Quick Eats, Tulane Hospitality’s first 24-hour, AI-operated convenience store, opened its doors early in the spring 2025 semester and introduced a new and unique shopping experience to students and faculty.
Located behind the Small Family Collaboration Hub on Tulane University’s Uptown campus, the store offers a wide selection of food and drink products ranging from produce to frozen ready-to-eat meals and snack items, as well as personal care and hygiene products. To gain entry into the store, customers must scan a credit or debit card or an individual QR code linked to their Splash Card on the Grubhub app.
The store is primarily reliant on the use of AI, as there are no cashiers or self-checkout kiosks present; customers simply walk out of the store with their items when they are finished shopping.
Quick Eats is one of many automated convenience stores that have made their debut across the United States, sharing similar technology, machine learning and a “just walk out” payment method as Amazon Go and VenHub.
“Weight sensors are placed on the shelf to help identify products and increase shopping accuracy,” Sam Gautreau, a marketing manager with Tulane Hospitality, said in a statement. “Weight sensors on the shelf work in unison with the special cameras to identify how many products have been picked up and put down, the system has been pre-loaded with the individual weight of each product.”
The store utilizes several surveillance cameras carefully mounted on the ceiling to avoid mistakenly charging the wrong customer for items.
“Once a shopper enters the store they are uniquely identified, and the cameras will pass off that identification number amongst the camera sets as the shopper moves through the space,” Gautreau said.
The decision to incorporate AI into Quick Eats distinguishes it from the Surfing Pelican, Tulane Hospitality’s other convenience store on the Uptown campus.
“We knew what the campus deserved and wanted to introduce a first class and award-winning experience to the Tulane community. We understand the importance of timely service and efficient practices — thus the reason we wanted to bring the very best,” Gautreau said. “With all things new there are always challenges, but for this one we had the luxury of a world class community in Tulane and the support of many within our organization that helped guide and bring it all to life.”
While challenges may have emerged during day-to-day operations for Quick Eats, the store has been successful overall.
“We are very pleased with the early performance of the store. Soon we will be installing digital pricing signage on shelving that can also display custom graphics and dynamic, illustrated imagery,” Gautreau said.
As for any future arrangements to open more AI-driven stores and services, Gautreau said, “We have no immediate plans to introduce more AI technology. However, we are always looking at what we can do to better the services on campus.”
