Answers to questions about 52UNATTENDED

An unattended store is a store where the entire customer flow is automated, and the customer has no interaction with staff. The unattended store may have a support intercom (as known from, for example, elevators), but it'll usually be answered by non-retail staff and be limited to handling inquiries related to access, exits, and emergency situations.

An unattended shop can be either a standalone or a hybrid solution (see What's the difference between fully unattended stores and hybrid stores?).

That depends on your potential customer base and their needs and wants. Many successful unattended stores are located in busy surroundings with high throughput, high customer turnover, and round-the-clock use, such as train stations, university campuses, or sports complexes.

On the other hand, many equally successful unattended stores are in rural areas, where staffed stores aren’t cost-effective. Such more remotely located unattended stores tend to be particularly successful if they’re adjacent to other services that help attract potential customers, for example car fueling or charging, a parcel collection point, or a recycling point.

A location on a busy road doesn't in itself guarantee success because people tend to just drive on. Examples of good locations for unattended stores:

• A small community of 100-300 households located more than 3-4 kilometers from the nearest retailer

• A gas station or charging facility where it's natural for drivers to stop

• A city center, bus terminal, or train station where no nearby newsagents, kiosks, off-licenses, or gas stations are open after 18.00 (6 pm)

Among emerging markets for unattended stores, we see growth trends among gas stations, secondhand stores, and at large building sites where unattended stores sell not only groceries to construction workers, but also tools and spares.

Many owners of unattended stores have invested in them because they help them save significantly on one of their biggest items of expenditure, namely staff. Unattended stores can also help store owners extend their opening hours at very little or no extra cost.

Both factors make it possible to offer shopping opportunities in environments where staffed stores would be too costly, so unattended shops are also a great choice for the many retailers who feel they have a social responsibility for supporting their communities, be it rural or inner-city ones.

Customers associate unattended shops with convenience and freedom to shop whenever they want as well as efficiency because they hardly ever need to queue. In areas where staffed stores aren’t financially viable, customers quite simply also welcome unattended stores as an alternative to no stores at all.

Yes, if the location and premises are suitable, you can turn an existing store into a fully unattended store or into a hybrid store (see the following). Whether or not an existing store is suitable for use as an unattended or hybrid store depends on many factors. For example, you’re very likely going to use video surveillance to provide a safe unattended shopping experience and keep shrinkage to a minimum, but if your existing store has many nooks and crannies, it may be difficult or costly to cover all of them with cameras. Customers typically feel most comfortable and relaxed inside unattended stores when they have an overview of the entire unattended store from wherever they’re situated.

A fully unattended store doesn’t have any staff at any time (other than cleaners and people who re-stock the unattended store). A hybrid store is typically staffed during normal opening hours and unstaffed outside normal opening hours, during which only part of the store may be accessible to customers.

The hybrid concept is relatively new for grocery stores, but has existed for many years in other sectors, for example at gas stations, where self-service fueling is available round the clock even though the garage may be closed outside normal working hours, or at public libraries, where users can often access reading rooms, return library materials, etc. outside staffed hours.

In principle you can sell almost anything in an unattended shop, but what you sell will of course ultimately depend on your customers’ needs and wants. In many unattended grocery stores, drinks, snacks, and sweets are among the most popular articles, but if your unattended store is in a busy sports complex, your top sellers might be tennis balls, shuttlecocks, athletic tape, and electrolyte drinks.

Retailers often wonder if they can sell age-restricted articles, such as energy drinks, alcoholic drinks, or tobacco, in unattended stores, and the answer is most often yes (see Can we restrict sale of certain articles based on customer age?).

Articles that are typically not suitable for sale in unattended stores include medicine, ammunition, heavy objects, dangerous substances, and highly customization-dependent articles like spectacles and prosthetic devices.

Yes. Unattended grocery store customers often want to buy articles that have a limited shelf life, for example fresh milk. Just like in a regular store, perishables typically require more frequent re-stocking and removal of out-of-date articles, refrigerated displays that may take up space, etc. However, if those articles help attract customers who buy lots of them, and ideally other articles too, the investment may very well be worth your while.

Yes.

