Autonomous Q Store opens in Tel Aviv

Erez Gur, CEO and Founder of CYB-ORG He pointed out to Gadgety during a press conference earlier today that the goal is to sell the company’s technology and retail capabilities separately so that in practice each company can use the technology and it will not be closed to Q stores only. Rami Levy and Avi Katz strengthened his words, noting that the technology will be sold to anyone who wants to use it, whether they are players outside Israel or players in Israel, such as AM-PM. Levy also mentioned the company’s partners in Russia, who want to examine the opening of about 1,000 autonomous stores with CYB-ORG technology.

Autonomous Q Store – How does it work?

Just before the store officially opened, we visited it to understand the process. The store is located at 27 Rothschild Street in Tel Aviv and will be open 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, including Friday and Saturday. The store is not staffed by employees, and the company noted that the only employees who come to the store every day are the ones who come to arrange the goods on the shelves, and not service people.

Before entering the store for the first time, register with your full name, active phone number (who will receive SMSs with reports on your purchases and more), scan a credit card for payment and register a fingerprint that will allow you to enter the store and open the locked doors behind the products.

The store itself is very large and we found a great abundance of products, whether it be food, drink and even alcohol and supplements. CYB-ORG clarified that digital shelves can carry any product, and therefore future stores can be built for a particular basket of products, and it can be healthy natural products or smartphones.

The registration is very fast, and in less than a minute we were already inside. After the initial registration there is no need to re-register every time you return to the store, but I will note that I had a slight problem with the fingerprint registration in my case, it led to unrecognization on some of the shelves, a problem that was resolved after a quick re-registration.

Each of the shelves in the store offers a variety of products and the door to them can be opened by placing your finger on the fingerprint reader available on each of them. When opened, your name will be displayed on the screen that appears on the shelf as well as the list of products you have already collected and their prices.

Once you take it off the shelf, it will immediately appear its name, the quantity you took and the price, and if you return, the products will disappear from your shopping list. On this side, the company performs the job excellently, with both the removal of a product from the shelf and its return, the update to the cart appears at record speed.

After completing the purchase, and leaving the store, you will be asked to transfer a fingerprint to the exit, then an SMS will be sent to your phone number, and you can also go through the list of products you purchased, with the charge being made through the credit card you entered at registration.

Want alcohol? Confirm that you are not a minor

Two places we encountered in a different course of action were on shelves with alcohol products and in an attempt to return a particular product to a place other than the one from which we originally took the product. In the case of alcohol shelves, after identification with the fingerprint we are required for further approval – after the first approval with the fingerprint we are asked to stand in front of a camera located on the shelf along with our ID card. The confirmation in this case is manual, by a remote employee of the company who will receive the request for approval by SMS and will be asked to approve it, or not. After a one-time approval, there is no longer a need for a similar approval every time we want to take a bottle of wine.

When it comes to our attempt to deceive the system, it encounters a certain problem, the one promised by the company that they will solve in a short time. When we tried to return a bag of bread crumbs to the cornflour shelf, we got a credit for cornflour. In a conversation with CEO Erez Gur, it was made clear to us that when the store opens, a product that is returned to the wrong place will not be accepted at all, and we will be asked to return it to the right place if we want it removed from our shopping list.

Further details can be found on the CYB-ORG website.