The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly changed how many of us purchased and consumed food. Even as the pandemic comes to a close, grocery stores continue to change.
As we get into the future, grocery stores will continue to adapt to the needs of consumers. Look into these ways on how grocery stores are expected to look like years from now.
Store Pick-up
Sometimes, consumers don’t have time to go around and shop inside a grocery store. That’s why they have been opting to visit grocery stores that offer store pick-up.
However, store pick-up services have been a little trick to use in the past. Stores are looking to change that by making store pick-up more of an experience. Grocery stores can do this by adding signs and specific parking spots that make picking up groceries as easy as possible. Grocery stores must make their store pick-up experience better if they want to compete.
Automation
For the past couple of years, automation has been seen through grocery stores offering self-checkout. This makes it so that you don’t have to talk to another person while checking out your groceries. However, self-checkout can be a bit buggy and slow sometimes.
Some companies have been trying to fix this through automation. An excellent example of this is Amazon Fresh. Along with being the name of their delivery service, Amazon Fresh is a grocery store that allows visitors to put whatever they want in their cart and leave immediately after shopping. This technology works by using cameras inside the shopping cart, automatically charging users whenever they place an item inside a bag. This type of automation is expected to be used more in grocery stores soon.
Open Space
If you’ve been in a grocery store before, you might have gotten a bit claustrophobic. This can be due to the grocery store shelves being so close together, not giving you much space to separate yourself from others. Grocery stores believe that this grocery store design is a bit outdated.
Instead of having shelves more close together, grocery stores are experimenting with open space designs. These designs allow people to space out and shop, giving a more comforting feeling to shoppers.