WILLIAMSBURG, N.Y. - Tops Markets stopped its trial of hand-held devices shoppers carried around the store to scan groceries, the Buffalo News reports. The supermarket chain had tested the system called EasyShop in five stores, but customer interest never materialized.

"We just didn't have the participation in the technology that we thought we would," said Katie McKenna, a Tops spokeswoman. However, Tops will keep its self-checkout lanes.

The chain had been testing EasyShop at select locations since 2006. Customers signed up to use the scanners and simply scanned product bar codes and bagged their groceries while shopping. The data transferred to the store??s computer system at checkout for payment processing. Employees spot-checked EasyShop customers to ensure no unscanned items were bagged.

While theft was not a problem, disinterest among shoppers was. Less than 2 percent of shoppers in participating stores used EasyShop, said McKenna. Tops originally started the experiment with two racks of 46 scanners each at the five test locations, before scaling back to one rack at each store.

The Food Marketing Institute (FMI) doesn??t see a trend in other supermarket chains with hand-held scanners dropping the service. "The trend seems to be the other way, that more stores are adding them," said David Fikes with FMI.