Germany’s robotic stores must rest on Sundays, too
Regional chain Tegut forced to close automated shops to comply with centuries-old ban
When it launched its fully automated stores four years ago, Germany’s regional supermarket chain Tegut billed the experiment as a window into the future of shopping.
But the Fulda-based retailer has since been embroiled in a legal fight over a centuries-old principle enshrined in the German constitution: Sunday rest.
Be they robotic or staffed by humans, most shops in Germany are not allowed to open on the last day of the week — and courts have upheld that ban.
“This is entirely grotesque,” Tegut management board member Thomas Stäb told the Financial Times. He said that the small robo-shops were “basically walk-in vending machines” that should not be affected by the ban.
The Fulda-based retailer owns about 300 traditional supermarkets and 40 fully automated mini-shops. It was forced to comply with a December ruling by the highest administrative court in the state of Hesse that said Sonntagsruhe must be observed even if no workers were involved.
The judges said the small self-service store qualified as a “shop” under German law, and therefore must abide by legislation on opening hours.
Housed in prefabricated wooden containers that resemble an oversized barrel with a grass roof, Tegut’s self-service stores offer almost 1,000 items deemed essential for daily life including milk, butter, fresh fruit and vegetables, as well as condoms and pregnancy tests.
During the week, staff visit shops to service them for a few hours a day, but on Sundays no employee interaction is necessary, Stäb said.
The legal battle was triggered by Germany’s service sector union Verdi after the first automated store opened in Fulda four years ago. The union fundamentally opposes Sunday shopping, arguing that retail staff, who already have to contend with highly flexible working hours during the rest of the week, need Sunday as a guaranteed day off to spend time with family and friends.
The union was also concerned about potential “knock-on effects” for workers in traditional stores. Tegut’s rivals could soon start lobbying for further liberalisation of Sunday shopping rules, a Verdi official said.
Robert Grabik, a 36-year-old Fulda resident who lives close to one of the automated supermarkets, was a frequent user on Sundays.
“It was just perfect for stuff you forgot to buy during the work week,” he told the FT, adding that the food options were much healthier than those at fuel stations and kiosks. The Hesse court’s decision, he said, was “a complete disaster”.
But as the three judges made clear in their ruling, Germany’s work-free Sundays are about more than just work. They pointed to the Christian origin of the principle which was first decreed more than 1,700 years ago by Roman emperor Constantine the Great.
Sunday rest has been enshrined in Germany’s constitution since 1919 and was upheld by the constitutional court in a 2009 verdict.
“Our society needs a special day per week that has its own characteristics to celebrate Christian spirituality and to have shared experiences with friends and family,” said Philip Büttner, an official at KWA, a body of Germany’s Protestant Church that lobbies for the work-free Sunday.
Both the Protestant and Catholic Churches have formed an unusual alliance with Germany’s powerful unions to defend the status quo for years, and spearheaded the campaign against the Sunday opening of automated stores. In March, the alliance encouraged pastors to criticise the shops in their weekly sermons.
In a country where church membership has fallen by a quarter over the past two decades, and just one in 20 citizens attend Sunday mass, “the current law is completely at odds with today’s reality of life”, said Stefan Naas, head of the liberal FDP’s parliamentary group in Hesse who is lobbying for change.
“A peaceful and quiet Sunday is not undermined by the sale of a bottle of milk and a box of cream,” he said.
Over the past three decades, Germany had already ditched most restrictions that until 1996 forced shops to close at 6.30pm on weekdays. The Sunday ban, however, has been kept in place for most businesses, except restaurants, fuel stations, kiosks and pharmacies.
Stäb was adamant that the impact on religious spirituality was non-existent, and pointed out that Tegut had never faced any conflict with religious communities. “In one case, the Catholic Church is even our landlord, and the pastor never raised any concern.”
Dubbed “teo” in a tribute to Tegut’s late founder Theo Gutberlet, the stores are the size of a one-bedroom flat.
“Tegut’s teo is one of the most innovative new formats in German retail,” said Stephan Rüschen, a retail professor at Baden-Württemberg Cooperative State University in Heilbronn, stressing how important these stores were for rural communities where grocery stores had long disappeared and large shops were often miles away.
New teos were often celebrated with a village party, and “we are getting more requests to open now ones from municipalities than we can satisfy,” Stäb said.
Tegut does not disclose financial details about its automated stores, but Stäb said that “we are more than happy with the sales performance as well as the feedback from local residents”. He also stressed that the shop’s productivity per square metre was superior to traditional supermarkets.
To prevent theft, the shops collects customer IDs from their payment card before entering and rely on CCTV. Once inside, shoppers can walk around and pick products from shelves, which they then scan and pay for at a self-checkout. Stäb acknowledged that shoplifting was a slightly bigger issue than at normal supermarkets but stressed that it did not make them unviable.
For Tegut, losing Sunday sales was economically painful as that day accounted for about 25 to 30 per cent of teos’ weekly commerce, said Stäb.
Since the ruling, Tegut has paused the capital-heavy expansion of teo supermarkets in its home state.
But more than a dozen of its automated shops stay open on Sundays in other German states such as Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, as the judgment only applies to Hesse. Even on Hessian territory, legal loopholes allow three shops that are near train stations to open on Sundays.
The government of Hesse has meanwhile indicated that it is willing to change the state’s law to create a legal exception for automated supermarkets. Some German states, including Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg, have already created similar loopholes.
Naas from the FDP said the matter could be resolved by the summer.
“The idea that Sundays should be sacrosanct increasingly seems like a leftover from the 1950s,” he said.