What’s more convenient than a convenience store that can come to you?

Above all else, a convenience store has to be convenient, and a key part of convenience is location. But what if there’s a potential customer base that’d like to have a convenience store nearby, but there’s no available spot to build one?

That was the problem that Japan’s Family Mart was pondering, and they came up with a very innovative solution by building a convenience store that can be towed around by a car and parked wherever it needs to be.

This isn’t just a trailer with a bunch of cups of instant ramen and lukewarm bottles of green tea tossed inside, either. This mobile convenience store, which opened on Monday, is stocked with roughly 280 different products, including refrigerated and frozen items, with power coming from the solar panels the trailer’s roof and exterior walls are equipped with. The store is completely unmanned, with an automated system that turns its interior air conditioning on or off as needed to maintain a proper temperature for shelf items. Customers check themselves out and pay for their items with a pair of self-service cashless payment registers.

▼ The shop is 6.06 meters (20 feet) long by 2.44 meters wide.

▼ Self-check-out registers

The design, which Family Mart refers to as a “towable off-grid mobile house,” was developed in partnership with Hitachi and Japanese architecture/construction firm Takenaka. For its fist base of operations, the mobile shop, designated the Family Mart Maishima/N Branch, has been parked in Osaka, at the construction site of facilities for the upcoming Expo 2025 world’s fair. Due to the project’s scale, construction workers can’t just run across the street to pick up lunch, and as they complete one section and move on to the next, Family Mart can simply hook the trailer up to a truck again and tow it to wherever the construction crew will be spending the next few days, weeks, or months.

For now, Family Mart just has the one mobile branch, but if everything runs smoothly we could see the idea expanded to other temporary locations like entertainment event venues and disaster-stricken areas where existing stores have been forced to temporarily close due to sustained damage.

Source, images: Family Mart
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