such mistakes, we wanted to find a digital transformation solution that could efficiently and accurately process price checks.”

In addition to checking selling prices, the company also had another issue. York Benimaru uses an electronic shelf tag called DigiPla, which is a digital technology that can quickly process changes in selling prices.

Mr. Gunji says, “By introducing DigiPla, when there is a change in selling price, you can update it all at once from a PC without having to reprint the price tag. In order to utilize DigiPla though, it is necessary to read the barcodes of the products and register them in the linked electronic shelf tag. For this task, we needed to be able to read the barcodes accurately and quickly.“

Solution

To tackle these challenges, York Benimaru adopted Scandit Smart Data Capture for its price checking app due to its reputation for high precision and accuracy when scanning multiple barcodes at once.

Gunji said, “We’ve been aware of Scandit for about five or six years. Around three years ago, we were able to engage with Scandit’s Japanese team and verify that its MatrixScan capability, which enables bulk scanning worked effectively even on affordable smartphone models, like the iPhone SE, so we started to move forward with the deployment.”

Explaining the benefits of the system, Gunji continues, “If it were just a matter of scanning barcodes with a smartphone, there were other low cost options – but we were specifically focused on the accuracy of bulk scanning.”

“Scanning the barcodes on each shelf to check the selling price takes about two minutes, even for experienced staff. However, if you can scan an entire shelf at once with Scandit MatrixScan, the work time is cut to less than a minute – a reduction of half. If we can achieve that level of efficiency during busy morning hours, it will significantly reduce the workload of sales staff.“

The retailer also adopted Scandit into its Fruit and Vegetable DigiPla App due to its ability to accurately read curved barcodes.

Mr. Gunji explains, “We evaluated the reading accuracy of Scandit. Barcodes attached to fruits and vegetables are not always flat and can be curved. Scandit can accurately read such barcodes. During the review stage, we compared other scanning engines, but Scandit was overwhelmingly superior in terms of reading accuracy.”

The development of the app went smoothly due to York Benimaru’s partner company and Scandit’s engineers working together collaboratively. The Fruit and Vegetable DigiPla App began full-scale operation in all stores from January 2025.

Regarding the effects in stores that have already introduced it, including the trial operations, Mr. Gunji added, “We haven’t received any help desk enquiries about the Fruit and Vegetable DigiPla App from the stores that have introduced it, so we are satisfied with Scandit’s reading accuracy.”

Results

Regarding future developments for the “price check app” that utilizes Scandit MatrixScan’s multi-scanning capabilities, Gunji said, “We are currently developing a system that transfers data collected by bulk scanning to the electronic work sheet app. Once this automatic transfer system is complete, we will fully promote its deployment to all stores.”

Additionally, if bulk scanning becomes available for price checks in all stores, any store associate will be able to check prices after a short training period. This will reduce the workload for sales floor staff and accelerate the promotion of digital transformation in store operations.

When it comes to other potential future uses at York Benimaru, he said, “We are also considering using bulk scanning for display registration. This is an initiative to digitize the sales floor by reading POPs such as price tags and barcodes. With the current system, the barcodes on the display shelves are read and registered one by one, which is a time-consuming and labor-intensive process.”

He continues, “On the other hand, if we can digitize an entire shelf in a short amount of time with bulk scanning, display registration will be able to be accurately processed in a shorter amount of time. In the future, we would like to use AI to analyze display registration data, which will lead to more efficient ordering, improved customer service, and improved proposals on the sales floor.“