Want to skip the check out line at your next grocery store visit? Here's how.

It never fails: When you're in a hurry at the grocery store, with just a handful of must-haves, you get in the slowest checkout line ever.

Kroger has a fix for that: Scan, Bag, Go, new shopping technology that debuted in Lexington this week at the Euclid Avenue store.

Shoppers can scan items as the put them in the cart, pay on a Kroger handheld device, and walk right out the door.

Sarah Hargrove of Lexington, shopping with her two young boys, was sold.

"I thought it was super easy, especially with children. You just scanned it as you went along and bagged it yourself and when you left, you just had to push the button and then you were ready to pay," she said. "It definitely saved a lot of time with little kids who are usually ready to go by the end of the check out. I didn't have to wait and scan each item and have anyone screaming. It was a big help and I'd use it again, for sure."

It's another volley in the grocery shopping wars that already has led to online grocery ordering and home delivery. Virtually every major grocery and shopping chain has moved into the fast-shop lane.

Kroger, which already has ClickList online ordering and is adding home delivery through InstaCart in some markets, launched Scan, Bag, Go in the Cincinnati market last year and in Louisville earlier this year. Coming next will be Mount Sterling, Winchester and Nicholasville stores.

Later this year, Lexington will be getting it at the Richmond Road and Beaumont Center stores. More will be coming in 2019 and 2020.

How does it work?

Anaris Sickles, Kroger's expert at Scan, Bag, Go, walked me through it. There are two ways: either with a hand-held scanner you pick up at the store entry or on your smart phone.

"Everybody has to grocery shop. We just want to make it easier for them," she said.

The beauty of using your smart phone is that you can pay automatically too, and avoid the line completely.

With the pay-on-your-phone option, "customers really don't even have to stand in line anymore," Sickles said.

(You can use an iPad but will have to transfer the order to a scanner to pay at the Scan, Bag, Go self-checkout lane. I know because this happened to me.)

If you're using your phone, some caveats: You must have a Kroger account and both the Kroger app and the Scan, Bag, Go app downloaded. And you have to use the Kroger wifi while you're there.

The scan technology is designed for shoppers to pick up items, scan them and put them in shopping bags. There are bags at the front and by dairy or you can bring in your own and use those.

If you have pre-loaded electronic Kroger coupons, the process will take them off the price at the end. You also can use paper coupons but you have to go through the self-checkout and show them to the attendant.

Both the scanner and the app on your phone will give you an estimated running total of how much you're spending as you go, although it doesn't factor in the coupons until you go to pay.

This is helpful to shoppers who are trying to stay on budget, Sickles said.

You can check prices as well, and remove items if you change your mind.

The technology is supposed to save time, and shoppers who tried it on Monday for the first time said they thought it would, eventually.

Joe Morgan of Lexington said he didn't realize he could weigh all his apples and bananas in produce (there's an electronic scale just for this) rather than at the end.

Will he do it again?

"Yes, definitely. Now that I know how to use it ... I didn't know I could weigh stuff over there ... so I came back and weighed here," he said.

As an incentive, Kroger was giving away cloth shopping bags to the first 250 customers to use Scan, Bag, Go and you get $5 off your first three orders of $35 or more.

This story was originally published April 23, 2018 at 3:30 PM with the headline "Want to skip the check out line at your next grocery store visit? Here's how.."