New technology at Sainsbury's: 1977-1987

1977 - The first Savacentre at Washington, Tyne & Wear (opened 15th November) was the first British retail store to rely on a computer for all its management information. Each of the thirty-six checkouts was linked to an NCR mini-computer which in turn was connected to a larger central computer.

1979 - Experiments with computer checkouts began at Broadfield, Crawley in June 1979, with the introduction of an IBM computer-controlled key entry point of sale system in June 1979. This was upgraded to scanning in February 1980, and the store was converted to trial a second scanning system, NCR, in the autumn of 1980.

1980s - ICL system 25 mini-computers were installed at each branch and linked to the mainframe computers at head office.

1983 - Sainsbury's became first retailer in Britain to link weighing scales for produce to scanning terminals.

1985 - Burpham store was the first to open equipped with a bespoke scanning system developed by ICL. By 1988 more than half the branches had scanning equipment and almost 75% of all food scanned in UK supermarkets passed over Sainsbury's checkouts. All the stores had been converted to scanning by 1990.

1987 - Debit cards were trialled at Heyford Hill and High Wycombe using Electronic Funds Transfer at Point of Sale (EFTPOS); in 1988 Sainsbury's became the first major supermarket chain to commit to EFTPOS when it signed an agreement with Midland Bank to accept Switch. By 1991 EFTPOS accounted for over 25% of Sainsbury's supermarket sales and had exceeded payment by cheque in popularity.