Your mid-inning trip for a snack during an Astros game in Houston this season will be more of a breeze than ever.Major League Baseball announced Thursday that Minute Maid Park will have two stores enabled with Amazon’s Just Walk Out shopping experience, which allows customers to simply pick up their items of choice and walk out without dealing with a cashier or long lines.Minute Maid Park is the first in the league to have the technology.”We wanted to provide this state-of-the-art technology to our fans, giving them a more streamlined and convenient shopping experience so they can spend more time enjoying baseball,” said Marcel Braithwaite, senior vice president of Astros’ business operations.The new tech will be at 19th Hole in Section 156 and a new store called Market in the Honda Club Level behind Section 211.Both will offer a selection of snacks, soda, candy and ready-to-drink alcoholic beverages.The 19th Hole store will also offer pre-packaged salads, wine bottles and souvenirs.
Just Walk Out, developed by Amazon first for its Amazon Go stores and eventually sold to other companies, eliminates cashiers altogether.Each store will still be staffed in case customers need assistance.Customers swipe their card when they enter the store, grab their items and walk out without any other interaction.The technology captures each time a customer grabs something off the shelf and adds it to their virtual cart.If they put an item back, it gets removed from the virtual cart.Once they leave, their card gets charged with whatever items they have in tow.There aren’t many stores in Houston that use the technology.
There’s one at the University of Houston and at Bush Intercontinental Airport .The Astros kick off the first homestand of 2022 on Monday.First pitch is at 7:10 p.m..