REWE continues to innovate: In the Upper Franconian municipality of Pettstadt, REWE is testing a new format called "Josefs nahkauf BOX", which is intended to ensure a supply of fresh groceries and products for daily needs in the municipality of 2,000 inhabitants. The pilot concept at Ohmstrasse 15 is a so-called "walk-in store": on a sales area of around 39 square meters, located in the town and operated without staff. Customers can shop there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. They can choose from an assortment of around 700 articles and will find everything for their daily needs, from apples to toothbrushes. Customers can pay cashless at a self-checkout with either a debit or credit card.
Photo: REWE Markt Ltd/Achim Bachhausen
The concept of the "Walk-In Store" is customer-friendly, conceivably simple and offers an uncomplicated shopping experience. Customers use their EC or credit card to gain access to the store around the clock. There, they can move around freely and put together their purchases at their leisure. The assortment ranges from fresh fruit and vegetables, dairy and frozen products to dry goods, non-alcoholic beverages, toothbrushes and cigarette vending machines. In the assortment, there is an emphasis on REWE private labels, organic products in all merchandise categories, and regional and local suppliers. Neither alcoholic beverages nor spirits are on sale.
The payment process is cashless. Customers use an EC or credit card to pay for their purchases at a self-checkout, where each item must be scanned independently. After the payment process, customers can leave the store with their purchases.
The operation of the store is ensured by a nahkauf merchandiser, via the company's own regular store. In Pettstadt, it is the nahkauf merchants Josef Sier and Thomas Scheuring who jointly run a nahkauf store in Walsdorf.
"Local supply is an important building block for the attractiveness of a community. With the new "nahkauf" concept, an important piece of the puzzle in the context of our further development comes to Pettstadt. I am pleased that all citizens can now once again carry out their basic supply directly on site and, moreover, around the clock," says Pettstadt's first mayor Jochen Hack.
"Through this pilot, we would like to find the answers to the question of future-oriented local supply in rural areas and village settlement areas that are far from big agglomorations. In Germany alone, there are around 8,000 undersupplied settlement areas in which people have to travel very long distances for their daily grocery shopping. Our nahkauf format, which ensures local supply in areas where all our competitors have withdrawn, is perfect for this. Furthermore, through this project we are once again proving that we are one of the most innovative companies in the country when it comes to grocery shopping," says REWE Divisional Board Member Peter Maly.
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