Carrefour City+, the first checkout-free grocery store in the Middle East, has opened in one of Dubai’s major shopping mall, the “Mall of the Emirates”. Mall of Emirates was already home to Carrefour hypermarket.
“Carrefour City+ has been designed to make life easier by using technology to remove friction and enhance the retail experience,” Hani Weiss, chief executive of MAF Retail, told Lifestyle. “The store represents a huge leap forwards for retail in the UAE and region as Carrefour continues to innovate to meet the needs of the present whilst anticipating future shopping trends.”
With Amazon’s launch in the US and UK, reports of cashless, contact-less and cashier-less supermarkets are not unusual, but many already exist in Asia.
“This is how the future will look,” The Associated Press spoke to Hanni Weiss, CEO of retail at Majid Al Futtaim, the company that operates Carrefour in the Middle East. “We do believe in physical stores in the future. However, we believe the experience will change.”
“We use (the data) to provide a better experience in the future … whereby customers don’t have to think about the next products they want,” Weiss said. “All the insights are being utilized internally in order to provide a better shopping experience.”
“There is no future without humans,” Weiss added.
Additionally, Carrefour City+ monitors shoppers’ movements and shopping patterns with computers and cameras powered by computer vision and machine learning.
Customers must download and install the MAF Carrefour app, then provide an address and a credit/debit card.
Despite being a small store, the cashier-less store in Dubai has the most convenient and essential items readily available.
A wide variety of fresh fruits and juices are available for shoppers. To ensure food safety and hygiene, fresh produce is packaged with good practices.
