Zippin’s Winning Streak: 5 Seasons of Checkout-Free Success

As we celebrate five incredible seasons serving the sports industry, Zippin is proud to share some key milestones that helped define our journey. Here’s a look at what we've achieved so far and what's ahead.

Our First Store in Sports

We were the first to recognize sports and entertainment as the perfect place for checkout-free technology to flourish. “Banish the checkout line, that’s Zippin’s motto,” said Zippin CEO and Co-founder Krishna Motukuri at the time. 

“I can’t think of a better place than a sports venue to eliminate the checkout line" -Krishna Motukuri

Our first checkout-free store for professional sports opened in September 2019 at the Golden 1 Center. Since then we have grown to have checkout-free stores at more than thirty-one sports and entertainment venues around the globe. 

Our Impact on the Fan Experience

During a major sporting event or blockbuster summer concert, venues serve tens of thousands of fans in just a few hours. Efficiency and accuracy are paramount to helping attendees enjoy more of the live event they came to see. Zippin-powered stores have supported over 30,000 event days, including premier events like the Super Bowl, FIFA World Cup, US Open, French Open, and multiple performances of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour. Zippin technology streamlines the shopping experience so fans can avoid lines and venues can serve many more fans than with traditional stores. 

To date, more than 5.1 million shoppers have shopped 100% checkout-free with Zippin. Here's how it works. Shoppers enter a Zippin-powered store with a credit card (or any other valid payment method), take what they want, and zip out. No checkout, no scanning, and no hassles. Shoppers are automatically billed for what they take after leaving the store. Shopping times can be 30 seconds or less, so fans can easliy grab their favorite snacks and drinks without missing a moment of the action.

Since 2019, we have expanded our footprint beyond sports to retailers that put a high value on saving their shoppers time. Outside sports, Zippin’s technology ensures travelers can shop without missing their flight, college students can grab a snack without being late to class, and families have more time to enjoy experiences like visits to amusement parks and live events. 

Our Impact on Retailer Success

It’s not just the transformative fan experience that’s driving Zippin’s growth, it’s the benefits that store operators are achieving. Zippin has been deployed at over 31 sports and entertainment venues around the world and counting. Football stadiums, cricket grounds, basketball and hockey arenas, and other entertainment venues all choose Zippin for checkout-free shopping. Operators have seen sales increases of 78% or higher when converting a stand to checkout-free, with the speed of service often limited only by the rate of food production or restocking. 

Retailers using Zippin can streamline operations, use labor resources more effectively, and grow sales. Our ability to consistently deliver ROI  has led to our successful expansion across multiple retail segments and business cases. The breadth and variety of our customer base means our AI technology is the most tested and most mature in the market. 

Our History of Innovation 

Zippin’s success is not defined simply by how many stores we deploy and how many shoppers we serve. Our success and growth come from our commitment to innovation and being first to market with new ways to bring checkout-free technology to more retailers. We were the first to design a modular Zippin Lane to turn unused spaces into high-traffic stores, the first with a checkout-free solution purpose-built for “belly up” hot food stands (Zippin Walk-Up), and the first to retrofit outdoor tents and container stores with checkout-free technology (Zippin Walk-Up Outdoors). 

Along the way, one of our proudest achievements has been cutting deployment times by half– or more. We're continuously innovating to reduce our hardware footprint, simplify installations, and refine our checkout-free platform to reduce total cost of ownership (TCO) and make checkout-free possible for more retailers. Venues can quickly implement Zippin’s  technology in a way that minimizes disruption and maximizes convenience. Many of our models can be installed in just a few days with little to no construction, which unlocks the potential to go checkout-free between home games instead of waiting until between seasons. 

Zippin’s flexible checkout-free platform includes an API framework that supports over 25 integrations (and counting) with third-party systems. Our technology can easily adapt to meet each of our customer’s unique needs. Retailers that choose Zippin can keep their payment gateways, loyalty programs, inventory management systems, custom check-in experiences, and other capabilities and still go checkout-free. The flexibility of our platform helps future-proof our customers' checkout-free investments, so the technology can grow and evolve as they do.

 Looking Ahead at Our Next Five Seasons (& Beyond)

As we look to the future, our commitment to our customers remains unwavering. Checkout-free technology is all that we do and we’re passionate about accelerating the adoption of checkout-free around the world. We’ve achieved a lot in our first five seasons in sports, and we can’t wait to see where the next five years take us - and our customers. 

Thank you for being a part of our journey. Here's to many more seasons of success and innovation with Zippin!