In the Nordics, the large supermarket chains haven't really jumped the unattended stores bandwagon yet because early unattended store solutions were targeted at single-store setups. If you need to run 50 or more unattended stores simultaneously, you need an enterprise-level setup that lets you monitor and manage all your unattended stores from a central office, and you also need an enterprise-level support solution to match. That's where a highly scalable solution like 52UNATTENDED becomes interesting because it can help large chains embrace the attractive unattended store concept.

With 52UNATTENDED, you can use the payment methods that your customers trust and are familiar with, typically card payment and mobile payment. Customers’ payment experience will be just like in a regular shop.

We don’t recommend that you accept cash as payment unless you’re required by law to do so because cash handling can be costly, involve mechanical equipment that can require excessive maintenance, and involve a security risk that can complicate the otherwise simple and safe unattended store environment. In many countries or regions, unattended stores are technically viewed as vending machines, which may well exempt you from having to accept cash altogether.

Payment is just as secure in an unattended store as in a regular store, but there’s typically no other people around who can distract you or find out your PIN code if you use card payment.

If you’ve ever paid for gas at a self-service gas station or for a ticket at a train station ticket machine, which most people have without any worries, the payment experience in an unattended shop is similar, but much more comfortable because you’re inside a secure, well-lit building, and the articles that you pay for are, unlike gas and tickets, already in your possession when you pay.

You can do many simple things to make customers feel safe and comfortable in an unattended store. Among the most used ones are:

• Make customers able to view and assess the entire unattended store: Customers typically feel most comfortable and relaxed inside unattended stores when they have an overview of the entire unattended store from wherever they’re situated.

• Light up the entrance area: Use lighting, also outside the unattended store, to make the entrance safe and welcoming. Remember that seasons change, and daylight angles, foliage on trees, etc. may change significantly from season to season, so your lighting needs to take that into consideration.

• Provide an entrance lobby with two-step access: Provide a small, well-lit lobby space between the street entrance door and the inside entrance door to the actual unattended store. This will give new customers a safe space to enter their details when they register, and it’ll help prevent tailgating so that unregistered people can’t gain access by sneaking in behind registered customers.

• Light up the store: Make the store light and welcoming inside. Don’t switch lights off completely if there’s no one inside your unattended store because customers must be able to assess the store layout from the outside to feel safe.

• Use visible video surveillance cameras: Make it highly visible and evident, also outside the entrance, that your unattended store is monitored by video surveillance cameras.

• Provide level access: Provide an inclusive unattended shopping experience, where the fact that customers may use wheelchairs, walkers, etc. doesn’t make it difficult for them to use the unattended store.

• Give people space: Provide sufficient space between aisles to allow customers unobstructed lines of sight and make it possible for customers to easily pass each other if there’s several customers in the store at the same time.

• Provide simple exit and emergency procedures: Provide a clearly marked emergency exit and display signs inside and outside the unattended store with the store location (address and/or coordinates) and phone numbers to call in emergencies. Make sure to make the emergency exit sound an alarm and trigger notifications to the store owner if people use it.

  Make your non-emergency exit procedures so simple to use that customers aren’t tempted to misuse the emergency exit to avoid hassle. For example, exit procedures that involve scanning a QR code on the customer’s receipt don’t work well if customers don’t buy anything or if the receipt printer’s thermal paper roll has run out. A simple scan-your-card-to-leave-just-as-you-did-when-you-entered approach will typically work better and prevent misuse of emergency exits.

Let’s look at two examples where customers enter a 52UNATTENDED store, do their shopping, and leave. In the examples, customers use their physical payment cards to enter and exit the unattended store, but they might as well use digital cards on their phones, key tags, or any other means of access that can be tied to their registration.

Existing customer Karen who has already registered to use the unattended store:

• Karen opens outer door to unattended store by scanning her payment card.

• Display in lobby says Good to see you, Karen. Please scan your card again at the next door.

• Karen opens inner door to store by scanning her payment card.

• Display in store says Welcome, Karen and displays real-time video of Karen in the store.

• Karen shops.

• Karen scans articles at checkout.

• Karen pays with their payment card.

• Karen opens inner door to lobby by scanning her payment card.

• Karen opens outer door to street by scanning her payment card.

New customer Wayne who hasn’t used the unattended store before:

• Wayne opens outer door to unattended store by scanning his payment card.

• Wayne’s payment card isn’t known by store, so display in lobby says Please register here to get access to the store.

