Structural Concepts Corporation has partnered with Instant Retail Systems LLC to offer a fully integrated autonomous retail solution to US and Canadian-based customers, becoming the first refrigerated merchandiser manufacturer to offer a complete smart solution for autonomous shopping.
Focusing on delivering even greater value to its customers, Structural Concepts will make fresh food displays more profitable with a new refrigerated door merchandiser that utilizes leading-edge automated checkout technology from Instant Retail Systems. Automated Checkout allows shoppers to browse products directly on the shelf, have their selections automatically added to the cart, and pay with credit/debit and mobile payment for faster transactions. For the operator, the autonomous solution tracks inventory and requires less labor, resulting in lower operating costs and increased productivity.
“This will be a game changer for our customers. This technology will increase operational efficiencies, provide better inventory tracking, and improve security,” said Joe Mockus, CEO of Structural Concepts. “From a shopper’s perspective, this will deliver on their desire for contactless experiences and food safety while also ensuring the speed and accuracy of transactions.”
Designed to offset labor challenges and improve the end customer experience, the Structural Concepts autonomous retail merchandiser delivers a complete solution by offering an appealing merchandising format, a cashier-less transactional system, and the ability to streamline inventory management. Using less energy and providing a heightened level of security, these merchandisers enhance the overall shopper experience and are easy to use.
“We see dramatic changes are about to take place in the retail and inventory management industry, driven by the rapid development in sensor technology, AI vision and processing power,” said Franz Kuehnrich, Chairman, Instant Systems Group. “With their leadership position in the fresh food merchandising display category, we believe Structural Concepts is the ideal strategic partner to augment our core competencies of software integration and custom hardware development that will allow retailers to become more profitable, increase productivity, and most important of all, to keep them viable in the eyes of their consumer for the time to come.”
Structural Concepts will market and sell turnkey refrigerated door merchandisers equipped with Instant Retail Systems software subscription as autonomous retail merchandisers to serve the food and merchandising markets. The joint development of the solution will guarantee reliability, low implementation risk, and consumer satisfaction.
About Structural Concepts Corporation:
Since 1972, Structural Concepts has consistently set the standard of leading the way by bringing the most innovative, turnkey refrigerated and heated food display solutions to the market. Constantly innovating the art of fresh food presentation, making the desired more desirable and improving the protection of the perishable, we have spent the past 50+ years delivering the most attractive, reliable, temperature- controlled supermarket display cases, when and where you need them.
About Instant Retail Systems:
Instant Retail Systems has its roots all the way back to 2002 when Mike DeLazzer and Franz Kuehnrich recognized the next trend in the DVD rental industry by developing a networked system solution for kiosks to be deployed around the country. The developed platform was successfully leveraged by Redbox© and allowed it to transform the DVD rental industry with over 45,000 installed kiosks and billions of successful transactions. The learnings from the past of how to recognize and systemize new trends laid the foundation for the Instant Systems autonomous retail solution now transforming the retail industry.
