France-based Carrefour launches unmanned store in Taiwan

The store carries around 600 SKUs targeting the needs of office workers.

French multinational retailer Carrefour opened an unmanned store in Taiwan called iCarrefour in collaboration with Taipei-based Yushan Bank, IGD reported.

With a sales area of 9 sqm, the unmanned store carries around 600 SKUs, designed to fulfil the shopping missions of office workers inside the building. The range covers food categories such as snacks, fruits, bakery, chilled and frozen products, but shoppers can also find non-food items, including slippers and face masks.

All items are sold at a “quantity price” that is synchronized with the retail price, and electronic shelf labels are used throughout the store. The self-checkout machine supports solely digital payments from physical cards to mobile payments.

The retailer has been testing the unmanned store concept inside its HQ building since May 2020. Carrefour revealed that during the trial, it can generate a revenue of $286 (TWD8,000) to $357 (TWD10,000) per day.

The company expressed plans to open more iCarrefour stores as several other large companies also expressed keen interest in having such store inside their office buildings for convenience.