On the surface JUXTA’s new micro-store ‘Nomad’ is akin to a walk-in vending machine – tap your payment card to gain entry and once you have selected your items simply walk out. Dive a little deeper, however, and the technology’s greatest power is giving established convenience brands access to new markets, bringing them closer to their customers than ever before.
JUXTA “We are not trying to replace convenience stores. We believe that c-stores are incredibly important and will remain incredibly important for decades to come. If we think of the c-store as the central hub that is the last mile to the customer, what we are aiming to give our customers is access to the last 50 feet,” explains Om Shankar, CEO at JUXTA.
There is little doubt that the fuel retail industry is in a period of transition, but while the pace of change is still up for debate, it is clear that the the concept of a convenience store centred around a vehicle is a thing of the past. With electric vehicles continuing to take a foothold in the industry charging infrastructure will need to reach further and extend into more remote locations. Whilst these sites may not present a viable location for a standard bricks and mortar store, JUXTA Nomad offers an opportunity for retailers to grow and trial new locations without the associated risk and, if it doesn’t work, they can simply move the store to a different location.
“All of us are confused and considering what our EV future looks like. Our technology gives us the ability to go to EV in more remote locations, giving EV drivers more amenities,” explains Om.
“Then we have retailers who won’t adopt EV. How can they take a brand that they’ve crafted over years and years and transition that to something that is not is not wrapped around a vehicle? With our technology we can give them access to meaningful growth by taking the brand and putting it anywhere. Let’s not have customers drive their cars to us anymore, let’s take our brand to them.”
The data generated from the store also ensures retailers are able to craft a targeted offering ensuring the right products at the right price for the customers visiting the store.
JUXTA is already seeing a number of interesting use cases emerge for their technology from college campuses to music festivals and even as a temporary store to ensure continuity of service to customers during scheduled raze and rebuilds of their network.
How it works
After polling tens of thousands of frequent consumers at c-stores to understand how they would want their shopping to be, JUXTA set out to create a seamless customer experience. There is no lengthy sign-up process or app downloads required. Customers simply tap their choice of payment card to gain access to the store. They can then shop freely, with the inbuilt AI technology logging their purchases. Once they have finished they either walk out of the store and their card will be charged, or they can review their purchases on the checkout screen – a crucial step that helps people to build trust in the autonomous process.
“We know that trust is probably the biggest issue that the autonomous checkout has. That was the single biggest issue that was identified when we did our research. We developed the ability for consumers to interact with the store without having a check out process. There’s a screen in the store that shows you to instantly see what items you’ve taken and, if for some reason, you have an issue with what the AI is telling you, you can interact with it and resolve issues in real time,” explains Om.
“As soon as customers understand that you can enter the store with a credit card, which is pictorially shown at the entrance of our store, they immediately become familiar with the experience. We were very purposeful in crafting the experience to meet the needs of the consumer rather than building technology for technology’s sake.”
Helping customers to grow
Backed by one of the world’s leading fuelling and convenience store equipment and technology providers Gilbarco Veeder-Root, the team at JUXTA set out to unearth the pain points within the industry and come up with a business concept that seeks to sooth these pains in an interesting way.
“When we went to the market there was really two pains that we found. One, unsurprisingly, was labour and the other was the changing expectation for convenience retail and the digital experience. We coupled these pains together and set out to create an experience that is digitally focused, consumer friendly and convenient without any labour requirements,” said Om.
“JUXTA and Gilbarco’s aim is to leverage this type of technology to drive growth outside of bricks and mortar. We as an industry have really powerful brands and there is nothing stopping us from taking those brands everywhere and gaining growth on both the top and bottom line,” he added.
JUXTA is currently rolling out pilot stores across North America and will begin their European roll out in Q1 2024. For more information on JUXTA visit juxta.ai. Om will also discuss moving beyond the traditional c-store format as part of the conference programme at forecourttech ’23.
