Japan Yamanashi Café: Creating Japan’s First Walk-Through Unmanned Store Integrated with a Café

Customer Requirements

Regional retail is entering a new stage of transformation.

In local cities and community spaces, customers want convenient access to food, drinks, local products, and everyday items without waiting in line or depending entirely on staffed checkout. At the same time, many regional retail operators are facing labor shortages and need more flexible ways to provide service.

In Yamanashi Prefecture, Alps and Cloudpick launched a new Walk-Through unmanned store inside Open Café Marugoto Yamanashi, a facility near Kofu Station. The store opened on July 10, 2024, and was introduced as Japan’s first-ever unmanned store integrated with a café.

The project was designed not only to create a convenient shopping point, but also to show how AI and IoT technology can support regional retail innovation.

The store needed to address several key needs:

1. A smoother café retail experience
   Customers should be able to buy food, beverages, souvenirs, and local products without waiting at a cashier counter.
2. A new retail format for regional facilities
   The store needed to fit naturally inside a café environment, rather than feeling like a separate vending machine corner.
3. Labor-saving operation
   The unmanned model needed to help reduce the pressure caused by labor shortages while maintaining a reliable customer experience.
4. Support for different product temperatures
   The store needed to support ambient, chilled, and frozen products, making it suitable for food and beverage retail.
5. A practical model for future regional deployment
   The project needed to become a reference for other retail spaces facing similar staffing and operational challenges.

To meet these goals, Alps introduced Cloudpick’s Walk-Through unmanned retail technology inside Open Café Marugoto Yamanashi.

Cloudpick Solution

Cloudpick provided the AI-powered Walk-Through unmanned retail system behind the store, combining AI image recognition, smart sensing, access control, automated checkout, and digital backend management.

The customer journey is designed to be simple:

Register through LINE
Customers add the store’s official LINE account and register a credit card through the mini program.

Scan to enter
Customers use a QR code to enter the unmanned store area.

Pick products freely
Inside the store, customers can browse shelves and select food, beverages, chilled items, frozen products, souvenirs, and local specialty goods.

Walk out naturally
After choosing the products they need, customers simply leave the store.

Automatic recognition and settlement
Cloudpick’s AI image recognition system identifies shopping behavior and supports automatic checkout after the customer exits.

This creates a true cashier-free Walk-Through shopping experience.

The most distinctive part of the Yamanashi project is its café integration. Instead of operating as a standalone unmanned convenience store, the store becomes part of a broader café and local experience space. Customers can enjoy the atmosphere of Open Café Marugoto Yamanashi while also accessing a smarter, more flexible retail service.

The store also supports Yamanashi’s regional identity. Open Café Marugoto Yamanashi was created to communicate the appeal of the region, including agriculture, food culture, local crafts, water resources, and local alcoholic beverages. By combining this regional showcase with AI-powered retail, the project turns local products into a more accessible, digital, and modern shopping experience.

For operators, Cloudpick’s backend system helps turn the store into a data-driven retail unit. Product movement, sales records, inventory status, and operational insights can be managed digitally, supporting smarter replenishment and future store optimization.

Result

The Yamanashi Café Walk-Through unmanned store demonstrates how AI-powered retail can support both convenience and regional innovation.

For customers, the value is immediate. They can enter the store, choose products freely, and leave without waiting in a checkout line. The process feels simple, fast, and natural.

For café and facility operators, the benefits are broader:

1. A cashier-free shopping experience
   The Walk-Through model removes traditional checkout friction and makes small purchases easier.
2. Better integration with café spaces
   The store works naturally inside a café environment, creating a new hybrid model of hospitality and retail.
3. Support for food and beverage categories
   The store can carry ambient, chilled, and frozen products, making it suitable for broader food retail scenarios.
4. Lower labor pressure
   AI recognition and automated checkout reduce repetitive cashier work and help address staffing challenges.
5. Regional product promotion
   The store can support local food, beverages, souvenirs, and specialty products, helping customers discover the charm of Yamanashi.
6. A replicable model for future retail scenes
   The concept can be applied to cafés, tourist facilities, hotels, public buildings, roadside stations, campuses, offices, and other locations facing labor shortage and service efficiency challenges.

Most importantly, the project shows that unmanned retail does not have to feel cold or mechanical. When integrated with a café and local product experience, it can become warm, regional, and human-centered, a small retail lantern glowing inside everyday community life.

By working with Alps, Cloudpick helped create a new retail format in Yamanashi: a café-integrated Walk-Through unmanned store that combines local charm, AI technology, and cashier-free convenience in one compact space.

Customer Testimonial

A representative from the project said:

“Regional retail needs to be more flexible, more efficient, and more connected to local value. With Cloudpick’s Walk-Through unmanned store technology, we are able to create a new shopping experience inside Open Café Marugoto Yamanashi, allowing customers to pick products and leave without cashier checkout. This project shows how AI and IoT can support labor-saving operation, regional product promotion, and future retail innovation.”