Shopping for “cream on Sunday”? Or quickly get “snacks and drinks for the gaming weekend” even though the stores are already open? What an older woman and a young man present on two posters as a tempting possibility for the “smart store” Latebird will become reality from this Friday in a residential area of the real estate group Vonovia in Pasing. Then Munich’s first fully automated 24/7 supermarket opens as a neighborhood shop on the corner of Lortzingstrasse and Scapinellistrasse.
A small shopping area, equipped with two conveyor belts like at the supermarket checkout and with displays on which you can select categories, is the gateway to 650 products. Food such as spreads, pasta or frozen pizzas and many items intended for immediate consumption such as yoghurt, ice cream and drinks are available there. The range also includes drugstore items, sweets, snacks and even pet food.
The operation is simple. Customers simply select the goods they want on the touchscreen, pay with a card or, from March, with an app – and then wait around 20 seconds for the first product to appear. For ten items, shopping is completed in around two minutes, a quick process compared to the long queues at the supermarket checkout. However, the goods are also up to ten percent more expensive than usual in the store.
Latebird managing director Markus Belte (from left), Maximilien Breß and Michael Plum from Vonovia.
(Photo: Alessandra Schellnegger)
Checkout-free shopping around the clock is not new. For example, a Rewe “Pick & Go” supermarket opened at the end of 2022 on Karlstrasse near Stachus, where cameras on the ceiling record what you buy and you then pay for it via app. Five minutes from the English Garden is also the fully automated Ben and Bred mini market, which is open around the clock and offers 125 products – from snacks to household goods. However, automated and permanently usable shops are still a novelty in residential areas.
“We surveyed our tenants and found that they were often not satisfied with the local amenities,” explains Maximilian Breß. He is responsible for innovations at Vonovia and therefore turned to Markus Belte, the founder and managing director of Latebird, two years ago. Together they developed the concept for the Pasinger Store. “People today prefer to buy less and go more often,” says Breß.
There are now 40 Latebird shops in Germany, and 150 more are expected to be added this year. The company is only the system manufacturer for all of them – with the exception of the first fully automated store in Paderborn and now this new model in Pasing, where it also acts as the operator. From Vonovia’s perspective, the Pasinger settlement with its around 2,500 residents is ideal as a pilot location – especially since the former bakery shop there was already empty.
However, the store should not be more than a supplement to classic bulk shopping. Even though Latebird “can in principle offer everything that a supermarket does,” emphasizes Belte. The cabinets with different temperature zones up to minus 21 degrees behind the sales wall look like conventional snack machines; they are refilled on average three times a week. A “cloud-based solution” reports “what is empty and when, exactly to the second,” says Belte. However, how Latebird goes about placing the goods gently on the conveyor belt remains a trade secret.
The test phase in Pasing will last two years, then we will see whether the idea can also be transferred to other districts. Anyone can now shop in the store – including non-district residents.