Enköping (Sweden) (AFP)

Do your shopping in a mobile container without staff, placed near fields in the middle of nowhere: the Swedish countryside is seeing the flourishing of supermarkets of a new kind, coming to the rescue of inhabitants neglected by local shops.

In Veckholm, a town without a city center of a few hundred inhabitants, 80 kilometers from Stockholm, the last grocery store closed over ten years ago.

And the store at the only gas station lowered the curtain a year and a half ago.

The nearest supermarket was half an hour's drive away, until the arrival in July 2020 of this 24-hour automatic grocery store, which offers several hundred items, but without a cash register on the horizon. .

“Most of us who live here really missed it,” said Giulia Ray, a local beekeeper, today.

"It's so convenient to have this in the area," she told AFP, taking advantage of her passage to supply the stalls with her honey.

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To unlock the door of the 20 m2 store, located in the middle of the fields and next to the gas station's petrol pumps, you have to draw your smartphone connected to an application.

"We come here three times a week to buy what we need," Lucas Edman, a technician visiting the region for a few weeks, told AFP.

"It's a little more expensive but that's fine with me, it's a price I can pay for not going to another store."

In a few moments, he scans his pizzas and his soda on his phone - linked to his bank account and to a national identification system (a guarantee of security against theft according to the brand) - under the eye of the unique surveillance camera.

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- Economic -

In Sweden, the number of food stores (from hypermarkets to shops to gas stations) fell from 7,169 in 1996 to 5,180 in 2020, according to official statistics.

If the number of hypermarkets has almost tripled in a quarter of a century, many rural grocery stores have disappeared, often for lack of profitability, as elsewhere in Europe.

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"In order to be able to keep the price low for the customer, we have to be able to control our operating costs, that is to say control the rent - that's why the stores are quite small", explains to AFP Daniel Lundh.

Co-founder of Lifvs, for more than two years he has opened nearly thirty such stores across rural Sweden, or in urban areas devoid of shops.

Domenica Gerlach, who keeps the Veckholm store running smoothly, only comes once a week to receive the delivery.

It manages three other stores, all installed in removable containers at will.

The mayor of Enköping, of which Veckholm is a member, has nothing but good to say about these businesses - three in total in his municipality.

And do not hide his desire to see more bloom.

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"To settle here, it's easier to take the step if you are sure to have this offer", explains Peter Book.

- Meeting place -

In one of the most digitized countries in the world, Lifvs and its competitors like AutoMat or 24Food benefit from a highly connected population: in 2019, 92% of inhabitants had a smartphone, compared to 77% in France.

Paradox of these automatic stores in the countryside, Lifvs also represents a "meeting place" for the inhabitants of Veckholm.

"We come here, we take gas, we come in to get something and maybe someone else is present and we can discuss," explains Giulia.

The Covid-19 pandemic has also highlighted the usefulness of the store, where no contact is necessary, and in which only one person is allowed for health reasons.

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"My mother lives nearby and for a year now, it's a store that she has always been able to go to, she hasn't been anywhere else, it's like a landmark for her" who is 75 years old, says Giulia.

For his part, Daniel Lundh intends from "the beginning of next year" to cross the border to open his first stores abroad.

© 2021 AFP