If only there was some kind of transparent material we could make freezer doors out of so you could see what was in them.
Then how would you be able to hide a camera for facial recognition?
Or display ads on the screen to eke out a little extra cash?
To be entirely fair, the glass doors are terrible for refrigeration efficiency because the glass is far less insulated than the door with the screen is. It might actually save electricity by powering a screen that shows a picture of the product over a insulated door than just having a glass door.
This implementation looks ugly as heck of course but if there’s a big enough energy efficiency gain I suppose it might be worth the trade off
You can make insulated glass doors fairly easily. Just sandwich a gas between layers of glass. Look at any modern window for an example.
Still not as insulating as a thick door with the manufacturer’s choice of insulation material. Double/triple pane glass is far better than a single pane window but a window is still a window
Unfortunately this isn’t Star Trek.
ironically, transparent aluminum is real
The good news is one they’re replaced if you can score a working unit for little to free it’ll make a awesome TTRPG table.
why do they have doors with screens telling you what’s behind the door when they could just have glass
Cameras above each door to gather data.
Ads on the doors.
Because EVERY SINGLE SQUARE INCH OF EVERY SURFACE MUST MAKE PROFIT.
I would complain and stop shopping there, and encourage others to complain as well. Hell leave the doors propped open to help people see what’s inside, even though it’ll run up their electricity bill and spoil the contents. Aslo remember to bring in one of those window-cracker car safety things and have a go at breaking the screens if you want to be even more rebellious.
“We have determined that we’ll be able to fill 80% of the user’s display with advertising before inducing seizures” ~Nolan Sorrento, Ready Player One
I read about this, and it’s the ads. Full wall animated ads.
I also instantly predicted this obvious outcome. And hope it happens go any place that installs them. Fuck billboards invading every inch of our lives.
Better insulation; what others are saying is just what SEOs will do with it once implemented but AFAIK the main purpose is more efficient refrigeration.
So they can show ads for 2 minutes, and whats actually behind the glass for about 5 seconds.
It allows them to control the appearance and impression of the products more. A huge amount of store design is based around making the stuff appealing and thus increasing the chance you buy it.
Hence the huge pyramids of apples or the bountiful overflowing stock of vegetables. They’ll generally not even sell a half of what they end up stocking, but if they just stocked what people were likely to buy the shelves would look barren and off putting, and people may be less likely to come back there.
Even if a glass door on these fridges was perfectly functional and arguably better from the average person’s point of view, the screens give the marketing team more opportunities to spin their products. The goal of a store is not to provide you with what you want and need, but to convince you that you want and need things you don’t actually.
I wish they’d realize that many people don’t give that much of a shit. Not that they don’t give a shit, they give a shit… But just not as much as they think.
Yah, these kind of things don’t tend to work as well as marketing people think. The influence is marginal, and mainly a grift on the part of the company selling them.
Any store installing that crap (it fortunately hasn’t arrived in my country yet) will lose me as a customer. I know it won’t hurt them, but I’m not dealing with shit like that.
Where are these, so I can never see them in person
Walgreens has them installed in 700 stores because a previous ceo signed a deal with a company that provided them.
The CEO of the company providing them? Was also a previous, different CEO of Walgreens. Sure looks like a buddy did another buddies startup a favor, likely for a kickback.
The current Walgreens CEO canceled them, and is being sued for it.
Its walgreens CEOs all the way down.
