Tesco's first autonomous store outside of London

Hello Birmingham

Located in the center of England, Birmingham is the UK’s second-largest city. Over the past decade, the multi-billion pound ‘Big City Plan’ development project is slowly transforming Birmingham’s city center with modern high-rise buildings, expansive parks, and restored historical sites.

The city is known for being the youngest city in Europe, with nearly half of the population under 25. Its vibrant nightlife, cultural events, fine dining, and many universities are just some of the city’s many features that draw young people to Birmingham. In recent years, the city center has also become one of the UK’s top innovation hubs. One of the main drivers of innovation, the Birmingham Science Park Aston in the city center, has attracted Fortune 500 companies and global initiatives to open incubators and innovation centers, building on the city’s highly educated and young population.

Uniquely University

The young and innovative spirit of Birmingham’s residents makes it the perfect place for Tesco’s latest autonomous store. This location is the first autonomous store in the UK outside of London of any British retailer – a huge milestone that reflects Tesco’s commitment to innovation all around the UK.

The ‘University’ store is adjacent to the Aston University campus in the city center, making it a high-traffic location, filled with tech-savvy students and academics looking to fulfill their on-the-go shopping needs. This store stands out from other GetGo stores, as it will be the largest store so far at over 4,000 square feet. The location has another distinct quality, its largely student demographic who shop at the store poses a unique use case for autonomous store technology – the seasonal shopper. These features, alongside the store’s hybrid format, make it a classic application of autonomous store technology.

Perfecting autonomous store deployment

The University location is the final installment of Tesco’s announced three-store deployment throughout the UK. The defining feature of these additional stores is rooted in one of Tesco’s core values – the customer is at the center. Tesco built upon its the years of experience from its previous Trigo-powered autonomous stores and user research and testing to identify more ways to leverage computer vision technology and create an even better shopping experience.

In line with the previous stores in this multi-store deployment, the University location will also support the entire Tesco product line and the latest innovation in Trigo’s frictionless checkout solution – customers will only need to scan their Tesco app at the exit gate when they finish shopping, as opposed to at both the entry and exit gates.

The launch of the final installment of this multi-store deployment is also a reflection of Tesco and Trigo’s strong collaboration and experience working together, setting a high bar for scale and process. Together, we were able to seamlessly deploy multiple stores across different regions and customer profiles, in parallel, paving the way for more innovation to come.