bookmark_borderQuality Markets.

When I lived in Western New York State, the Quality Markets supermarket chain was using Sweda cash registers with scanning. Depending on the age of the store, there were two versions of these cash registers. The earlier registers had impact printers that were rather loud but seemed to have the entire alphabet at their disposal when printing out the receipt. Newer stores had newer registers running what appeared the be the same software, but with dot-matrix printers handling the printing.

The cashier’s display was a basic guidance panel with numbers and lights, while the customer display was a full alphanumeric display showing the items being scanned. There were “flip cards” on the left side of the register that handled PLUs like produce and such, the “flip cards” triggering a switch the basically acted like a “shift key” so the same key could be used for multiple items. The card had a hand- or typewritten description of the item in question.

I don’t recall seeing the older Sweda systems elsewhere, but Shaw’s Markets in Massachusetts had the newer version with dot-matrix printers into the early 1990s.

I found this photo online of the older Sweda setup. I don’t think it’s a Quality Markets, but the registers are identical. I believe it’s the Sweda 80S system with two back office computers in the back made by Data General.

Photo from The Free Dictionary.