Welcome to Viken, Sweden (population 4,227), where we trust you to shop without a shopkeeper. The innovative country known for IKEA-style do-it-yourself independence has introduced do-it-yourself shopping at an unstaffed convenience store.
With no staff, what stops shoppers from walking off with the goods? If only everyone heeded the eighth commandment, the process would be simple. But in this case, there’s an app for that.
Customers first must register and download an app. The store is always locked. Customers unlock the door with a smartphone. Once inside, they use their phones to scan each item they purchase. They pay monthly from an invoice. Could a customer pocket an item without scanning it? Maybe, but surveillance cameras would likely record the theft. And WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE because it was your smartphone that unlocked the door.
Why mess with apps and invoices to shop at an unstaffed convenience store? Well, convenience. The store is available 24/7. And in a town the size of Viken, there aren’t many options. In fact, the store’s creator, a 39-year-old IT specialist, got the idea during a desperate late-night scramble to buy baby food. Robert Ilijason dropped the last jar of baby food on the floor. With his hungry (and very vocal) son in the backseat, he drove 20 minutes to find an open supermarket.
“My ambition is to spread this idea to other villages,” says Ilijason. Smaller towns mean fewer shoppers and not enough sales to support local stores. Larger supermarkets have replaced most neighborhood stores, but they are few and far between. A store without a staff is cheaper to operate—cheap enough for small towns. Ilijason stocks the shelves himself with typical convenience-store basics: milk, bread, diapers, and, yes—baby food.
Ironically, the technology that enables the zero-staff store is also a challenge to its success. Viken resident Tuve Nilsson, 75, thinks the new store could help elderly people. “But if they can manage this [technology], I don’t know,” Nilsson says. “Sometimes I don’t understand it.”
Others love the idea of a no-service store because it means no wait. Raymond Arvidsson did his shopping in less than a minute. "No queues," he grinned. "Quick in, quick out."
“It’s incredible that no one has thought of this before,” says Ilijason. But the idea is not entirely original. A company called ShelfX introduced a payment system in 2014 for no-staff shopping in ShelfX-equipped stores. Other attempts, such as Shop24 and the 24RobotMart, were more like giant vending machines. Ilijason's store, with his unique access-and-pay app, is the next-generation mashup of those systems.
