Need to Know
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London – The bespoke diamond jeweller is placing the customer centre-stage at its new boutique housed within Selfridges department store London.

With glass walls providing passers-by with a clear view into the space, customers are encouraged to directly participate in the creation of a piece of diamond jewellery, with VASHI allowing them to be involved from the initial design of a piece, through to the diamond selection and stone setting. Jewellery workbenches are positioned in the centre of the boutique to give customers insight into how a diamond ring is made, while display units allow them to explore various styles, finishes and metals and hand-pick loose diamonds. VASHI craftsmen, known as Alchemists, will be on site to make pieces or live or undertake resizing of jewellery for customers to take away.

This open approach to fine jewellery retail comes at a time when luxury brands are exploring concepts focused on exploration and personalisation, as exemplified by Tiffany & Co.’s recently-opened Covent Garden boutique in London, which features an on-the-spot jewellery engraving and leather embossing bar.

US – The Applestone Meat Company has debuted several vending machines around upstate New York, each filled with a variety of meat choices including beef, pork, lamb, as well as sausages.

The company launched the venture in an effort to increase accessibility of high-quality meat for busy city-dwellers. Utilising existing machines that have been retrofitted for meat vending, each has enough room to house individually-packaged cuts of meat, while storing them at safe temperatures for up to seven days in the case of steak.

Josh Applestone, founder of the Applestone Meat Company, says the machines were created in response to modern living. ‘We’re not in the 1950s anymore, where everyone works 9 to 5 and eats at the same time every night, he explains in an interview with Bloomberg. ‘Life is chaotic at best.’

Applestone hopes that by providing 24/7 access to high-quality meat, the company can bring greater convenience to the lives of time-pressed consumers.

To discover how selling spaces are evolving from traditional grocery stores to micro-retail, explore our recent trend.

San Francisco – Tech start-up Zippin has launched a new automated grocery store to demonstrate how major brands could create seamless shopping experiences for their customers.

Situated in San Francisco’s SOMA neighbourhood, the concept store uses artificial intelligence, machine learning and visual cognition technology to enable consumers to shop without manually checking out. Echoing AmazonGo, Zippin’s software-as-a-service technology is designed as a white label product for grocery and convenience retailers to brand as their own.

‘With Zippin, traditional retailers can now compete against e-commerce companies, which until now have had the advantage of leveraging a host of key data about their customers,’ says Krishna Motukuri, CEO and co-founder of Zippin.

With greater demand for convenience, a new generation of stores are facilitating automated commerce for time-pressed consumers. As a result, Zippindescribes its use-cases as infinite, noting that airport retail, hotel lobbies and gas stations are other future spaces where its just-walk-out software could be used.

According to a recent survey by marketing and consultancy firms Acosta and Technomic, most Americans are indecisive about their evening meal choices leading to many choosing convenience foods from restaurants, takeaways or prepared meal kits.

In the three months leading up to the survey, 51% of US diners and 77% of Millennials reported ordering food for home delivery. And yet, health remains an important factor for most, with almost half of Millennials and those with families stating they opt for healthier options when ordering from a restaurant or delivery menu.

For more, read our Eating In and Dining Out Market.