Specialized click & collect infrastructure for regulated industries

Why pharmacy needs more than a parcel locker

Click & collect is becoming standard in retail. Pharmacy is different. Products require temperature control. Some require extreme cold. Compartments need to accommodate everything from a small medication box to bulky deliveries. Customer trust matters more than convenience — and convenience matters a lot.

Standard parcel lockers can't do this job, and neither can a delivery locker with cooling added to it. The infrastructure has to be designed for the category — and for a client whose core business is retail, not delivery.

The challenge

self-service pickup model in a market where locker infrastructure was still emerging. The opportunity was clear — patients and customers increasingly expected pharmacy products to be available for convenient pickup outside traditional pharmacy hours. The constraint was that pharmacy products demand a level of storage rigor that general parcel lockers aren't built for.

Temperature-sensitive products. Some categories requiring extreme low-temperature storage down to −50°C. Mixed product sizes from small boxes to larger packages. A customer base that includes elderly users and people managing complex health needs. The real test: deliver all of this while keeping pickup available around the clock — 24/7, beyond pharmacy opening hours.

How we approached it

We engineered a pharmacy-specific locker configuration rather than adapting an existing parcel design. Temperature-controlled storage zones for sensitive products. Engineering capable of supporting extreme low-temperature scenarios down to −50°C for product categories that demand it. Mini and macro compartment configurations to handle the actual range of pharmacy product sizes.

The customer interface used a large screen — important for accessibility and for users who don't want to squint at a small display to confirm a medication pickup. The pickup flow was designed around the realities of pharmacy customers: clear, guided, unambiguous, with verification steps where they matter.

Click & collect orders grew by 40% in the year after the lockers went live. TClick & collect orders grew by 40% in the year after the lockers went live. The solution enabled a pharmacy operator to introduce a modern self-service pickup model in a market where this infrastructure is still developing — establishing the category and the position before competitors arrived. Click & collect for pharmacy stops being a future-looking concept and becomes operational reality.