Delivery Box - digital delivery service for Salzburg

Residents of Salzburg now have a new service available. With the delivery box, customers of Interspar Lehen can have their groceries delivered to their home. For this project, Syreta delivered the touchscreen-controlled user interface including control of the barcode scanner and the openers for the delivery box compartments.

What makes the Interspar delivery box in Salzburg so interesting is the concept behind it: order online, pick in the store, collect from refrigerated compartments. In 2013, this is not a widespread model in Austria – it is a pilot project that shows where grocery retail could be heading.

For this project, syreta delivered the touchscreen user interface, including barcode-scanner control and the opener logic for the individual delivery compartments. That may sound unspectacular – but it is the decisive moment in the customer journey: the customer stands in front of the box, scans their code, the correct compartment opens. This moment has to work flawlessly, every time. We are pleased to be part of this project.

How the delivery box works

The concept is simple and at the same time technically demanding: customers order their groceries online from Interspar Lehen and choose a pickup time. The order is picked and placed in one of the delivery-box compartments. For pickup, the customer comes to the box, enters their code in the touchscreen interface — the barcode scanner captures the code, and the corresponding compartment opens automatically. No waiting in line, no fixed opening hours, no need for contact with checkout staff. For this project, syreta provides the entire software side: the touchscreen-controlled user interface, control of the barcode scanner, and the electronic control of the compartment openers — everything meshes seamlessly.

Click & Collect 2013 — a concept ahead of its time

What Interspar Lehen is implementing with the delivery box in Salzburg was still truly uncharted territory in Austria in 2013. Click & Collect — i.e., ordering online and picking up in-store — is still in its infancy at this point, and a fully automated pickup station for groceries is hardly known here. For syreta, this project is an early example that retail technology goes far beyond webshops and CMS systems — namely, where software meets physical hardware and together enables a completely new shopping experience.