After-work shopping is fully on-trend, particularly at the weekend. Catching shoppers on Saturdays and Sundays and from 6pm to midnight used to be reserved for online retail, but that’s not the case any more. Official opening hours are no longer an obstacle to making sales; with the new 24/7 dispenser from Wanzl, shopping is now possible around the clock.
Shopping 365 days a year, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day used to only be possible online. But then of course, shoppers have to wait for goods had to be delivered. The new dispenser means that shopping is possible at any time of the day or night, with the advantage that the items are also immediately available. This makes it the optimum solution for an even greater service offering from supermarkets to expand small shop floors or for basic supplies in rural areas – that’s a win for everyone involved. Customers can shop at all hours, and bricks-and-mortar retail stores can sell 24/7.
Surely a machine like this one takes up a lot of space? As a fresh goods retailer, is it worth my while to get one? It only has room for a few tins and snacks, right? Reasonable questions, all with simple answers: no, yes, and no. In fact, hardly any more solution is more flexible than the dispenser. It fits perfectly into almost any store and is also impressive as a standalone solution. It can be retroactively integrated into a shop floor, and is certainly worth more than a passing thought for a new-build project. But what makes it so incredibly flexible?
It’s so easy to fill the machine – all you need is an employee, the machine, and of course the items to be placed in it. First, an item is scanned either manually or automatically using a 360° scanner. Then, it travels along a conveyor belt into the interior of the machine, where the order picking robot is waiting. It uses a gripper arm to pick the goods and automatically place them into an available compartment. It does this for one product after another. Employees place pressure-sensitive or difficult-to-grip items on plastic trays to protect them. The sequence doesn’t matter in the slightest – the principle of chaotic storage is what makes it possible. Fast-selling items are positioned next to less popular ones, even sharing the same compartments. The principle for this is that all the product characteristics that matter – such as the need for cooling or protection of children – are registered during scanning and taken care of by the middleware. In addition, the goods are thereby automatically stored in the merchandise management system of the store or dispenser. For what purpose? To support permanent, automatic inventory and to monitor “best before” dates. If stocks are running short, the store manager is notified, so employees and order picking robots should get themselves ready...
Step 1: choose
Customers are greeted by a rich-display 27-inch touchscreen – a screen that no smartphone can match. With the tap of a finger, the customer selects their items and quantities. Preset categories, classification criteria such as price, name, popularity, and filters, make the search and selection process easier. For example, if food containing certain allergens should not appear on the screen at all, it can be easily hidden using the right filter. When it comes to age-restricted products such as alcohol and cigarettes, trust is good but control is better. Anyone who wants to buy these products must first pass the age check using their ID card.
Step 2: pay
Take out an EC or credit card, pay using the card scanner or via NFC (Near-Field Communication), and you’re done. And of course a receipt is also available on request.
Step 3: take
Once payment has been made, the commissioning robot gets going. The items are with the customer in seconds. The ordered goods are taken from their compartments by a gripper arm and placed on a conveyor belt that leads to the goods output area on the sales floor. From there, the fully automated order picking process can be tracked live using a viewing window.