After opening to much fanfare, unmanned c-store can’t stand the heat.
BingoBox, China’s self-service c-store, was forced to temporarily close its doors.
According to a report by Sixth Tones, the issues followed a week where BingoBox earned $14.7 million from investors.
Zhang Xu, a spokeswoman for BingoBox, told Sixth Tone that the store’s glass exterior hadn’t responded well to last week’s high temperatures.
Sixth Tone further reported that some guests complained the doors wouldn’t open for them.
“We will improve our cooling system and scout more suitable locations. The closed store will reopen in the coming days,” she said, adding that the store’s other Shanghai location remained open.
BingoBox will need to hurry, as competition is cropping up around it. Sinovation Ventures, a venture capital fund headed by former Google executive Kai-Fu Lee, invested 30 million yuan into F5 Future Store, one of BingoBox’s main competitors, in June, Sixth Tone reported. Meanwhile, Swedish startup Wheelys started promoting Moby, an unmanned mobile convenience store that comes rolling when summoned, in China in March. And Chinese e-commence giant Alibaba launched its unmanned Tao Café, offering coffee and a limited stock of groceries, at the Taobao Maker Festival on Friday.