Mon, May 24, 2021 page5

• Unstaffed supermarkets to the rescue as groceries shut down in rural Sweden

  • AFP, ENKOPING, Sweden
  • • 
    • 
    • 

  One after another, grocery stores are shutting down in rural Sweden, leaving villagers to travel kilometers to buy food.

  However, a new type of shop has sprung up in their wake: unstaffed supermarkets in mobile containers.

  In Veckholm, a village of a few hundred people 80km from Stockholm, the last grocery store closed more than a decade ago. Then, a year-and-a-half ago, even the little convenience store at the only gas station locked its doors.

  

  A Lifvs unstaffed supermarket is pictured in Veckholm, Sweden, on May 6.

  Photo: AFP

  Villagers were left with no choice but to travel a half-hour by car to the closest supermarket.

  However, in July last year, an automated, unstaffed grocery store came to town.

  In a container dropped in the middle of a field, open 24 hours a day, the 20m2 supermarket sells hundreds of items — and there is no cashier in sight.

  “Since a while back, there has been nothing in this area and I think most of us living here have really missed that,” said Giulia Ray, a beekeeper in Veckholm.

  “It’s so convenient to have this in the area,” she told reporters, doing her own shopping and restocking the shop’s shelves with her honey at the same time.

  Shoppers unlock the supermarket’s door with an app on their smartphone.

  “We come here three times a week and buy stuff we need,” Lucas Edman, a technician working in the region for a few weeks, told reporters. “It’s a little bit more expensive, but it’s fine. It’s a price I can pay to not go to another store.”

  In Sweden, the number of grocery stores — everything from superstores to small convenience stores — has dropped from 7,169 in 1996 to 5,180 last year, according to official statistics.

  While the number of superstores has almost tripled in 24 years, many rural shops have closed down, often due, like elsewhere in Europe, to a lack of profitability.

  Daniel Lundh, who cofounded the Lifvs, has opened almost 30 unstaffed stores in rural Sweden and in urban areas with no shops in the past two years.

  “To be able to keep low prices for the customer, we have to be able to control our operation costs. So that means controlling the rent — that’s why the stores are quite small — but also controlling the staffing cost,” Lundh said.

  He plans to open his first unstaffed supermarkets outside Sweden early next year.

  Domenica Gerlach, who manages the Veckholm store, only comes by once a week to receive deliveries. She also manages three other shops, all of them mobile containers.

  Peter Book, the mayor of Enkoping, the municipality to which Veckholm belongs, has only good things to say about the three container stores that have opened in his patch — and he would like to see more.

  “It makes it easier to take a step to move there if you know you have this facility,” he said.

  In Sweden, one of the most digitalized countries in the world, Lifvs, like its Swedish rivals AutoMat and 24Food, which have also popped up in rural areas, benefits from a wired population.

  In 2019, 92 percent of Swedes had a smartphone.

  Ironically, the unstaffed shops — plopped down in the middle of nowhere — also play a role as a “meeting place” for locals.

  “You come here, you get some gas and you go inside and get something, and maybe someone else is here and you can have a chat,” Ray said.

  Book echoed the notion, saying the stores make it possible to “connect society.”
• Most Popular

  • 1

    Eurovision Song Contest triggers surge in betting interest

  • 2

    Napoli close in on title despite Parma stalemate

  • 3

    Palau president in Taiwan for first time since start of second term

  • 4

    ‘Beitou Shilin’ announced as new Nvidia office site

  • 5

    Kevin de Bruyne bids Manchester City farewell