The Deployment
Evergreen Refreshments, the Pacific Northwest's longest-operating breakroom service provider, has opened a checkout-free store at Lake Washington Institute of Technology in Kirkland, Wash., powered by Amazon's Just Walk Out technology and built on the 365 Retail Markets platform. The store sits inside the campus cafeteria and is open beyond traditional staffed hours, giving students, faculty, and staff a full-aisle retail experience with no cashier and no checkout queue.
Shopper entry is gated — visitors tap a credit or debit card, mobile wallet, or the 365Pay app to unlock the door. A computer-vision and sensor array tracks what items are lifted from or returned to shelves, builds a virtual cart in real time, and charges the shopper's payment method automatically upon exit. The format is distinct from a standard micro market kiosk or a locked smart-cabinet: the space is fully walkable and carries a broader SKU count than either alternative.
Why It Matters for Operators
For unattended foodservice operators like Evergreen, the peak-period problem is a persistent revenue leak. Lines that form during the lunch rush push some campus shoppers to abandon their carts and walk away empty-handed, a lost transaction the operator can never recover. Autonomous checkout eliminates that friction point and allows the same physical footprint to process more transactions per hour without adding labor. The store also extends effective selling hours into periods when only vending machines were previously available — a meaningful upgrade for a campus population that keeps irregular schedules.
Evegreen operates more than 1,000 micro markets across Seattle, Portland, Olympia, and Spokane. The Lake Washington Tech deployment runs on the same catalog-management, payment-processing, and reporting stack Evergreen already uses for those locations, which lowers the operational learning curve and avoids parallel systems. Jeff Dumbrell, Chief Revenue Officer at 365 Retail Markets, described the store as a model for how autonomous retail can match campus operating rhythms — handling peak traffic without the lost sales that come when lines build and transactions stall.
365's Role in the Build
As a member of Amazon's Just Walk Out Certified Partner Network, 365 Retail Markets owns end-to-end accountability for store build-out — site design, hardware installation, camera calibration, and gate setup. Day-to-day support flows through 365's existing field teams, with Amazon handling escalations for deeper technology or hardware issues. The structure is relevant for operators evaluating autonomous retail: it positions 365 as a single-vendor contact rather than requiring the operator to manage a direct relationship with Amazon's hardware organization.
365 Retail Markets expanded its operator footprint significantly in May 2026 when it completed the acquisition of Cantaloupe, Inc., adding Cantaloupe's payments, telemetry, and device network to its micro-market and smart-store platform. The combined entity now supports nearly 40,000 operators nationwide, a scale that gives 365 leverage when negotiating technology partnerships and supply agreements. For convenience and campus foodservice operators evaluating autonomous checkout, the Evergreen deployment offers a live reference site for a format that sits between a traditional micro market and a full unstaffed convenience store — a category that is drawing growing operator interest as labor costs remain elevated.
Arthur Siller, SVP of Business Development at Evergreen Refreshments, said the store gives students access to what they need at any hour without a wait — a straightforward value proposition for a campus client base that expects the same on-demand convenience they get from their phones.
Operators tracking autonomous retail deployments in campus and workplace foodservice channels will want to watch how Evergreen's throughput data compares with its traditional micro-market locations over the next several quarters.
Written by Michael Politz, Author of Guide to Restaurant Success: The Proven Process for Starting Any Restaurant Business From Scratch to Success (ISBN: 978-1-119-66896-1), Founder of Food & Beverage Magazine, the leading online magazine and resource in the industry. Designer of the Bluetooth logo and recognized in Entrepreneur Magazine's "Top 40 Under 40" for founding American Wholesale Floral, Politz is also the Co-founder of the Proof Awards and the CPG Awards and a partner in numerous consumer brands across the food and beverage sector.