• Wayne registers and accepts terms and conditions.

• Wayne opens inner door to store by scanning his payment card.

• Display in store says Welcome, Wayne and displays real-time video of Wayne in the store.

• Wayne shops.

• Wayne scans articles at checkout.

• Wayne pays with their payment card.

• Wayne opens inner door to lobby by scanning his payment card.

• Wayne opens outer door to street by scanning his payment card.

The only difference between the two examples is that the new customer Wayne must register and accept terms & conditions. How many details to ask customers for when they register is up to you. In the Nordics, many unattended stores ask new customers to register with their BankID or MitID (two-factor authentication services used by the governments, private enterprises as well as individuals), so the store automatically gets the customer’s identity, including their age, verified.

No, access to a 52UNATTENDED store requires that customers have registered so that they’re known by the store.

Registered adults can of course bring their children with them, and a group of coworkers may get access if just one of them has registered (specifics about who customers can bring with them are typically covered in the terms and conditions that customers must accept when they register). In both cases, you’ll know who they came in with because you can easily correlate the timestamped access logs with your video surveillance.

Tailgating (that is unregistered people gaining access by sneaking in behind registered customers) is typically not a problem in unattended stores, partly because it’ll be captured on video, and partly because many unattended stores use entrances with two-step access via a lobby area between the street entrance door and the inside entrance door to the actual unattended store.

That’s up to you. You can set up the access control system to allow only a single customer, multiple customers, or a limited number of customers at the same time. It’ll typically depend on the size and nature of your unattended store. Unattended stores that only allow one customer at a time typically use a display with green/red lights to show whether the store is ready or in use.

The project will depend heavily on building characteristics. If you need to construct a new building, you'll have a design and permit phase that can easily take six to nine months month on top of the actual solution installation. If the facility is in place, it'll typically take one month for planning and scoping, one month for professionals to install electricity, video surveillance, and door and gateway infrastructure, and one to two weeks for POS and access service configuration.

That way, the answer can range from one to twelve months depending on construction complexity. For basic conversion of a small attended retail store with all required infrastructure already in place, it could be a matter of a few weeks, but don't underestimate planning and timing.

Because the unattended facility can vary from simply adding a gate service and a self-service POS in an existing store to building a new unattended facility from scratch on a non-developed location, it's difficult to come up with a general estimate.

Facility costs and costs of doors, gated areas, and fences are likely to be the biggest cost drivers because the access portal SaaS solution and POS solution are fairly inexpensive.

We are happy to support you with your case and we have a business case template ready. Just reach out to us and we will be happy to help you.

You need the following basics to be able to calculate your business cases:

• Cost of facility readiness

• Running monthly cost for electricity, SaaS fees, security, insurance, etc.

• Monthly cost of staff to maintain store (re-stocking, cleaning, etc.; can be as low as seven hours of labor per week)

• Your average coverage on your stock sales price (typically between 25%-40% in retail)

When you have these, you get the first indication of your daily break-even point. In various current projects we see, depending on investment size and complexity, daily break-even sales targets from 400-800 EUR for small stores under 30 square meters.

We are happy to support you with your case and we have a business case template ready. Just reach out to us and we will be happy to help you.

Depending on factors like the location of your unattended store, whether you’re going to convert existing premises, etc., you may need planning permissions, building permits, fire safety approvals, environmental permits, or similar, just like you might if you planned to set up a regular store. Contact your local authorities for additional information.

Note that permits aren’t always a hassle. For unattended stores, they may also be in your favor: In many countries or regions, unattended stores are technically viewed as vending machines, which can greatly simplify things for you as an unattended store owner because that fact might exempt you from having to accept cash, having to handle bottle deposit returns, having to offer customers the right to cancel or return their purchases, etc.

Yes, In the web-based 52UNATTENDED management interface, you can monitor store use and sales in real time on an at-a-glance dashboard.

You can also analyze customer trends, such as which days and times they visit your unattended store the most. If you need details, you can drill down to the individual timestamped events of a given customer session, such as entry, scanning of articles, payment, exit, and more.

If you have several unattended stores, you can monitor and compare all your unattended stores in a single instance of the 52UNATTENDED management interface.

