There has been a renewed national interest with restaurant/retail brands offering contactless pickup solutions. The buzzworthy Brooklyn Dumpling Shop franchise, as well as the new dining brand Automat Kitchen, are both reviving the temperature-controlled automated vending machine “automat” trend, a food purchasing concept, with or without dining room space, that had been popular in urban Northeast locales until the mid-1970s. Additionally, Jewel-Osco is introducing a separate automated pickup kiosk concept in some of its parking lots, which will also allow for contactless hot and cold food items.
Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, a new 24-hour automat locker food pickup concept, will open its first franchised unit in NYC by the end of this month and expects to open between 50 and 70 new units per year over next three years. National expansion is anticipated, especially with the help of the franchise development company, Fransmart. Growth will begin in the Northeast, with the Tri-State area seeing approximately 20 new units per year over the next three years. A unit will open in The World Trade Center Oculus Transportation Hub, operated by Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield, by the end of the year and more mall sites are anticipated. Preferred markets for growth are high-volume metropolitan cities, as well as university campuses and towns. Look for street-front retail, malls, airports, university centers, transportation center hubs and the ground floor of mixeduse developments to be targeted for units that are between 500 and 1,000-s.f. Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is also seeking spaces in parking lots of big-box anchored power centers for its five-car, drive-thru ordering port, in which its automat can be positioned horizontal to a building.
The Brooklyn Dumpling Shop automat concept originated as an offshoot from the full service Brooklyn Chop House restaurant, which had high sales for its dumpling appetizers. The automat configuration for the franchise concept can include a window to view the dumpling-making automated machine, developed from Miso Robotics technology, which can produce up to 32 unique dumpling fusion flavors, such as bacon cheeseburger and French onion soup. Cold beverages can also be purchased. The customer can order on his or her phone or through a touchless kiosk. When a text notification is received indicating that the order is ready, the customer then scans a barcode to open the temperature-controlled locker that houses either hot food or cold drinks.
Another related automat concept is Automat Kitchen, which opened its sole unit in January at a 1,900-s.f. space on the ground floor of a mixed-use building that connects to Simon Property Group’s Newport Centre mall in Jersey City, N.J., near a high-traffic light-rail train line. Automat Kitchen has more modest growth plans, expecting up to three more units by the end of 2022. Beyond that the brand hopes for further expansion, potentially due to a possible agreement with Compass Group, which manages businesses looking to enter college and airport spaces. New markets for the brand’s expansion include lower rent areas in New Jersey, as well as possibly Philadelphia and Orlando, Fla.
Ideal space would be ground-floor units in urban cores near major foot traffic, including in office parks, as well as at major highway stop destinations. The Automat Kitchen concept allows pre-ordering via its website, app, an onsite touchscreen kiosk or a QR code scan. The kitchen staff then prepares the meal fresh in a kitchen behind the wall of heated or cooled lockers. The prepared meal is then placed in the appropriate lockers, with a text sent to inform the customer that touchless pickup is ready, through the cell phone scan. Automat Kitchen, whose sole unit provides limited indoor seating, hired a professional chef to develop the menu, which includes items such as curry pot roast, salmon with broccoli, and even dessert choices such as cinnamon beignets.
In January, a Jewel-Osco grocery store in Chicago debuted its new “Kiosk PickUp” locker concept that utilizes the 215-s.f. “Cleveron 501” standalone unit placed outside of the store and developed by Cleveron, a robotic pickup locker manufacturer. This provides a totally contactless pickup experience in which a customer is given a two-hour window to retrieve a grocery order through a QR scan. After approaching the window of the unit, the robotic technology allows items from two different temperature zones, regular and deep freeze, to be collected and delivered to the front window for pickup. A second Kiosk PickUp locker unit is expected in another Jewel-Osco in Chicago, and up to three more potential units will open in Safeway grocery stores in Northern California by the end of the year.
