Milan’s Supermarket of the Future is Worth A Look

It took the 13th ranked country, by GDP, to bring the “Supermarket of the Future” to reality.

It is a store within a store and housed in the latest store of Coop Italia, the country’s largest grocery chain. The 10,800-square-foot shop holds some 6,000 products, which are all organized on interactive tables and shelves. When a customer moves to grab a specific product, relevant information such as nutritional value, presence of allergens, and waste disposal instructions are displayed on sleek screens suspended above as “augmented labels.”  

Imagine this – according to curbed.com, a wall of over 50 monitors form a gigantic screen for displaying information, all aimed at promoting more conscious and sustainable consumption.  

Shoppers can easily check out top selling products, and even recommendation for recipes and cooking suggestions. Carlo Ratti, designer, MIT professor, and author of the book, The City of Tomorrow: Sensors, Networks, Hackers, and the Future of Urban Lifeand one of the drivers behind the store says that  “In the near future, we will be able to discover everything there is to know about the apple we are looking at: the tree it grew on, the CO2 it produced, the chemical treatments it received, and its journey to the supermarket shelf.”  

It’s a store worth taking the trip to see the future of the US supermarket.