At Forecourttech’23 in Spain this month, Professor Sabine Benoit talked about the rise of autonomous shops on petrol forecourts, leisure destinations, tourist traps, industrial parks and often in small villages, where the local c-store has simply disappeared of the face of the earth.
In a lively conference, several shop concepts were held up by Professor Benoit, but there was not enough time to go through each one specifically, so we thought we would do that in a series of weekly posts offering some background into each unmanned shop solution.
The first name on Sabine’s list was Chinese market leader BingoBox, having established itself in 2016 as a cross between a convenience store and a vending machine, at that time, representing a new convenience channel. The company has expanded from its domestic market into Taiwan, South Korea and Malaysia with store rollouts in Japan and Australia.
A typical BingoBox store is 160 sq ft, far smaller than the likes of 7-Eleven or Tesco Express stores in the UK, at c. 1,400 and 2,300 square feet respectively, making potential sites easier to source, reducing overheads and supporting high sales densities.
Customers enter the store by scanning a QR code via the BingoBox app on their phone, place their items in a scanner and pay via WeChat or Alipay, or a local alternative, where they can shop for hundreds of convenience items.
To exit the store, the customer scans a QR code. A camera checks to ensure that all items have been paid for before allowing the door to unlock. Although the 24-hour store is unmanned, a customer support video call system allows customers to speak to support staff.
In a recent article published in Kiosk Marketplace, Xilin Chen, BingoBox CEO, said "Our stores carry from 400 to 800 items depending on the locations," Chen said. "Stores that locate near a residential area will also have fresh food and fruits offerings."
BingoBox stores use facial recognition for access authorization and theft prevention, Chen said. The facial recognition system identifies the shopper upon entry. Surveillance cameras allow an employee in an offsite location to monitor store activity in real time.
The system also has the capability of sending promotions to shoppers based on their individual customer purchase history, but Chen said the company is not yet using this functionality.
It normally takes 40 minutes to restock a store, Chen said. The stores are easy to assemble and dismantle, he added, so they can be moved to another location. The average BingoBox store makes $150 to $300 per day, according to published sources in 2018.
At a Shop Talk conference in Las Vegas in 2018, Hans Tung, a managing partner at GGV Capital, a venture capital firm that has invested in BingoBox, told delegates that transactions are completed with 99.6 percent accuracy, and they take one second compared to 8.6 seconds on average for manual checkouts. BingoBox has recently introduced a "mini" version that can be installed within traditional retail stores
Shell introduced its first retail outlet entirely unmanned, using BingoBox Retail Technology in Malaysia during 2018. It operates 24 hours a day and using facial recognition for access authorization and theft prevention. Next week we will take a closer look at another name on Professor Benoit's list, ShopBox.
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