Blockstore Group - On a Path to Autonomous Grocery Store Operations

On a Path to Autonomous Grocery Store Operations

Henna Hynynen, Head of Finance, Partnerships & Marketing, at Blockstore Group, shares her company’s vision of 24/7 autonomous and automated grocery stores across Europe.

Click to watch the Blockstore video

Juha Maijala CTO Head of Finance, Partnerships & Marketing

4 CEO

Jussi Nummela

Henna Hynynen

Sanna Mäenpää Head of Operations

lockstore Group is a technology start-up from Finland that offers autonomous and automated grocery store infrastructure and services. Founded in 2020, it works with grocery retailers in supporting them to open up autonomous and automated grocery stores.

Henna Hynynen is Head of Finance, Partnerships & Marketing at Blockstore Group, and responsible for supporting and managing the company’s growth initiatives in the name of expansion and results. Henna explains, “Our aim is to understand the customer, their challenges and pain points, to help them create a better world for everyone. Smaller supermarkets find it hard to profit if they are brought closer to the consumer in traditional ways. With the help of technology, we can support them to bring their stores closer to the customer in an autonomous and automated way, combining online channel to in-store services, along with different delivery methods.”

Henna says Blockstore Group is founded on the principle of looking beyond the store itself to create autonomous grocery stores with automated operations. She continues, “We provide the technology infrastructure with redesigned key business processes. Even though we are a technology

company, technology is just one piece of the puzzle in our solution. Focusing on the operations is equally important to make the concept work and capture all the business benefits.”

So, what value does Blockstore Group bring to the grocer? Henna answers, “Our solution offers efficiencies across

other players are not offering this type of complete solution in the market. For a grocer opening up autonomous and automated smart grocery stores, our technology infrastructure enables extraordinary capabilities. Our smart stores can monitor and report on their own condition, generating previously unavailable insights into the performance of the store. Grocery operations can be controlled and managed through remote access, providing the ability to customise each store. Through the combination of monitoring data and remote control capabilities, new opportunities for optimisation are created for the grocer.”

the end-to-end value chain, and this is what makes us so unique. Our cloudbased technology platform reaches all the way to key business capabilities, such as supply chain, for example, and then we can provide real-time data of the automated operations. This is a differentiating factor because

Blockstore Group plans to further develop its solution, applying more artificial intelligence and machine learning, so grocers can benefit from algorithms to substantially improve store operations. In turn, this will lead to greater autonomy, as the stores learn to adapt to the new environment. Henna continues, “The business capabilities available in our solution include automatic inventory management through real-time itemlevel tracking of goods. We can see real-time capacity levels of goods at both the store and the warehouse, as well as the best-before dates of each item. This gives opportunities to apply dynamic pricing remotely, for example. We have automated grocery store replenishment systems, so our smart stores are able to analyse themselves when products are running low, sending orders

“We have automated grocery store replenishment systems, so our smart stores are able to analyse themselves when products are running low”

independently to the warehouse for their replenishment needs. No humans are therefore needed in the ordering process.”

In the near future, Blockstore Group will be looking at developing robotics to handle the RFID tagging operations of multiple SKUs and the different types of products, ready for when volumes increase. Robotics will be the most efficient way for grocery tagging

operations. Henna adds, “The visibility of the exact number of goods, the remaining shelf life of each item and knowledge of the delivery frequencies, together with automated operations, support grocers to become more sustainable and increase productivity and profits. This is what we provide today to our customers.”

Henna says innovation and technology will play a key role

in helping to grow and scale the business. She explains, “Innovation is a huge part of what we do because we are turning an idea into a solution that gives value to our customers. We always need to stay on top of the emerging technologies, but knowing the customer is the strongest competitive advantage we can have in any market because it opens up the opportunity to create better value. In my job, I need to understand the

customer’s environment to have a strong value proposition and business model, so I focus a lot on having a good understanding of market analysis, competitive analysis, global market conditions and key trends. In this way, we are able to support our customers in bringing the best business benefits they expect from autonomous and automated grocery stores.”

According to Henna, building a strong team of people alongside the technology side is crucial to be successful. She continues, “When you look at the research on why start-ups don’t make it, the wrong team is often among the top reasons. Scaling a start-up requires a huge set of skills, and one person cannot have them all. Our core team consists of four people, and we each bring a different skillset and experiences to the table. As a team, we understand each other’s motivators and stressors. Some of us are more dynamic and fast-paced, while others are more thoughtful or people-focused. In the end, I do believe we have an all-star team. We all have the desire to make things happen. It is not just about having a vision; you need to be able to execute it. We have also built a solid network of different stakeholders because we believe relationships play an important role in our success.”

Henna reflects on the company culture at Blockstore Group. She says, “Our culture echoes the personalities and passions of our team members. In smaller companies, the individual

contributions of the team are more impactful. Our purpose is to challenge the status quo and relentlessly pursue opportunities to build a profitable company that creates long-term value for its customers, end users, partners and investors. To succeed, we need to have a growth mindset. I am inspired by the success of others, and we all value open communication, treating others with kindness and respect. We have a flat hierarchy, so we are very adaptable to changing situations.

We find it crucial to nurture a space in which we feel comfortable to think differently and are encouraged not to limit ourselves.”

