Cooler Screens in Hot Water

Hi everyone!

A while ago, I came across some articles on Cooler Screens, the company that creates digital fridge screens that we talked about earlier this semester. Currently, they’re in a big legal battle with Walgreens. In 2019, the two companies entered into a 10-year contract to install over 45,000 smart doors in Walgreens stores.

About 10,000 of these got installed. However, the screens frequently glitched and displayed the wrong products. And some even caught on fire. This led Walgreens to try to get out of the contract and Cooler Screens responded by suing them for breach of contract.  Walgreens countersued for monetary damages.

But that’s not all! In December 2023, Cooler Screens secretly cut the data feeds to doors at more than 100 Walgreens locations in the Chicago area. This left them blacked out or glazed over, making it difficult for customers to shop.

In one of the articles, Jacqueline Flam, a senior vice president at a consumer intelligence firm, said, “High installation costs, potential privacy concerns, technical challenges, and the risk of overwhelming customers with excessive advertising are key drawbacks [of products like Cooler Screens]. Ultimately, [Cooler Screens] create[s] risk in complicating a simple, straightforward sale.”

Personally, I found this really compelling. As a consumer, I’m not really getting much benefit out of a screen that displays the exact same thing that’s behind it, even when it’s working. I also don’t want to be bombarded by a bunch of ads when I’m just trying to get my groceries. To me, it seems like the only ones gaining from this technology are retailers and advertisers.

But what do you all think? Let me know in the comments!

Here are my sources for anyone who wants to read more:

https://www.techspot.com/news/106434-walgreens-smart-freezer-doors-200-million-misstep.html

https://fortune.com/2025/01/17/walgreens-cooler-screens-refrigerator-doors-digitized-ads-200-million-lawsuit/