Experience shows that unattended stores suffer less shrinkage than you’d expect. This is primarily because customers in unattended stores voluntarily accept an element of time-limited social control while they shop: They know that they’re known by the unattended store through their entry registration and their acceptance of the unattended store’s terms and conditions. Also, they know that the unattended store, and consequently their actions in the store, including which articles they select and which articles they pay for, is recorded by video cameras, so they tend to be on their best behavior.

That said, theft does happen in most stores, including unattended stores, but if you apply a little psychology, for example by welcoming customers on entry with a display that greets them by their first name and shows their face on live video, the unattended store’s layout on live video, and the current time, you might well deter them from even contemplating theft.

Should theft happen, you can easily provide information about who did it, when they did it as well as how they did it captured on video to the relevant authorities to help solve cases and bring perpetrators to justice quickly, which in turn will further deter theft. The same applies to any vandalism attempts.

Furthermore, you can block unwanted customers if required (see the following).

Yes, if a customer misbehaves, for example by behaving in a reckless or threatening manner in one of your unattended stores, you can block the customer across all of your chain's unattended stores with the click of a button in the 52UNATTENDED management interface. When that's the case, you're not necessarily interested in having them as a customer in your unattended stores again – note even if they delete their profiles and later sign up again.

With 52UNATTENDED, the fact that a user is blocked is therefore stored anonymously and isolated from the customer's profile and only matched with the customer's profile if the blocked user attempts to use your unmanned stores. That way, it's possible to keep the blocking information and still comply with personal data protection regulations, even after a blocked customer has deleted their profile.

If the blocked customer then creates a new profile to see if they can outsmart the access control and be able to enter your chain's unattended stores again, 52UNATTENDED will check their new profile against the otherwise completely anonymous blocking information and notify the customer that their new profile is blocked because it matches a previously created profile that was blocked.

Consequently, a blocked customer can't get access to your chain's unmanned stores by deleting their original profile and creating a new one. As a store owner you can, however, unblock a blocked customer at any time if you come to an agreement with the customer.

You can learn more about how customer blocking is implemented in 52UNATTENDED, and how blocking complies with GDPR, the European personal data protection act.

52UNATTENDED uses sensor technology to register doors or lids that have been open for longer than acceptable, refrigerated display temperatures above defined thresholds, etc. Sensors can automatically alert relevant staff when necessary, so that they can take action either remotely, by calling a local agent, or by going to the unattended store and fixing the problem themselves.

Sensor technology often works with even low-budget video surveillance systems, so that you can use video to verify or reject reported sensor issues remotely, for example because the sensor alert you get includes video surveillance images.

Manually, which means that your unattended store will occasionally require staff attention in connection with re-stocking, removal of out-of-date or near-out-of-date articles, etc., just like it’s normal practice in regular stores.

Many owners of unattended stores cherish the moments when they visit their unattended store to re-stock it because that gives them the chance to meet and interact with their customers and listen to their requests, suggestions for new articles, etc.

Note that the sales log in the unattended store’s management interface together with the unattended store’s video surveillance can greatly help you assess when it’s the optimal time to re-stock.

Use electronic shelf labels (ESLs). They're highly suitable for unattended stores because they easily let you update prices remotely.

With 52UNATTENDED, shopping is so simple and easy that customers rarely need support, and 52UNATTENDED offers user interfaces in several languages, so you can also accommodate customers who don’t speak your local language.

To offer customers support during their shopping you have multiple options, from simply displaying a phone number for customers to call if they need support or using an intercom (like in elevators) to offering two-way video calls with a customer support team.

Advanced video surveillance systems can be set up to automatically detect objects, such as human bodies that don’t move or behave as if they’re ill. However, even with simple motion detection-based video surveillance systems, you can configure thresholds for periods of time with as well as without motion. This will help detect a customer who falls ill while they’re alone in the unattended store:

When the customer enters the unattended store, they’ll generate motion. If the customer then passes out and falls to the floor, there’ll be no motion after a while. No motion is expected behavior when there’s no customer in the store, but in this case the system will know that there's a customer in the store because the access control system hasn’t registered that the customer has left. Longer periods of no motion when there’s a customer inside the store is unexpected behavior, so the system can automatically alert relevant people that there’s a possible emergency in the store, and responders can then use the video surveillance system to assess the situation and provide help when necessary.

