Chateraise NTU: Bringing 24/7 AI-Powered Dessert Retail to Singapore’s Campus Life

Customer Requirements

Dessert retail has a special rhythm on campus.

Students may want a cake after class, ice cream during a study break, a sweet treat after dinner, or a small dessert to share with friends late at night. Faculty and staff also need convenient access to quality snacks and refreshments during busy workdays.

At Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, Chateraise wanted to bring its Japanese dessert experience closer to campus customers in a faster, smarter, and more flexible way.

Traditional dessert stores often face several challenges in university environments:

1. Demand changes throughout the day
   Campus traffic can shift quickly between class breaks, lunch hours, evenings, weekends, and exam periods.
2. Dessert products require careful display
   Cakes, cream desserts, frozen sweets, and chilled products need reliable refrigerated display and organized product presentation.
3. Students want quick access
   Customers buying one cake, one ice cream, or one snack should not need to wait in a long checkout line.
4. Campus retail space is limited
   The store needed to fit into a compact space while still offering a wide dessert selection.
5. Service should match modern campus life
   A technology-driven university environment creates strong potential for a smarter retail format that combines convenience, automation, and digital operation.

To meet these goals, Chateraise opened Chateraise NTU inside Nanyang Technological University, powered by Cloudpick’s AI and IoT Walk-Through checkout system. The store operates 24 hours a day, giving busy students and faculty easy access to high-quality sweets at any time.

Cloudpick Solution

Cloudpick provided the AI-powered Walk-Through unmanned checkout system behind Chateraise NTU, combining computer vision, smart sensing, access control, automatic checkout, and real-time backend management.

The customer journey is designed to be simple:

Enter the store
Customers access the store through the entrance gate.

Pick desserts freely
Inside the store, customers can browse refrigerated shelves and choose cakes, pastries, ice cream, Japanese sweets, packaged desserts, and other Chateraise products.

Walk out naturally
After selecting the products they want, customers leave without scanning every item manually or waiting at a cashier counter.

Automatic recognition and settlement
Cloudpick’s AI and IoT system recognizes customer behavior and product movement, generates the order, and completes the checkout process automatically. Cloudpick’s technology supports highly accurate consumer behavior recognition, fast automatic checkout, and low-staff operation.

Compared with vending machines, Chateraise NTU offers a much richer dessert experience. Customers can browse real shelves, compare products, see packaging clearly, and enjoy the feeling of shopping in a dessert store rather than selecting from a closed machine.

Compared with traditional staffed dessert retail, the unmanned model reduces checkout friction and supports 24-hour operation, making it better suited to campus schedules.

Cloudpick’s backend system also supports real-time inventory management, purchase data analysis, traffic flow analysis, and digital signage content delivery, helping operators manage the store more efficiently.

Video

To see the Chateraise NTU AI-powered unmanned dessert store in action, watch the video below:

YouTube:
https://youtube.com/shorts/MC1q34O62Lc?feature=share

Result

Chateraise NTU demonstrates how AI-powered unmanned retail can support premium dessert categories in a university environment.

For students and faculty, the value is immediate. They can access high-quality cakes, sweets, ice cream, and desserts at any time, without waiting in a traditional checkout line. Whether it is a quick dessert after class, a late-night treat during study hours, or a small gift for friends, the store makes dessert shopping faster and more convenient.

For Chateraise and campus operators, the benefits are broader:

1. 24-hour dessert access
   The store allows students and faculty to enjoy Chateraise products at any time of day.
2. Faster small-basket shopping
   The Walk-Through model removes checkout friction for quick dessert purchases.
3. Better product variety than vending machines
   Refrigerated open shelves allow the store to display cakes, sweets, ice cream, and packaged desserts more naturally.
4. Lower operational pressure
   AI-powered automatic checkout supports unmanned or low-staff operation.
5. Real-time digital management
   Inventory control, purchase data, and traffic flow analysis help operators optimize replenishment and product planning.
6. A scalable smart campus model
   The same format can be applied to universities, office buildings, hotels, hospitals, residential communities, transport hubs, and other high-frequency locations.

Most importantly, the project shows that unmanned retail is not limited to drinks and snacks. With the right technology, store design, and cold-chain display, AI-powered retail can support premium dessert brands and create a warmer, more enjoyable shopping experience.

By working with Cloudpick, Chateraise NTU brings Japanese dessert retail into a smarter campus format: 24-hour, cashier-free, data-driven, and built for the rhythm of university life.

Customer Testimonial

A representative from the project said:

“Campus customers want convenience, but they also care about product quality and shopping experience. With Cloudpick’s AI-powered Walk-Through checkout technology, Chateraise NTU gives students and faculty 24-hour access to high-quality sweets while helping operators improve efficiency, reduce checkout friction, and manage store operations more intelligently. This project shows how smart retail can support premium dessert categories in modern campus environments.”