[In the picture] Ikea employs huge ‘soda vending machines’ for online orders

Need a new Ikea sofa in the dead of night? If you live in Amsterdam, that has become possible: the interior chain has installed pick-up machines as large as eight metres wide. A world first, the Swedish chain claims, with further implementation already in the pipeline.

480 orders per day

After a thorough renovation, customers in Amsterdam can collect their online orders at a number of pick-up lockers and two large pick-up machines. Belgium already had an experiment with takeaway lockers, but Amsterdam beats it in sheer size.

The pick-up machines are eight metres high and over eight metres wide. As if it were a giant soda vending machine, customers enter the code of their online order, after which the machine picks up the order and lets the customer take it home. The collection machines can dispense 480 orders per day.

Much space saved

Remarkably, Ikea can even close its 7,800 sqm external warehouse: online orders are now stored vertically (Ikea employees place the orders on a trolley at the top of the vending machines) rather than horizontally in the new cylindrical vending machines, saving a lot of space. The Amsterdam shop switched to 100 % self-scanning checkouts to free up space: that was also was used to rearrange the warehouse within the shop, eliminating the need for the extra depot.

Ikea is exploring options to implement the system in other stores as well, both in the Netherlands and abroad. A similar collection solution is being built in Belgium, which is due to open this spring.