As an employee inside one of Kwik Trip’s two Wisconsin distribution centers loads pallets, an automated voice inside a headset helps guide the work.
“It’ll direct them to an aisle and it’ll direct them to a slot,” said Joe Vike, senior director of distribution centers for La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip. The company has been using voice-automated headsets to guide warehouse work for more than two decades, Vike said.
This practical use case shows that wearables aren’t science fiction. But they also aren’t yet a standard part of most c-store employees day-to-day, although wearable technology such as Meta’s smart glasses grab headlines and broad attention.
The retail industry is still in the early stages of adopting wearable technology, said Sky Canaves, a principal analyst at EMARKETER who covers retail and e-commerce.
A future convenience store employee wearing smart glasses might one day just have to look at a shelf—and then the glasses do the work of telling the employee what needs to be restocked. Another employee preparing food might have an AI-powered headset walking them through the steps of preparing a new LTO.
What Wearable Tech Can Do for Retailers
Adoption could increase as the cost of wearable technology goes down, Canaves said, but other factors could delay a rollout to retailers.
“[Cost is] the key barrier for deployment more broadly in retail settings,” she said. “Retailers are grappling with the need to digitize and modernize and enable more AI technologies in their stores, but they have so many different competing priorities that they really have to figure out where the spending makes the most sense.”
QSR employees already use headsets, but the goal of more advanced technology is to connect to the wider business, Canaves said. That could mean planning inventory, improving customer service through coaching employees or answering customer questions when an employee doesn’t know the answer.
“This is especially valuable in retail or restaurant environments where you have a lot of staff turnover,” she said. “There is a constant need for training and refreshing the associates’ or employees’ knowledge.”
Optimized value for wearable devices comes when they seamlessly connect to the broader retail ecosystem, said Yevgeni Tsirulnik, senior vice president of portfolio management for Toshiba Global Commerce Solutions. The company’s ELERA platform can connect wearable devices with cameras, sensors and store equipment.
“As AI, edge computing and connected store technologies continue to evolve, the most valuable wearable solutions will be those that integrate naturally into existing workflows, including inventory, product information, pricing, promotions, transactions, store conditions and customer preferences,” Tsirulnik said. “Through [Internet of Things] platforms like ELERA, wearable devices can become part of a broader retail environment that helps employees operate more effectively while giving shoppers a more informed, convenient and personalized experience.”
One prominent QSR has already gained attention for testing wearable tech. The Associated Press reported in February that Burger King was testing headsets equipped with an AI agent called Patty in 500 stores. In one example, the headset could notify an employee if the soda fountain was close to running out of a syrup.
Coaching staff on customer service was another possibility for the device, as the AP reported that the headsets could help managers know when workers use expressions such as “thank you.”
“I think something like this is really helpful because it can help employees both in their customer-facing work and in their back-end operations,” Canaves said.
Another potential use for smart glasses is restocking, she said.
“[Employees] would be able to just look at a shelf, for example, and get the inventory information or be able to assess what needs to be replenished without necessarily manually counting items,” Canaves said.
Accessing foodservice preparation guidelines and recipes is another use for wearable technology, said Art Sebastian, founder and CEO of convenience advisory firm NexChapter. For example, an employee making a pizza with multiple toppings could get a recipe prompt in their ear, Sebastian said.
Wearable tech has the potential to solve problems around labor pressure, training consistency and operational complexity, he said. Just don’t expect widespread adoption anytime soon.
“How many priorities are there for a convenience store to drive efficiency and customer experience? There are endless [priorities],” Sebastian said. “So where’s the wearable going to show up on that list in terms of priority? Probably a little further down, because there’s just too many other things to get done.”
Anticipating Customers’ Reactions
In October 2025, Amazon said it was developing smart glasses that help delivery drivers with walking directions and capture proof of delivery. The glasses provide information in the worker’s field of vision after the driver has parked.
“We anticipate future versions of the glasses will provide real-time defect detection, where the glasses can help notify drivers if they’ve mistakenly dropped a package at a customer doorstep that does not correspond with the house or apartment number on the package, detect hazards like low light and adjust the lenses, notify that there’s a pet in the yard, and more,” Amazon said in an online post.
Canaves foresees one potential issue with in-store adoption of such glasses: Consumers could react negatively.
“There could be privacy concerns around customer interactions and how much is recorded and stored,” she said. “That’s somewhere where retailers will have to tread very carefully.”
She drew a parallel to the expanded use of electronic shelf labels in the United States.
“There is a public backlash to electronic shelf labels and how they might be used to deploy surge pricing against consumers,” Canaves said. “So I think retailers will have to prepare for similar concerns around privacy and recording if things like smart glasses were to become more prevalent.”
An employee simply having a headset on can change the conversational dynamic with a customer, said Jenny Fu, a Cornell University doctoral student whose research focuses on the effects of AI-mediated communication tools on emotional and social well-being.
“You see that there’s a layer on me that I’m not talking to you with,” Fu said. “Or I’m accessing other information that you have no idea [about].”
Another factor is how much the customer should know about the wearable technology, Fu said. An interaction with a call center, for instance, usually includes a mention that the call is being recorded.
“From the employee perspective … having a headset and knowing that they’re being measured or they have this access to information … can increase people’s cognitive load a lot,” Fu said.
Fu compared robots moving from the warehouse to customer-facing roles such as baristas to how voice-automated wearables in warehouses might one day move from the distribution center to the store.
“There seems to be this emerging pattern of existing technology that is moving from the back end to the front end,” Fu said.
Back Inside the Kwik Trip Warehouse …
Vike of Kwik Trip gave an example of how an employee at the Kwik Trip warehouse could build an order for a store with guidance coming from a headset equipped with an automated voice.
The voice in the headset could direct the worker to get six cases of 16.8-ounce water bottles. “[The employee] confirms where they’re at. They grab the six cases, repeat back six to the voice, build that base layer on that pallet,” Vike said. “Then they’re sent to our very fast-moving Celsius [energy drinks].”
The store order would continue through the staffer’s headset as the employee drives a forklift through the warehouse. “They make a serpentine turn to the next aisle,” Vike said. “As they’re driving down, [the headset] calls the next slot.”
For Kwik Trip, it’s about completing the task in the shortest distance, Vike said. “Because that’s going to allow for efficiencies. You want to be able to create a pick path that [means] coworkers are efficient in their steps, because anytime we’re adding steps, we are inefficient.”
The headsets serve a great purpose for Kwik Trip, Vike said, but eventual advances in technology might lead to more innovation inside distribution centers.
“It’s a tool, and you need to constantly evolve with the tool and ensure that you’re setting up your team for success,” Vike said.
