The nightly scene along Baoshan Riverside Boulevard was bustling with crowds.

As the drone fireworks show at Wusongkou Sky Theater was about to begin, many residents and tourists had already set up their cameras, waiting to watch "Mecha Nezha" light up the night sky.

Not far away, a small robot shop of just over ten square meters was brightly lit, with the robot "Xiaomai" shuttling back and forth to fetch goods while several young people gathered at the window scanning QR codes.

There were no staff on duty and no cashier counter inside — everything relied on "Xiaomai" to take orders, grab products, and hand them out.

The shop is called "Shaomaigou," an embodied intelligence convenience store launched by SenseTime Shanzhi, a smart retail ecosystem enterprise under SenseTime Technology.

Before the holiday, SenseTime Shanzhi released its retail physical operating system SenseMart OS in Shanghai and launched the "Thousand Cities, Ten Thousand Stores" initiative with ecosystem partners.

This National Day holiday became the perfect "stress test" for this model.

Xinmin Evening News has learned exclusively that during the National Day period, the overall transaction volume of "Shaomaigou" stores in Shanghai nearly doubled compared to regular days, with the Baoshan Riverside store seeing the largest increase — transaction volume surged more than 25-fold week-over-week.

Additionally, since the start of the National Day holiday, stores in commercial areas such as Xuhui Riverside and Baoshan Riyueguang have also seen significant spikes, with tourist check-in spending driving notable growth.

On the 4th, a family of three shopped at the "Shaomaigou" store in Xuhui Riverside. Photo by: Liu Xin (same below)

Robot "Store Managers" Face National Day "Big Exam"

The Xuhui Riverside area was crowded with visitors during the National Day holiday.

Inside "Shaomaigou," "Xiaomai," now wearing a new shirt, was also busy without pause.

The moment a scan code sounded, "Xiaomai" would turn and move toward the shelf, grab the item, turn back, and hand it over — a set of movements clean and efficient, capable of completing a single delivery in as fast as 15 seconds during peak hours.

While tourists at the back were still deciding what to pick, those in front had already walked away with their drinks.

Once the crowd dispersed and the pace slowed down, "Xiaomai" revealed its adorable side — when passing children reached out their hands, it would proactively shake hands and make heart gestures; when young tourists came up to chat, it could tell jokes and dance; when encountering elderly citizens, it could even recite poetry and match couplets, switching interaction styles based on the crowd.

Some customers also noticed that it could judge a person's age and gender through visual recognition and automatically adjust its address and tone — young women were called "Miss," and children were tickled into giggles.

When foot traffic was low, "Xiaomai" would also organize shelves, take inventory, and analyze sales data — which products were selling well and how much stock to prepare each day, "Xiaomai" had it all figured out.

With each completed order, performance +1

Many parents also treated the robot shop as a natural AI science classroom.

Three children who were learning programming came together and observed beside "Xiaomai" for quite a while.

They said AI is the future, and abstract theories in textbooks are not as intuitive as seeing a robot operate with your own eyes.

"This space of just over ten square meters, with no staff, is pulling robots from the demonstration stage into the real urban life," said the parent accompanying them.

Better Performance, More Popularity, More Sales

Having a robot as a store manager means the question is not just "can it grab accurately" but also "is it cost-effective."

Yi Shuai, co-founder and chief scientist of SenseTime Shanzhi, told Xinmin Evening News that currently "Shaomaigou" stores average about 0.2 to 0.3 staff per store — in other words, one person can support the operations of 3 to 5 stores; by comparison, traditional convenience stores need 2 people per store working in shifts.

Additionally, the investment payback period for premium locations in Shanghai is about six months to one year, and about one year for mid-tier locations.

He specifically mentioned a detail from Xuhui Riverside: two "Shaomaigou" stores are only 30 to 50 meters apart, both selling standardized items like water and beverages. When the second store opened, the team was very worried about cannibalization.

However, the two stores focused on different non-standard items: one leaned toward grilled sausages, the other toward beer.

The result was that the two stores did not steal customers from each other but instead drove overall sales growth.

"The store receives tourists day after day, accumulating massive amounts of real data that will continuously optimize its expression and interaction logic, constantly closing the distance with ordinary people; at the same time, this fun interaction also allows 'Xiaomai' to continuously build popularity, driving revenue growth," Yi Shuai stated.

Meanwhile, the system's learning capability is also being honed in the stores.

For example, when grabbing glass bottles, the team encountered a problem where the cold air blower being turned on caused condensation on the bottle surface making it slippery — the team ultimately solved it by turning on the machine half an hour early to let the moisture evaporate. Such details can only be discovered in real production environments.

From Small Shops to a Large Network — What Stands in Between

According to the introduction, "Shaomaigou" has now established more than 20 stores in cities including Shanghai, Hefei, Shenzhen, Qingdao, and Yancheng. The Shanghai Theatre Academy store and the Shanghai Bailian Southern Shopping Center store also "opened their doors to customers" before the holiday.

Xinmin Evening News has learned that as the country deepens its implementation of the "AI+" initiative and the Ministry of Commerce and seven other departments issued implementation guidelines for accelerating "AI + consumption" development, Shanghai is advancing its "Model Shanghai" construction, building "AI + consumption" cluster zones. Artificial intelligence is moving from models to terminals, from online to offline, becoming a new form of productivity in urban commerce.

"Several 'Shaomaigou' robot shops are now operating steadily in Shanghai. The R&D team customizes product categories based on the demographic profiles of people around each store: riverside scenic area stores primarily serve family visitors, focusing on ice cream, beverages, and small children's cultural creative products; office building stores focus on coffee and low-sugar functional drinks, precisely matching the consumption needs of office workers," Yi Shuai pointed out.

Industry insiders analyze that going from a few dozen stores to several thousand, the maintenance system is a hurdle in between — currently when a robot breaks down, there is no rapid on-site repair after-sales network like there is for air conditioners and televisions. A technical team capable of after-sales service, maintenance, and quality inspection needs to be cultivated.

Currently, the deployment cycle for new stores has been compressed from the initial two to three months to one to two weeks, with the future goal being "measured in days."

However, whether this process can continue to advance depends on the speed of building the maintenance system, the rate of decline in per-unit hardware costs, and the stability of real sales volumes across different scenarios.