It was end of September that Bloomberg reported Amazon Go would likely open another 3000 cashier-less Stores by 2021. This move will clearly impact other convenience stores like 7-Eleven and potentially the likes of Panera Bread. And it will only be a question of time, until the cashier-less convenience stores hit Europe.
You can imagine how surprised I was to find they had already arrived. And it was not Amazon, but a German start-up from a region, which prides itself with the local dialect (“Wir können alles – außer Hochdeutsch” – “we can do anything – except speaking German without dialect”). The startup created a hybrid between a cashier-less walk-in convenience store and the online Amazon food delivery service where you select products from the website. The “shop” is a no-walk-in booth, the size of a small corner shop. Offers include chilled products as well as those which can be kept at ambient. Customers can select on the touch display the items they like to purchase.
After payment, which can be done by cash or credit card, purchased items are placed automatically into a drawer for the customer to take.
The current product range includes 120 local and sustainable products such as:
- Drinks (water, soda pops, beer, wine, spirits)
- Dairy products (yoghurt, milk, butter, cheese)
- Dairy alternatives (soy milk, oat drink)
- meat products (sausages, bread spreads from meat)
- BBQ Products (marinated meat, sausages, sauces – including egg-less mayonnaise)
- Snacks (chocolate, trail mix)
- Eggs
- Bread and bread rolls
- Convenience ready meals like soups and prepared pasta
The prices for the organic products I checked are identical to those in most supermarkets.
Philip Hoening, the co-founder of SMARK, told me that they studied engineering and had the idea for the cashier-less store about four years ago. While the current product range is around 120 products, he told me that they envision to have a full supermarket portfolio available in the near future. The company started with the shop called “Kesselkiste” in the main train station in Stuttgart last summer and then added another store “Kessellädle” in February this year (2018). The heart of the store is a high bay warehouse en miniature – similar to the Amazon storage system. The company envision to rapidly expands its number of automated stores. Certainly for local retailers like REWE, EDEKA, and even ALDI and LIDL it is a very interesting option to keep Amazon at bay. And of course, this is not only an interesting option for German retailers.
