Midwest Grocery Store Chain uses a Mat-Sensor Combination to Keep Shoppers Safe

In the supermarket industry, automatic doors are practically a necessity. Who wants to stop to open a door with hands full of groceries? But, with the potential for facility design related lawsuits, many of today's supermarkets are increasing their focus on customer safety. That's why a leading grocery chain with over 150 stores in the Midwest decided to make automatic door safety a top priority.

For many years, the company used mats as the standard for both safety and activation of its automatic doors. However, as technology advances, architects are starting to specify sensor-based door activators-primarily for aesthetic reasons. Sensor technology is increasingly more sophisticated and can reduce "ghost" activations caused by shadows, dark-colored clothing, or weather patterns that have plagued infra-red sensor accuracy in the past.

But according to Larco Sales Manager Karl Sharlakian, even with all of these technological advances, sensors simply do not compare to mats when it comes to safety.

Paper or Plastic?

Just like grocery shoppers who must decide on the "paper or plastic" question at check-out time, many of today's companies are trying to evaluate the pros and cons of mats versus sensors for their automatic door activation and safety needs.

"Sensors and mats have the same purpose: they are both designed to open and close the doors," Sharlakian explained. "But sensors still aren't perfect. Sometimes they get it wrong which is not only unsafe, but also a potential liability."

Mats, however; are virtually fail-safe. Although mat technology has not changed much, they are extremely effective because there is no ghosting. "As long as someone is standing on the mat, the doors will not close on a customer," says Sharlakian. He adds, "In addition to being the safest, mats are easy to maintain, so we hardly ever get service calls once they are installed."

Ultimately, the supermarket chain decided to install sensor-activated doors on the outside of the new stores, paired with safety mats inside the store.

So far, this "mat-sensor" solution has proved to be a winning combination. Since the Larco safety mats were paired with the sensor-activated doors, there haven't been any problems reported at the stores.

The Larco Sensor-Mat solution has proved to be a winning combination by providing safety to customers across the country. Visit our Sensors and Automatic Door Mat pages for more information on these products.  

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