It would be almost impossible for a small start-up to create a groundbreaking grocery store solution without having the right partners on board. Henna continues, “We partner with companies that think the way we think, but offer something different to our solution to make it more complete. These partnerships bring

our full end-to-end solution alive. In the future, we will work together to bring additional capabilities and features to our solution. Our partners are also willing to co-develop step after step, so the pace is continuous. When we enter different markets, we look at finding new partners to support us in having a faster market entry. We have started offering our solution in Europe, so we need to have a strong partner network throughout it. After that, our plans are to go global, especially into North America.”

Beontag and BLEAM are two such partners that play very important roles in Blockstore Group’s solution offering. Henna explains, “We use Beontag RFID tags to uniquely identify each piece of the merchandise. Once items are received at the store, they can be placed in the cabinets that display the goods for sale, which shoppers then access. These RFID tags make it possible to identify all items automatically and reliably in

“Beontag’s solution has proven to be the best for grocery stores, bringing more benefits than any other technology on the market. We have therefore chosen RFID to be one of the core technologies in Blockstore Group’s solutions”

ESG enabler for the value chain

The ECO Tag reduces CO2 emissions by more than half compared to standard RFID tags, making it an excellent and valuable ESG ally for companies that have climate-related goals.

Barbara Dunin Beontag’s Marketing & ESG Director

The ECO RFID tag is a sustainable product with an exclusive and unique technology developed by Beontag in Finland. It is an excellent choice for companies that aim to invest in sustainability combined with high-quality and cutting-edge technology.

Juha Ikonen Beontag’s Head of R&D Digital Transformation Enabler

Digital transformation in the most sutainable way

ECO is the sustainable choice for the main RFID applications

Frictionless payments for automated retail

real time throughout the entire endto-end value chain, from warehouse to store, enabling real autonomous operations. Beontag’s solution has proven to be the best for grocery stores, bringing more benefits than any other technology on the market. We have therefore chosen RFID to be one of the core technologies in Blockstore Group’s solutions.”

Beontag has been a global pioneer in developing sustainable RFID tags that are plastic-free and made with eco-friendly manufacturing processes. Henna adds, “Given their sustainability commitments, Beontag are a natural partner for us. Sustainability plays a big role in today’s grocery business, as we move from manual to digital processes. Beontag has achieved remarkable results around this essential topic.”

Blockstore Group continuously deals with payment systems, whether it’s with customers’ existing solutions or in creating Blockstore-enabled payment methods. This is where BLEAM comes in. Henna explains, “BLEAM is an internationallyrecognised expert in utilising and developing the latest payment technologies and integrations for pursuing the most frictionless payment process for consumers. In addition, BLEAM provides a trusted backbone for our software development roadmap, as their expertise covers all bases, and they play a very important role in our modern walk-in-walk-out self-service shopping experience.”

An alternative to traditional customer aquiring and payment processing

“BLEAM provides a trusted backbone for our software development roadmap, as their expertise covers all bases”

STEP 1

Walk in

All consumers can enter the grocery store 24/7, using their registered smartphone app or showing their credit/debit card at the payment terminal to start shopping.

STEP 2

Shop

Once the payment method has been accepted, character recognition technology and sensor systems are used to understand which cabinets need to be opened, when and to whom. When the consumer places their hand on the intelligent cabinet door handle, it instantly unlocks itself, enabling the customer to select their items.

STEP 3

Walk out

Once the person has finished their shopping, they can leave the shop and payment is automatically taken. A receipt of the shopping is available in the app or it can be printed at the payment terminal.

Blockstore Group’s future plans include delivering the first white label customer stores and preparing to scale the business across Europe and North America. Henna explains, “As we open up our first customer stores, we need to start accelerating and further developing the technology to be better fitted to even bigger supermarkets. At the same time,

we need to be able to improve our cost efficiency from both the consumer and retailer perspective. Understanding how we can make the process even easier, faster and smoother for the consumer is always at the forefront of our mind. We want to strengthen our capabilities in combining traditional bricks and mortar stores with great online

Henna describes the walk-in-walk-out shopping process as encompassing three steps.

capabilities, along with the different delivery methods such as click and collect, home delivery, or instant versus scheduled delivery. Having a strong omnichannel offering that works seamlessly across the different channels is clearly defined in our roadmap.”

The ultimate goal for Henna and her team is to create long-term value for all stakeholders. Henna says, “Our growth strategy expands beyond financial metrics to encompass

human, social and environmental values. We are at the forefront of the change, so it is important to stay curious and not to limit ourselves. Our promise to our customers and partners is to be the experts in autonomous grocery stores and their future opportunities. To succeed, we need to continuously improve the concept and design, building on the facts and exploring new technologies. The solution that we offer today is a strong foundation for autonomous and automated grocery stores.

“Step by step, we are improving it by introducing new functionalities and capabilities to be the number one choice in the eyes of our customers in the long term.”

As a final point, Henna highlights the importance of sustainability, which is at the core of what Blockstore Group is all about. She concludes, “Sustainability has been in our DNA since we were founded. I am proud of how our solution supports grocers in their sustainability efforts. We

work hard to continuously improve our solution to be more sustainable through research and testing new innovations. Our solution brings the right products at the right time to the right place, making processes more efficient and strengthening communities store by store. It has opened up a whole world of opportunities.”

For further information on Blockstore Group, visit www.blockstoregroup.com

“Our solution brings the right products at the right time to the right place, making processes more efficient and strengthening communities store by store. It has opened up a whole world of opportunities”

www.blockstoregroup.com