A store which sells only bulk and fresh food, and durable containers: mesh bags, Mason jars, glass bottles.
Every container, dispenser, and display has a scale, and unlocks with a nearfield chip. Enter the store, tap phone or insert chip card, get a card.
Fill up your cart, stick the card back into the slot, get charged, done. One customer service kiosk for buying back clean containers at 80% of retail cost.
Depending on where you live, it might already (mostly) exist, minus the NFC part.
Grocery co-op in my area has a big back room of bulk goods, sells durable containers too, run by hippies and has been around for decades.
The real hurdles with selling bulk & having customers reuse containers is handling tare smoothly and getting customers to remember to bring their containers.
A store which sells only bulk and fresh food, and durable containers: mesh bags, Mason jars, glass bottles.
Every container, dispenser, and display has a scale, and unlocks with a nearfield chip. Enter the store, tap phone or insert chip card, get a card.
Fill up your cart, stick the card back into the slot, get charged, done. One customer service kiosk for buying back clean containers at 80% of retail cost.