Dive Brief:
- Startup company Wheelys, a cafe chain known for its bike-powered mobile coffee carts, has created Wheelys 247, an employee-free convenience store that uses artificial intelligence to greet customers and grant them access inside, according to PSFK.
- Consumers who want to shop at Wheelys 247 must download the company’s app and have a credit card saved to their account before being allowed inside.
- Customers can scan the bar code of the items they want to buy and it will be deducted from their credit cards automatically. Then shoppers can simply walk out of the store with their purchases, and Wheelys 247 will send a digital receipt to their smartphones.
Dive Insight:
Numerous studies have shown that convenience is one of the biggest drivers of consumer demand today, but some analysts say that store concepts like Wheelys 247 and Amazon Go could just be fads that will eventually lose shoppers' interest.
Still, the technological advancement of these store formats can't be ignored. True grocery disruption, like what Amazon Go is proposing, could streamline the shopping experience to such a degree that consumers may gladly walk away from traditional supermarket formats forever.
If this transition does occur, however, it won't happen overnight. Many consumers are comfortable with the brick and mortar stores of today, and while they do want technical advancements , they don’t necessarily want to feel like they are shopping on Mars. Convenience is obviously important for most shoppers, but the grocery “experience” is also picking up steam, so too much tech could lose some of what makes people want to come to the stores.
The Wheelys 247 concept seems great at first glance, but in a larger setting, problems seem likely. Theft, power outages and problems where there’s no live person to talk to could all come into play. It also seems like items like produce and bakery goods would be hard to fit into the click and pay system because their costs often rely on weight.
