Photo Courtesy of Nourish + Bloom
Husband and wife entrepreneurs Jamie and Jilea Hemmings are the first Black owners of an autonomous grocery store in Atlanta.
Nourish + Bloom Market, which opened in the Town at Trilith development in Fayetteville, Georgia (a suburb of Atlanta) on Jan. 21, is the world’s first Black-owned autonomous grocery store, according to founders Jamie Michael Hemmings and Jilea Hemmings.
Nourish + Bloom grocery store and cafe will offer over 1,000 locally sourced, healthy food products, including produce, meats, baked goods, dairy, and prepared meals.
According to 11Alive, the Hemmings were inspired to create their line of frozen food and, most recently, open Nourish and Bloom by their oldest son, Jabari. He was diagnosed with autism when he was two years old, and the family turned to a healthy diet to mitigate a lot of the challenges Jabari faced.
“We thought of the idea a year ago, during the pandemic, to provide a solution for customers where they wouldn’t have to wait in line or touch anything while checking out,” Jamie Hemmings told TechCrunch.
The contactless location, which will offer Trilith residents robotic delivery, is also the first autonomous grocery store to open in the South and the first store of its kind that will be open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
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Market users will download an app and enter their payment information. When they are in the store, they scan a code at the turnstile, creating the digital cart. The user can walk through the store, and a combination of 30 cameras and weighted shelves monitor and track that person’s shopping. When the user leaves the store, their payment method is charged, and they receive a receipt on the app.
“There are so many people that had come before us and paved the way,” Jilea said. “But it’s a tremendous honor, and we want to be on the forefront for what technology looks like, especially for Black and brown young children. How do we embrace and bring them into robotics, AI, and autonomous and show them this is the future? This is the way we’ll be operating moving forward.”