Shekel Brainweigh expands its partnership with Monop opening autonomous section in its new concept store

Capsule is a modular, cost-effective autonomous micro store framework that revolutionizes the way shoppers purchase items

Following the pilot of its first Autonomous Store (“Blackbox” project developed with Casino), Monop has again leveraged Shekel Brainweigh Retail Innovation Division’s Capsule, an autonomous micro market framework, to power its second store. The new store, opening for the commercialization phase, is located in Rue De Marseille, Paris. The new store deploys a new concept where the Autonomous store section is part of a standard shop during working hours, but once the store closes, the autonomous store section remains open with unique access control. The Autonomous store utilizes several technologies to provide an unattended, contactless shopping experience where shoppers use a mobile payment apps to walk in, select their goods and walk out, providing the retailer with alternate, off-hours, revenue sources.

Monop is part of the French retailer, Casino and the technology is deployed through the partnership between Shekel Brainweigh and the innovation teams of the Casino in place since the end of 2019.

To enter the autonomous store section, a shopper is identified using a secured payment. The shopper then selects their items, each of which is registered via Shekel’s Product Aware shelves technology and a management system that is automatically integrated to the retailer’s POS. Once the shopping is done, the shopper leaves the store without needing to check out through traditional self-checkout machines or via store cashiers. Since all administrative processes are automated, such as calculating and paying for purchases, shopper’s experience is truly frictionless that streamlines his time in store.

Mr. Udi Wiesner, General Manager of Shekel Brainweigh Retail Innovation Division: “Monop has been consistently demonstrating its leadership and innovation not only in technology adoption but also bringing to the market new, creative concepts of shopping experience and efficiency to its customers. Shekel brings its Product Aware Technology for product recognition, and together with our partners in the project we provide first of its kind solution for Autonomous ’store in store’ concept, hence spearheading a real revolution in the retail landscape. That would let customers buy 24/7 while experiencing totally frictionless customer journey. Bringing autonomous stores to retail in Europe, as demonstrated in this store, is a very important signal to the market for the adoption and utilization of such solutions, and a highly cost-effective way to get closer to what consumers expect”. The founders, Guy Moshe – CTO & Eliran Vaknin – Head of Products, who have vast experience in retail innovation startups, have been personally involved and led the deployment of this project because of its strategic importance.

In a full mode deployment, Shekel’s Capsule is a frictionless shopping framework that includes both seamless product recognition and shopper tracking, enabling a fully automated shopping experience. In its full capacity it acts as an autonomous shopping solution, a perfect real time inventory management platform and privacy compliant using Hitachi’s 3D LiDAR shopper-tracking technology, all packed in an affordable end-to-end cost-effective solution. Based on its groundbreaking IoT Load Sensors and advanced AI algorithms, Shekel has developed its Product Aware Technology to enable extremely fast and highly accurate on-shelf product recognition. The integrated 3D LiDAR sensors are able to track multiple concurrent shoppers.