German Grocer Rewe Opens Fourth Hybrid-Autonomous Store

German grocer Rewe Group has opened its largest hybrid-autonomous supermarket to date, allowing customers to shop and pay for their purchases in a traditional way or autonomously at checkout.

Trigo, an Israel-based computer vision company that builds infrastructure for cashier-less checkout and retail analytics, teamed up with Rewe to power its “just walk out” shopping experience using ceiling-mounted intelligent cameras and shelf sensors.

Opened in March in Cologne, this is Rewe’s fourth Trigo-powered Pick & Go grocery store, with others already operating in Cologne, Berlin and Munich. Last December, Trigo and Rewe opened Germany’s first fully automated supermarket.

Frictionless shopping is gaining traction as grocery giants scramble to address consumer expectations for convenience, while optimizing inventory and supply chains.

The new hybrid supermarket is Rewe’s largest in Germany, spanning around 6,400 square feet (or 600 square meters), almost twice as big as previous locations. The store also offers its most extensive range of items, compared to the other three, with around 13,000 SKUs.

“The shopping behavior of our customers is constantly changing,” Hanno Rieger, chairman of the management board of Rewe region west, said in a media release from Trigo. “The opening of the largest hybrid store in Cologne is another important milestone for us on the way to the shopping experience of tomorrow.”

Trigo specializes in “retrofitting” large supermarkets with frictionless checkout systems that allow shoppers to buy in bulk without having to pack and unpack items at the checkout line, according to the release. The experience aims to address the inefficiencies caused by long wait times in cashier lines, especially in bigger stores with more items to scan.

“Starting from 2024, we will also support the hypermarket format, meaning large supermarkets of thousands of square meters,” Trigo co-founder and CEO Michael Gabay, added. “Trigo is scaling up its store rollouts and deepening its tech offering, dominating Europe with partnerships like Rewe, Tesco, Aldi Nord and Netto, with dozens of stores in Europe under the world’s toughest data protection regulations. ... We are also making progress on reducing the cost of hardware and initial investment."