Carrefour has started Carrefour Flash, the first store of this kind in France. Carrefour Flash uses technology is used to enhance the customer experience, making shopping more straightforward. It has nearly 900 everyday product references on sale.
With this innovative new format, Flash 10/10 (“10 seconds to shop and 10 seconds to pay”) features a shopping journey that does not involve having to scan any products and payment that is almost instantaneous. Customers don’t even have to take their items out of their bag. This saves time for customers and creates a smoother experience.
The store is powered by AiFi technology that enables reliable, cost-effective, and entirely contactless autonomous shopping with AI-powered computer vision technology that provides an unrivalled experience for retailers and consumers.
Customers are free to enter and exit the store without having to pass through a gateway. There is no need to download an app or register beforehand. And there are no surprises – they can view their total spend in real time.
Four employees will be on-hand to open the store and oversee its operation. They will maintain it, manage its new e-commerce services (including Pedestrian click and collect) and provide customers with advice.
This whole customer experience will be made possible by 60 HD cameras, nearly 2000 sensors built into the connected shelves, an algorithm for interpreting all the data and a proprietary tablet payment system. Customers are tracked anonymously as a virtual avatar, allocated to them as soon as they enter the store. The products that they pick up are automatically detected and then added to their virtual basket. Once they have finished shopping, customers just get their baskets validated at a kiosk and then pay contactless. They can get an electronic receipt sent to them immediately simply by scanning a QR code. An automatic checkout kiosk is also available for any customers wishing to pay with cash.
Carrefour Flash was tested at Carrefour’s head office in Massy over more than a year, during which the Innovation team was able to refine the technology and adapt the concept based on feedback from the employees using it on a daily basis.
In March 2021, Carrefour Brazil launched Flash Scan & Go – a store where customers can use their smartphones to shop and pay for the products they want to take home. Six such stores are currently in operation in Brazil, and the subsidiary is planning on opening another eight or so before the end of the year.
And in September, Carrefour launched its “Carrefour City+” concept in Dubai alongside its UAE partner Majid Al Futtaim. The Dubai project is also powered by AiFi technology.
“The Flash concept checks our customers’ expectations. They want to be able to enter the store easily, know what they are buying, pay quickly and then leave. Compared with other existing concepts, with Carrefour Flash, customers get speed and accessibility in a unique way,” said Elodie Perthuisot, the Carrefour Group’s Executive Director of E-Commerce, Data and Digital Transformation.
Ying Zheng, Co-founder and President of AiFi, said: “We are proud to partner with Carrefour to build this delightful shopping experience for shoppers. Following our initial testing in Massy, we are excited to be launching this store in Paris.”
With a multi-format network of some 13,000 stores in more than 30 countries, the Carrefour Group is one of the world’s leading food retailers. The Group recorded revenue of €78.6 billion in 2020. It has more than 320,000 employees.
