Thirty-nine-year-old Robert Ilijason, an IT specialist has opened a 24-hour convenience store with no staff and no cashier. Customers simply use their cellphones to unlock the door with a swipe of the finger and scan their purchases – all this with an app and registration for service. Customers get charged once a month in an invoice.
Ilijason receives deliveries at the shop and stacks products on the shelves. Then he lets the customers do the rest. He has installed six surveillance cameras to discourage shoplifting in the 480-square-foot store.
Ilijason conceptualized the idea after a pretty harrowing night when he had to drive 20 minutes from the small town of Viken in southern Sweden with his screaming toddler in the backseat to find an open supermarket and buy baby food.
His shop sells the basics – milk, bread, sugar, canned food, diapers and other products that you expect to find in a small convenience store. It doesn’t have tobacco or medical drugs.
“My ambition is to spread this idea to other villages and small towns,” Ilijason was quoted by the Associated Press as saying. “It is incredible that no one has thought of his before.”
He hopes the savings of having no staff will help bring back small stores to the countryside.
Customers simply use their cellphones to unlock the door and then scan their purchases (Image Courtesy: Sorbis / Shutterstock.com)
Must Read
