Modular retail infrastructure · Switzerland
GreenServe is a 20-foot container that opens as a self-checkout store. It arrives complete, lands in a day, and works on two kinds of Swiss site that conventional retail has written off: motorway charging stops, and villages that lost their last grocery.
One container
6.06 × 2.44 m · 14.8 m²
One day on site
Two pads, one power feed, one lift
Nobody behind a counter
Scan & pay · solar roof
A fast charge takes twenty to thirty minutes. Most Swiss motorway charging sites have no shop, no coffee and nowhere to sit, so the driver waits in the car and spends nothing.
In the mountains the same gap runs in reverse. Villages that lost their last grocery still have demand, just not enough of it to carry a building, a lease and a full-time job. Residents drive down the valley for bread.
Both are places with real demand and no retail format small enough to fit it. The binding constraint is not footfall, it is fixed cost. GreenServe takes the building out of the equation and keeps the shop.
Deployment envelope
Illustrative section. The same container specification works from the Mittelland motorway network up to valley settlements above 1 400 m.
Context 01 · Motorway
Placed alongside existing fast-charging bays. The site host already owns the ground, the grid connection and the traffic. GreenServe supplies the format, the assortment and the operating standard, and the host earns from time that is currently worth nothing to them.
Context 02 · Mountain communities
Lowered onto two pads at the edge of the village. It restores basic grocery supply to communities that cannot carry a conventional store, and it can be lifted out again if the numbers do not hold. No permanent building, no permanent commitment.
Climate case
Most of GreenServe's climate contribution is avoided driving and avoided building rather than direct abatement. That is worth saying plainly, because the distinction is exactly what gets lost when small retail calls itself green.
The pilot is designed to produce this evidence rather than assert it. Each lever below carries its status: what a single unit can meter from day one, what can be calculated at the design stage, and what we do not yet have a defensible way to attribute to ourselves.
In a village with no shop, a loaf of bread is a round trip down the valley. A unit in the village removes those trips for basic supply. On current thinking this is the largest single lever, and it is legible from till data against a baseline resident survey.
Measured in pilotRefrigeration and lighting are the bulk of the unit's demand, and refrigeration load peaks with the sun. The rooftop array runs against it directly, with the balance metered to the grid.
Metered from day oneA reused container on two pads avoids the embodied carbon of a permanent structure and its foundations. A unit that stops working is relocated rather than demolished, so the material stays in use instead of becoming rubble.
Calculated at designChilled meals are where convenience retail wastes food. Shelf-level sales data sets replenishment per site rather than per region, which is the only lever that works at this size.
Calculated at designA charging site with somewhere to stand removes one of the reasons drivers give for keeping a combustion car for long journeys. We think this matters. We do not think any single site can honestly claim the emissions saved by someone else's decision to switch.
Not attributedWe would rather arrive with a number we can defend than one that looks good.
Self-checkout only. Electronic shelf labels, a terminal at the door, and payment by card or phone.
The interior is built for a five-minute visit: chilled meals and bowls on one side, drinks and snacks on the other, coffee at the end. Nothing on the site is designed to identify a customer. The camera system watches stock levels and incidents, and the layout is being specified against the revised Swiss Data Protection Act rather than retrofitted to it later.
The unit
Every unit is the same specification, so the second one costs less to build than the first and the fiftieth is a production run rather than a project.
Unit specification
Front elevation · glazed run, roof array, charger bays
The unit leaves the fabricator finished. Shelving, refrigeration, checkout and roof array are installed and tested before it ships.
On site it needs two pads, a power connection and a lift. That is a low-loader and a crane in most places, and for the villages with no road wide enough for either, a Super Puma. Switzerland already moves buildings this way. GreenServe only makes the shop light enough to be one of them.
Open when the charger is open. No opening hours to staff.
The model
GreenServe does not want to own a property portfolio. It wants to own the format.
Site hosts co-invest in the unit that stands on their own ground. GreenServe supplies the specification, the assortment, the systems and the operating standard, and takes a margin across the network. The capital intensity sits with the party that already holds the land, and the thing that compounds is the number of sites running the format.
Charging operators, municipalities and transport operators already hold the land, the connection and the traffic. They put in the site. We put in the format.
Every unit is the same build, so fabrication moves from a project to a production run and site works reduce to groundworks and a connection.
A unit that underperforms gets lifted and re-sited. No lease to break, no fit-out to write off. That changes how many sites we can afford to try.