Case · Our own store
We opened the first store
ourselves.
Before selling this to anyone, we built it for ourselves. UP MARKET opened in Teatinos in March 2023 and has run 24 hours a day since. Everything we say elsewhere on this site comes from operating it, not from a brochure.
6
weeks to deploy
24 h
open, every day
25
cameras in the shop
2023
opened, March
No cashiers is not no staff
Worth clearing up, because it always gets misread. There are people at UP MARKET: they restock, help first-time visitors, sort out whatever jams and handle maintenance. What there is not is somebody taking payment, because there is no till to take it at.
That distinction is what changes the business. It is not about letting anyone go: it is that the shop can be open at three in the morning without paying for a night shift to sit and wait for a customer to walk in.
When El Español visited six weeks after opening, they counted two people per shift and six or seven in total including the technical team. That is still true and contradicts nothing: none of them is on a till.
You do not have to take our word
On 30 April 2023, when the shop had been open a little over forty days, El Español visited and published a report with the address, the opening hours and the figures. It has been online ever since and can be read in full.
El Español · 30 de abril de 2023
«Scan and buy, el primer súper inteligente de Málaga: “Esto no es el futuro, ya es el presente”»
The rest of the press coverage, with dates and links, is on the media page. See all
What we learned opening it
None of these four was in any plan. They came from having the shop open, and they are what we now tell anyone considering their own.
The night is not a bonus, it is the business
Intuition says nobody comes in at night and that 24-hour opening is more a talking point than a revenue source. Next door to a hospital, it turns out otherwise: there is demand at hours no competitor can serve because the shift would cost them a fortune.
The first visit needs a hand
Someone walking for the first time into a shop where they have to scan with their phone needs thirty seconds of help. If nobody gives them those seconds, they leave without buying and do not come back. The second time they need nobody. That initial hand-holding decides adoption more than any detail of the app.
Shrinkage looks little like the fear
The question everyone asks is whether people steal. With 25 cameras and identified access, the real problem turned out not to be deliberate theft: it was the half-scanned product, the item picked up and left on another shelf, and the honest mistake of someone who has not quite grasped the flow. That gets fixed with store design, not surveillance.
Six weeks is the real timeline, not the sales one
It takes six weeks from empty premises to selling, and we quote that number because we did it, not because it looks good in a proposal. What eats the time is not the software: it is fitting out the space, agreeing with suppliers and the paperwork.
Want to open yours?
The cost breakdown of a full store is published, with no email required in exchange. And if you would rather see one first, the Torremolinos shop can be visited.