Pan-Asia online grocery and food delivery company, honestbee, yesterday (16 October) unveiled the world's first fully-integrated online-to-offline (O2O) shopping-and-dining experience in Singapore: habitat by honestbee.
Spanning 60,000ft2, habitat by honestbee is a supermarket, speciality grocer, online fulfilment centre, retail innovation hub and dining destination all in one, the firm said.
The O2O store offers two world firsts: a cashless checkout experience (AutoCheckout) and robotic collection point (RoboCollect), where loaded trolleys can be scanned, packed, paid for and ready for collection in under five minutes. It also offers shoppers an on-the-spot ‘Scan & Go’ service for purchases of ten items or less.
Meanwhile, customers can order from habitat's food counters for dine-in, take-away and home delivery, while online grocery orders are fulfilled by ‘shopper bees’ using overhead conveyor belts before ‘driver bees’ pick them up for one-hour time-belt deliveries within the day.
To enter and use the centre, customers must download the honestbee app, which is linked to either their credit card or honestbee's mobile payments service, beePay.
Honestbee CEO and founder Joel Sng dubbed habitat at honestbee, “NewGen Retail: an innovation in retail technology which inspires more human engagement”, and said his firm plans to launch the concept in other countries “soon”.
'We are excited to bring this NewGen Retail concept from Singapore to our other markets (Hong Kong, Taiwan, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan) and beyond,” he said. “Guided by our passion for food and technology, we will continue to innovate in O2O solutions to enhance the quality and value of our products and retail experiences.'
Commenting on the store launch, habitat by honestbee VP and managing director Pauline Png said: 'habitat by honestbee is a beautiful, physical extension of the honestbee brand we all love. With its launch, we now provide tech-enabled convenience, value and quality through food, online and offline. We designed it so that customers can get their groceries and meals efficiently, but also linger and enjoy the experience.'
