Coffee retailers are driving ordering innovation with digital technology. Luckin Coffee, for its part, is entering the automated retail market with the rollout of a smart unmanned coffee machine and a smart vending machine. And in other automation news, big-box retail is innovating with the help of robots. Walmart, in one case, is aiming to solidify its position as America’s biggest grocer with a robot called Alphabot. All this, Today in Data.
Data:
4,507: Number of self-operated locations of Luckin at the close of last year.
3,600: Number of Starbucks locations in China as of last August.
593: Number of new stores Luckin opened in the second quarter of last year.
56 percent: Share of Walmart’s total U.S. revenue made up of supermarket sales.
10: Number of times faster that automated grocery systems like Alphabot can reportedly pick and pack orders.