Saudi Arabia ON THE WAY: How AI Unmanned Retail Brings Convenience to Events and High-Traffic Venues

Customer Requirements

In Saudi Arabia’s fast-growing event and venue economy, convenience retail is no longer just about having products available. It is about serving people at the exact moment they need something.

At exhibitions, pop-up events, entertainment venues, office buildings, and other high-traffic locations, visitors often want a bottle of water, a snack, a cold drink, or daily essentials within seconds. However, traditional convenience stores still depend heavily on cashiers, fixed opening hours, manual checkout, and high staffing costs.

For ON THE WAY, the goal was clear: build a smarter and more flexible retail format that could be quickly deployed, easily operated, and attractive to modern consumers.

The store needed to solve several key challenges:

1. Fast service during peak traffic
   Customers should be able to enter, pick up products, and leave without waiting in line.
2. Lower labor dependency
   The store should reduce the need for on-site cashier staff, especially during events or extended operating hours.
3. Flexible deployment
   The format should work not only as a fixed store, but also as a pop-up retail solution for exhibitions, venues, campuses, business parks, and temporary event spaces.
4. A more engaging retail experience
   The store should feel modern, digital, and memorable, giving visitors a new way to interact with convenience retail.

This is where ON THE WAY partnered with Cloudpick to bring an AI-powered unmanned store to life.

Cloudpick Solution

Cloudpick provided ON THE WAY with a full AI unmanned retail solution that combines computer vision, smart sensing, automated checkout, and real-time backend management.

Customers can enter the store, pick up the products they want, and walk out. There is no cashier, no manual scanning, and no traditional checkout counter. Behind the scenes, Cloudpick’s AI vision system automatically recognizes the items taken and completes the transaction through a digital payment process.

The result is a smooth grab-and-go journey:

Scan or verify to enter
Customers access the store through a simple digital entry process.

Pick products freely
Drinks, snacks, packaged food, and daily essentials can be selected directly from the shelves.

Walk out naturally
Customers leave the store without waiting for checkout.

AI recognition and automatic settlement
Cloudpick’s system identifies the selected items and completes the order automatically.

This allows ON THE WAY to create a retail experience that feels fast, intuitive, and future-facing.

For event scenarios, this model is especially valuable. During short periods of intense customer flow, traditional retail often struggles with queues, limited staff, and slow service. With Cloudpick’s unmanned store, the shopping process becomes much lighter. Customers do not need to pause their event experience, and operators can continue serving demand with fewer manual touchpoints.

The ON THE WAY store also functions as a powerful brand showcase. Its visual identity, bilingual signage, digital access, and compact layout make it suitable for Saudi Arabia’s dynamic commercial environments, from exhibitions and conferences to hospitality and entertainment venues.

Video

To see the ON THE WAY unmanned store in action, watch the video below:

YouTube:
https://youtu.be/jBN-qrhWbhE?si=lMyB11vmARZNm5uv