Melkerhei operates a farm store 14 hours a day, six days a week - without a single cashier

Deliberately Small, Deliberately Different

Melkerhei is, first and foremost, a dairy farm. “We have 75 cows, which isn’t many,” Martine explains. “To keep the farm viable, we had to either expand—most dairy farms have hundreds to a thousand cows—or diversify. We chose to diversify: to make our own dairy products.” Butter, yogurt, cottage cheese, hard and soft cheeses—everything is made on the farm, just a few meters from the milking parlor. “With 75 cows, our cows can still graze outdoors. With thousands, that wouldn’t be possible anymore, and we didn’t want that at all. We want to be self-sufficient.”

For years, Martine sold those dairy products from a food truck at the farm on Fridays and Saturdays. Until the customers themselves announced the next step. "You heard it over and over again: ‘Can’t you stay open longer? Don’t you sell flour, vegetables, fruit, or meat?’ That’s how the ball started rolling. It’s important to listen to your customers."

Choosing a Single Partner

For the point-of-sale system, the family visited Hoeve van Elven, where the Tilroy self-checkout was already in use. Martine describes that visit as the moment when a whole new world opened up. The decision was made quickly. “We deliberately chose Tilroy as our complete solution. Dealing with a single provider is easiest: that way, you get better support if anything goes wrong.”

The system was deliberately kept simple. Customers do their shopping, place everything on the counter at the self-checkout, and scan their items using the handheld scanner or the fixed scanner beneath the unit. Payment is made electronically, by card or cell phone. “No coins, no cash.”

At the grand opening in late 2024, just to be safe, someone was on standby for three months to help customers get started. “None of that was necessary. Customers are smarter than we think,” Martine laughs. She also dispels the cliché about older customers: “I love it when I see an older person in the store explaining to a younger person how things work. Let people be proud of what they can do—you shouldn’t patronize them.”

Trust works both ways

In an unattended store, does everyone actually pay what they owe? Martine is clear on this. “If you give people the trust to do their own thing, you get so much back in return. Customers often tell us how nice it is to shop here. There are even people who call back the person in front of them because they forgot to pay.”

There are cameras, and the village community provides social oversight. But that oversight turns out to be mostly a source of reassurance. “We carry small jugs of olive oil priced at 55 and 90 euros. If a few suddenly go missing, we zoom in on the camera footage and see: everything was handled perfectly.”

The best proof came at Easter, shortly after the opening. Martine parked the food truck next to the store to put together custom cheese platters, just like in the old days. “People just walked right past me. At first I didn’t know what was happening, but actually that was the ultimate confirmation: customers like to shop anonymously, at their own pace. We were on the right track.”

Thousands of products, one system

Chez Meme has become much more than just a dairy store. “You can walk in here and put together your dinner: potatoes, meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, flour. Everything except toilet paper, really,” says Martine. The potato farmer is less than five kilometers away, the meat farmers are five to six kilometers away, and through the Kortom Leuven cooperative, the store is restocked twice a week by farmers from the wider region.

All those products—thousands of them by now—are in Tilroy. Each producer delivers with barcodes; only loose fruits and vegetables are selected by customers on the screen. “That first year, entering everything was a real chore. Now it’s a piece of cake.” And the system offers more than just a receipt: “We can generate a lot of statistics. There’s much more to Tilroy than what we’re using today. It’s cleverly designed.”

A Breath of Fresh Air

The biggest difference? For Martine, it’s the freedom. “Tilroy was truly crucial in helping us make the transition to the farm stand. We didn’t want to be the ones manning the register, and it had to be easy for the customer.” Whereas she used to be required to be in the food truck, whether it was busy or not, she now stocks the shelves whenever it suits her—along with a small team of part-time workers on busy Fridays and Saturdays. “I tell my husband and my son all the time: what a relief this store is. Sometimes I’m there until nine o’clock at night, but that’s because I want to be. If one of the grandchildren stops by, I can keep them occupied. It’s a whole different way of working.”

She doesn’t give a traditional cash register a second thought anymore. “I wouldn’t dream of putting a cash register with a cashier here. The customers would be shocked.” And the numbers back it up: sales of her own dairy products have increased since the store opened—for Martine, purely a matter of accessibility. Customers now come from more than fifty kilometers away, partly for the raw milk.

To fellow farmers who are hesitant about a self-scan store, she has a short answer, one she’s repeated verbatim many times: “Would I do it again? Without a doubt.”

Ready for the Next Chapter

Melkerhei always looks five years ahead. Today, the family processes most of its own milk; the goal is to reach 100 percent within a few years, with a new processing facility and additional machinery. This way, the family sets the price for every liter of milk itself. A short supply chain, right down to the last drop. And while the cheeses age and the cows graze outside, Chez Meme keeps on running as usual—from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.—without a cashier.