Swedish convenience store of the future has no sales clerk; all you need is a smartphone

When one imagines the first jobs that will succumb to automation, convenience store staff is not usually the first thing on anyone’s mind. Store clerks are just one of those positions that’ve always been around, like an anthropological marker in the history of human commerce.

But now, 39-year-old Swedish IT specialist Robert Ilijason has open a 24-hour cashier-free convenience store; you just unlock the door with your, scan your items, and leave. There’s no staff working inside the store. Eventually, a monthly invoice is sent over with all of your purchases. You only need sign-up for the service, register your credit card, and download the app. That’s it.

Customers will find the shop regularly stocked with milk, bread, sugar, canned foods, snacks, and even diapers—basically, everything except medicine, tobacco, and alcohol.

“My ambition is to spread this idea to other villages and small towns,” said Ilijason. “It is incredible that no one has thought of his before.” Ilijason hopes the lack of employee overhead will allow him to expand his business within the Swedish countryside, where large supermarkets have replaced small brick and mortar shops. The only real employee is Ilijason himself, as he periodically delivers products and restocks the shelves.

While an automated convenience store seems like an obvious evolution of the self-checkout line or those paid food dispensaries found in Japan, the likelihood of such a thing becoming a worldwide phenomenon is highly improbable. In Sweden—and other places where collective responsibility is culturally engrained—it may be safe enough to deter shop lifting by installing surveillance series of security cameras, but in places like the United States, we’ll need to take more advanced precautions.

Ilijason hopes the savings of having no staff will help bring back small stores to the countryside. In recent decades, such stores have been replaced by bigger supermarkets often many miles (kilometers) away. He’s also considering installing a card reader or another way to unlock that door that doesn’t require using an app.

Source: AP