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Retailers have found a few ways around it, so consumers aren’t devoid of options on their rest day. Supermarket chain Tegut, for instance, has run automated stores without any human workers for the past four years.
But now, even those won’t open after a German court upheld a ban impacting Tegut’s stores—even those without human staff—forcing them to remain closed on Sundays. In December, it ruled that Tegut’s 40 automated shops will not be excluded from the Sunday rest law, or Sonntagsruhe, despite the absence of workers.
A member of Tegut’s management board, Thomas Stäb, described the move as “entirely grotesque” in an interview with the Financial Times, since the shops were more like “walk-in vending machines” than actual supermarkets. Business on Sundays also contributed to up to 30% of the shops’ weekly sales as few establishments are typically running.
From: German chain Tegut under pressure from law closing businesses on Sundays | Fortune Europe.
Automated supermarkets aren’t exacty new.
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We’re in Memphis Tennessee, 1948, at the Keedoozle store, a vending machine concept developed by the man behind Piggly Wiggly, Clarence Saunders, who had patented the concept of the “Self-Serving Store” in 1917.
In the 1930s, Clarence Saunders, founder of the Memphis, Tennessee-based Piggly Wiggly supermarket chain, introduced the “Keedoozle.” Customers viewed products behind glass-enclosed display cabinets, then inserted a key into a corresponding keyhole near the display cabinet to identify the product they wanted, according to Wikipedia. Stock personnel then put the selected items onto conveyor belts that took the products to the cashier for checkout. The system, which was not fully automatic, proved mechanically unreliable.
The idea of a vending machine version of supermarket has been tried in the UK as well. I can remember working on a project for one of the major supermarket chains here many years ago. The project was to do with communications and although I can’t remember exactly what it was I was doing, I know it involved looking at different types of stores to try to work out the bandwidth requirements of the town centre mini stores, the edge of town stores and the out of town macro stores.
At that time one of the stores had been fitted with an experimental vending machine which carried a limited number of goods (I think from memory it was 300 lines but I may be wrong) that could be sold outside stores hours. I can’t remember where it was exactly but it was somewhere up near Manchester I think. I do remember that I was dispatched to visit the store very early in the morning to talk to the manager and some of the employees before the store opened for business. I done this at a couple of other stores, but this one was particularly interesting because of the vending machine.
As a junior deputy assistant under consultant I took my pencil and notepad and went off to see the woman who was in charge of the vending machine. I don’t remember anythign about the communications requirements, other than that it was fitted with a (then new) chip and PIN reader that was desgined for external use. I do, however, remember the two key things that I learned about this fascinating experiment in automated shopping. I asked her what the best selling items in the vending machine (just out of curioisty as it had nothing to do with the bandwidth requirements) and she told me that the two top items were milk and condoms. When I commented, somewhat naïvely, that I didn’t understand the connection between the two she told me it was because of the nursing accomodation near the supermarket. And I remember, pencil poised, what the main lesson learned from the vending machine experiment had been and she told me “you have to sellotape the egg boxes shut”. So much for high technology.
Snippings 