Colruyt Group opens autonomous pop-up shop with plant-based products

In a high-tech pop-up store on the campus of the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Okay, Colruyt Group‘s neighborhood store chain, offers exclusively plant-based products. Next year, the pop-up will tour Belgium.

Hands-free shopping

The “Easy Switch” pop-up shop builds on the well-known technology of the Okay Direct autonomous stores that Colruyt Group opened in Ghent. The internally developed concept uses smart (refrigerated) cabinets and camera surveillance: customers can enter the store with their bank card and register at a kiosk.

The innovative camera technology follows the customer through the store, automatically opening the cabinets. The system registers the selected products and generates a correct receipt at the end of the visit. A new feature is that customers now have their hands free at all times: in a classic Okay Direct, you still have to scan a QR code at each cabinet.

Easy switching

The autonomous store sells a range of 150 exclusively plant-based products in an 18 m² space. In this way, Okay wants to further realize its ambitions around the Green Deal protein shift, which the VUB has also signed: the goal is a ratio of 60% plant-based and 40% animal-based proteins by 2030. Hence the name: the retailer wants to show how easy it is to switch to a more plant-based diet.

Okay is organizing various cooking workshops and tastings in the temporary store, which will remain open until December 12. In 2026, the pop-up shop will travel throughout Belgium.