Inside the store, there’ll be an emergency door opening mechanism by the exit door. If the child is too young to operate the emergency exit, the parent can use their registered card to enter the store again and help the child out. If the parent has left their card with the child inside the store, the parent can call (or get someone to call) the emergency number that’s prominently displayed inside as well as outside the store (as known from, for example, self-service gas stations).

Yes. In the browser-based, central 52UNATTENDED management portal, you can manage the customers of your unattended store, that is edit their properties, allocate discounts to them, delete them, block them from being able to use your chain's unmanned stores, etc.

In general, you must handle customer data just like you do in a regular store, that is carefully, securely, and in accordance with data protection regulations.

However, when customers sign up to use an unattended store, you typically want them to consent to some things that are unique to unattended stores. For example, you may want customers to consent to being video recorded in a non-anonymous context because data from the unattended store’s access control system can, and will, be matched with data from the unattended store’s video surveillance system. Fiftytwo can provide a template for a digital consent form that you can customize to suit your organization’s needs.

To comply with GDPR, all customer data must be stored on a secured network service, and only customer data relevant to the system, and for which the customer has granted their explicit consent, must be stored in the system.

If you delete customers, or they request to be deleted, their data can be kept for a configurable number of days, after which they’re permanently deleted, observing any legal requirements for financial transactions (these details are also stated in the consent form template). That way, you’ll still be able to act against a dodgy customer who steals articles from the unattended store and deletes their profile immediately after.

Note that data about the fact that a customer is blocked is handled anonymously and isolated from the customer's profile, so that it can be kept, in a way that complies with GDPR, even after a blocked customer has deleted their profile. This ensures that the customer will still be blocked if they later create a new profile.

You can learn more about how customer blocking is implemented in 52UNATTENDED, and how blocking complies with GDPR, the European personal data protection act.

Yes, you can restrict sale of certain articles, for example energy drinks, alcoholic drinks, tobacco, or similar based on a customer’s age. Some unattended stores that sell such articles stock them in separate store areas that require age verification for access.

In case of a shutdown of network and/or electricity, customers will not have access to the unattended store from the outside. Customers already in the unattended store will have no other option than to leave the store using an analog door opening device, typically the emergency exit. The store owner will automatically get alerted if the 52UNATTENDED management interface portal can't communicate with the store for any reason.

The 52UNATTENDED management interface makes the store owner able to support their own shop. If the shop is part of a chain, a headquarters support team can help assist individual shops.

If you get a support agreement with Fiftytwo or any of our affiliated partners, we can also provide support for individual shops remotely through the 52UNATTENDED management interface. Local and on-premise support will be handled through your chain's normal support arrangement or decided on individual cases on a project basis.

Not if you look at the business case for it.

It’s true that some unattended stores in Asia, the US, and other places offer grab-and-go shopping where checkout isn’t needed. Such stores either use weights on shelves, video-based article recognition, or RFID technology, so articles that the customer grabs are automatically registered and billed to the customer’s account or payment card as they leave the unattended store.

However, the investments in equipment required to make such solutions work are disproportionately high compared to the typical revenue from an unattended store. That’s why implementing grab-and-go shopping is typically something that large chains do to be perceived as shopping technology frontrunners rather than because it’s financially viable for them.

At Fiftytwo, we follow developments in shopping technology very closely, but we currently believe that there’s a significantly better business case in using existing, readily available, and very reasonably priced self-service checkouts with barcode scanners.

Yes.

For ultimate customer ease and flexibility, you can export relevant parts of your loyalty program database for integration into the 52UNATTENDED store access database. That way, your loyalty program members are automatically registered to access and use the 52UNATTENDED store and automatically get their loyalty benefits there too. If your loyalty program members aren’t validated through BankID/MitID, the system can be set up to ask them to validate the first time they use the unattended store.

If you choose not to import loyalty program members, customers can register their existing customer club membership, or sign up for a customer club membership in case they don’t have one, when they register to get access to the 52UNATTENDED store.

In the simplest implementations, customers can scan their loyalty cards at checkout to get their benefits.

You don’t have to be a big chain with an advanced loyalty program to attract and retain a loyal customer base in unattended stores. For example, many villager-backed unattended stores in rural areas reward customers, who have helped finance the unattended store through buying small denomination villager’s shares, by granting them permanent discounts or other benefits.