Japan Momoyama Gakuin University: Creating a New Campus Retail Experience with Campus DONKI

Customer Requirements

University campuses are high-frequency retail environments.

Students move between classrooms, libraries, clubs, sports facilities, cafeterias, and dormitories throughout the day. Their shopping needs are often small but frequent: a drink before class, a snack during a break, a quick meal between activities, or a small daily item before heading home.

At Momoyama Gakuin University in Japan, the Campus DONKI project was designed to bring Don Quijote’s energetic retail experience into campus life while making shopping faster, more flexible, and more digital.

For Don Quijote, this was not simply a smaller version of a conventional store. The goal was to create a campus-oriented retail model that could better serve young consumers and test a new type of smart store format.

The project needed to address several key needs:

1. Fast access for students
   Students need quick access to snacks, drinks, instant food, personal care items, and lifestyle products between classes and campus activities.
2. A compact campus store format
   Campus retail space is limited. The store needed to fit into a smaller footprint while still delivering Don Quijote’s colorful, high-density product experience.
3. Lower checkout friction
   Small purchases should be simple. Students should not need to wait in long checkout lines for one or two items.
4. A strong brand experience
   Campus DONKI needed to retain Don Quijote’s lively visual identity, product abundance, and sense of discovery.
5. Digital connection with young customers
   The store needed to create new user touchpoints and help the retailer better understand student consumption behavior.

To meet these goals, Campus DONKI introduced an AI-powered unmanned store model supported by Cloudpick technology.

Cloudpick Solution

Cloudpick provided the AI-powered unmanned retail technology behind Campus DONKI, combining computer vision, smart sensing, access control, automated checkout, and real-time backend management.

The customer journey is designed to be simple and intuitive:

Enter the store
Customers access the store through the entrance gate, creating a secure and trackable shopping environment.

Pick products freely
Inside the store, students can browse open shelves and refrigerated displays to choose snacks, drinks, instant food, packaged products, daily essentials, and campus lifestyle items.

Walk out naturally
After selecting products, customers leave without scanning every item manually or waiting for a cashier.

Automatic recognition and settlement
Cloudpick’s AI system identifies the selected items, generates the order, and updates transaction and inventory data automatically.

This creates a true Grab & Go shopping experience.

The Campus DONKI store keeps the visual energy of Don Quijote: colorful product signs, dense shelf displays, themed decorations, promotional boards, and a playful entrance design. At the same time, Cloudpick’s technology adds a smarter operating layer behind the experience.

Compared with vending machines, the store offers far more product variety and a richer browsing experience. Compared with traditional cashier-based campus retail, the AI-powered model reduces checkout friction and supports more efficient daily operation.

For Don Quijote, the store also becomes a digital campus touchpoint. Product movement, shopping behavior, sales data, and inventory changes can be recorded automatically, helping the retailer understand student demand and optimize product selection.

Result

The Campus DONKI project at Momoyama Gakuin University demonstrates how AI unmanned retail can create a new campus shopping model.

For students, the value is immediate. They can enter the store, pick what they need, and continue their day without unnecessary waiting. The store brings Don Quijote’s product variety closer to campus routines, making everyday shopping faster and more enjoyable.

For operators, the benefits are broader:

1. Faster campus shopping
   The Grab & Go journey reduces checkout waiting time and helps students complete small purchases more efficiently.
2. Better product variety than vending machines
   Open shelves and refrigerated displays support a broader assortment, from snacks and drinks to daily essentials and lifestyle products.
3. Efficient use of campus space
   The compact store format allows Don Quijote to enter university environments without requiring a large traditional store footprint.
4. Lower checkout dependency
   AI recognition and automated settlement reduce the need for continuous cashier operation.
5. Real-time digital operation
   Transaction records, product movement, and inventory changes can be updated automatically, supporting smarter replenishment and category planning.
6. A stronger connection with young consumers
   Campus DONKI gives Don Quijote a direct way to engage students and collect insights from a high-frequency youth market.

Most importantly, the project shows that campus retail can be both practical and experiential. It does not have to be a plain convenience corner. With the right mix of brand design, product selection, and AI technology, a campus store can become a small retail stage where convenience, discovery, and digital operation meet.

By working with Cloudpick, Campus DONKI at Momoyama Gakuin University creates a replicable model for smart campus retail in Japan: compact, colorful, efficient, and closely connected to student life.

Customer Testimonial

A representative from the project said:

“Campus retail needs to be fast, flexible, and attractive to young consumers. With Cloudpick’s AI-powered unmanned store technology, Campus DONKI brings Don Quijote’s product variety and energetic shopping experience into the university environment while making checkout smoother and operations more efficient. This project provides a valuable model for future campus retail innovation.”