The first black-owned autonomous store in the world is officially open! The Nourish + Bloom Market opened last week with two special events bringing families healthy and accessible options! Jilea and Jamie Hemmings, thank you for innovating the shopping experience and making healthy food convenient and affordable for the community!
Amazing Technology with a Human Touch
The Town of Trilith has just become richer for a modern and easy shopping experience. The Nourish + Bloom Market combines the newest technology of autonomous indoor shopping with cool robots that deliver your food in their temperature-controlled bellies within a five-mile radius.
You can both order on the app, pick it up or have it delivered, or use the order machine at the location. The whole process is touchless, and the space sanitized, making the experience clean and germ-free. Download the app and scan it at the front door to shop around. As it is new, the technology can be a little intimidating, but the Nourish + Bloom team is right there to help you get past any challenges you may have.
“A lot of pieces had to come together for this to work successfully. It’s a huge accomplishment.” – Tessa Ashford
Opening Days at The Nourish + Bloom Market Storefront
Both opening events were packed. We managed to get into the store the second day. It is not huge, but all the products are organic. You can read the ingredients on the back. The families can buy the ingredients to cook at home or get the deli items in the store. There are all kinds of drinks, including cold and hot coffee from the Costa machine. The food is fresh and delicious, especially the grilled cheese sandwich, which is mouth-watering. All the ingredients are supernatural, and there are a lot of allergen-type foods for people with restricted diets.
The Nourish + Bloom Market supports local vendors, so they have lettuce grown a couple of miles from the location and brought in fresh every day. In addition, they offer allulose sugar in snacks to keep your diabetic reaction down, delicious non-alcoholic organic wine, an incredible variety of dairy products, and more. Also, it is open 24 hours, which means you can get fresh coffee and a healthy snack at any given time.
The Grand Opening
“No grand opening is complete without awesome public relations and coverage.” – Tessa Ashford
The town of Trilith PR team has done a wonderful job covering the opening events. They created great photos and videos and featured Nourish+ Bloom in relevant articles. There were lines in front of the store for the opening weekend. As the market concentrates on bringing affordable, healthy, and organic food to more people, they partnered with companies such as Microsoft, Hitachi, and UST that provide the technology and stemming programs to make their vision possible. IdeaPros participates in consulting and helping them figure out the next steps for this innovative store concept.
How to Have a Successful Grand Opening
Most grand openings today are virtual, so you might not have a physical storefront. But the steps are similar. First, make sure you have a press release person who will distribute your article 30 days after your launch date.
“You need the right PR team.” – Tessa Ashford
Reach out to any connections you have built early in the process, so you can get the information into the right hands to share it. Create quality photos and video content that show you are a professional and help you get picked up by media outlets. Ask people to take photos and videos and share their experiences on social media. Try to reveal just enough to get people interested before you launch and show them what they can expect. If you are doing a virtual open house, you can use Facebook rooms and draw people in that way.
Don’t forget to have fun while doing all that! You deserve it!
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