Greg's Corner

Why ‘Bodega’ won’t work

Yesterday, a new retail start-up made its splash onto the internet and you could say that it wasn’t the most auspicious of debuts. In a nutshell, the start-up called Bodega wants to put unmanned pantry boxes into places like apartment lobbies, gyms, student housing, offices, etc., so people won’t have to travel so far to get necessity items. Basically, the pantry boxes are just smart boxes that unlock with a phone app then charge your account for whatever you take. It’s like the unmanned stores Amazon are experimenting with except much smaller.

The internet in general was not happy with Bodega’s debut after an article from Fast Company said that Bodega’s founders wanted to make mom and pop corner stores, the actual bodegas, obsolete. The complaints online ranged from accusations of cultural appropriation for using the word Bodega in their name to the claims that the Bodega boxes are nothing more than glorified vending machines.

However, I think Bodega’s main drawback is that it’s largely ignoring a customer base from the bodegas they’re trying to replace. While their boxes may work in a perfect world imagined in Silicon Valley, in the real world a lot of people still use cash as their primary means of purchase, not everyone trusts or wants to use a smart phone app with their money. That’s not even taking into consideration that the boxes are not refrigerated, meaning as long as they don’t have milk and eggs people are still going to need their corner stores.