Hybrid checkout-free discount store in Central Munich

Bohemian past, metropolitan present

The Schwabing West neighborhood in Munich is synonymous with the former heart of the city’s bohemian quarter. A home to avant-garde poets, painters and writers in the late 19th century, its residents are now some of Germany’s wealthiest elite or students at the prestigious Ludwigs-Maximilians University of Munich and Munich University of Applied Sciences.

While the neighborhood has some remnants of its creative and colorful past, it has transformed into a more upscale, residential neighborhood. Between its close proximity to Munich’s central square and the famous Englischer Garten (English Garden), Schwabing West has become one of the most sought-after neighborhoods in Germany.

A classic retrofit

After careful consideration, the Schwabing West location was chosen because it serves a large population of university students who live in the neighborhood. Students and young people are oftentimes early adopters of new technologies, especially if they are convenient and can be easily accessed by their smartphones.

Trigo-powered hybrid supermarket. Credit: Stefan Hobmaier.

This Trigo-powered Netto City supermarket boasts 3,500 SKUs in a 220 square meter space and will provide a hybrid checkout-free experience for shoppers. Netto opted for a hybrid checkout-free store in order to best fit the neighborhood’s personality. In addition to a vibrant student community, the store is a staple for local residents who have been shopping at this location for years. Netto is equally committed to innovation and to their shoppers, so it was essential that they provide an option for less tech-savvy clientele.

The store is also a model example of a retrofit, as the unique discount shopping experience was maintained after its transformation into a hybrid checkout-free store. One of the defining characteristics of Netto’s stores is that customers rely on Netto as their go-to supermarket for bulk shopping, such as buying by the case. 

This also applies to age-restricted items such as beer, which are often bought by the case in Munich, home to Germany’s famous Oktoberfest. Netto and Trigo worked together to ensure that buying age-restricted items was as frictionless as possible, so they decided that in order to use Netto’s frictionless checkout app, you must be 18+ years of age. Before the first time a shopper enters the store via the app, their age will be verified by a store colleague and they are set up for future visits.

Working with Netto

Netto’s leadership are visionaries for innovation and user experience – always searching for ways to improve and meet shoppers’ unique needs. They were proactive in finding a solution for frictionless checkout and were one of the earliest adopters of the technology after rigorously vetting other solutions and choosing Trigo, becoming one of our earliest retail partners.

Christina Stylianou, spokesperson of Netto Marken-Discount, says about the store opening, “We are excited and proud to be the first to retrofit a discount store to a hybrid checkout-free store. The most important thing for us during this process was to make sure we didn’t have to change anything in the store and the collaboration between our project management and Trigo’s hardware and tech teams helped make this happen. Together we found solutions to Netto’s unique offerings, such as buying unpacked bakery products, making sure our customers enjoy the shopping experience they know and love – but improved by this technological innovation.”

From the beginning, Netto believed in Trigo and the technology, and has been completely committed to its implementation. This included designing and developing an app specifically to deliver the solution to shoppers. We also worked closely together to develop use-cases that were specific to Netto, which pushed our technology to new limits.

Trigo-powered hybrid-checkout-free experience, in central Munich. Credit: Stefan Hobmaier.

“Opening this store with Netto marks a significant shift in the product capabilities of Trigo, because until now, our main customer base was the on-the-go shopper,” says Erez Arbel, Trigo’s VP Product. “They have served as a key strategic design partner from the start, enabling us to stretch our technological capabilities to support shoppers  with different shopping habits and larger basket sizes. Netto’s continued forward thinking as leaders in discount grocery retail will serve as an example for other retailers and drive innovation in the category.”