[ajcp]

->store sized vending machines

Which was literally the shopping experience before Selfridges "revolutionized" the department store experience by letting customers have direct access to goods for sale.[0]

Before that everything was behind a counter and you have to be served and monitored. Even the grocery store was a similar experience, whereby you would give the clerk your list and they would select everything for you.

Everything that is old is new again.

0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Department_store#Innovations_1...

[ryanmcbride]

I'd be perfectly content with this model, but the problem is then they'd have to hire employees to do things! Stores would much rather have us pick everything ourselves, checkout ourselves, and have our cars remote detonated by robots automatically if the crime computer deems it appropriate.

That way they only have to hire two employees. One to drag carts around the parking lot and one to drag keys to all the locked cabinets of soap and shampoo and diapers and whatnot.

[cjbgkagh]

The main issue is spiky demand, you’d have keep a cadre of employees around to minimize peak latency. Offloading tasks to the shopper scales well with usage.

[aerostable_slug]

Also revenue loss due to fewer impulse purchases. You could still have candy bars in the line to get to the counter, but it's not the same thing as merchandising in aisles and on end caps.

With robots doing the picking and packing the employee problem becomes reduced, but it might take some serious innovation to reliably get customers to leave with more products than they went to the store to buy.

[lostlogin]

Click and collect has made grocery shopping almost tolerable in my household. It seem a modern take on the pre-Selfridges model.