The Future Supermarket

A Speculative Design Workshop

2019 | Exploring Future Food Systems with Juliane Busboom & Ivar Simonsen

What will the supermarket of tomorrow look like? How will technology, behavioral shifts, and environmental concerns reshape the way we buy, consume, and interact with food? These are the pressing questions that Juliane Busboom and Ivar Simonsen, students at ITU Copenhagen, explored in their speculative design project.

I had the pleasure of participating in their workshop, where they presented 20 alternative future scenarios, envisioning the role of automation, local production, personalization, information access, and efficiency in shaping tomorrow’s food retail landscape. This experience provided a thought-provoking glimpse into the possibilities, challenges, and ethical dilemmas that may define our supermarket experience in the near future.

Concept & Key Themes:

The project categorizes the Future Supermarket into five key dimensions:

1. Autonomous – Supermarkets that operate independently, reducing human labor and optimizing logistics.

2. Local – Emphasizing in-house food production, shorter supply chains, and hyper-personalized shopping.

3. Personal – AI-driven experiences that customize food choices based on individual health, habits, or even social behaviors.

4. Informed – Expanding consumer access to nutritional, environmental, and ethical data about their food.

5. Effective – Optimizing efficiency through smart technologies, predictive purchasing, and automation.

Each scenario speculates on a potential future reality, ranging from utopian to dystopian, desirable to undesirable, depending on one's perspective.

Exploring the “Local” Supermarket & the Future of Meat

One of the most striking scenarios explored in the workshop was the “Local” supermarket, where cell-cultured, 3D-printed meat is available on demand. In this imagined future, customers could generate any kind of meat—ethically, instantly, and with minimal environmental impact.

A fictional customer, Max, browses his local store, looking for a nostalgic meal inspired by a family trip to Norway. Though moose meat isn't naturally available in Denmark, advanced biotechnology now allows him to print fresh moose tenderloin at a vending-machine-like device. In just 5-10 minutes, his order is ready.

This raises the question:

• On a scale from realistic to unrealistic, where does this scenario stand?

• More importantly, is this future desirable or undesirable?

Speculative Scenarios: A Utopian or Dystopian Future?

Beyond localized, 3D-printed meat, the project explored additional speculative supermarket futures, such as:

• Autonomous supermarkets that come to you—a fully mobile food system operated through an app.

• A social credit system that rewards or penalizes consumers based on their dietary choices.

• Ingestible sensors that analyze your body and tell you what you need (or shouldn’t) eat.

• Smart fridges that not only track your groceries but automatically order food based on your personal health data.

Each of these ideas pushes us to reflect on how technological advancements might shape our relationship with food—for better or worse.

Outcome & Reflection:

Juliane and Ivar’s project serves as an invitation to critically reflect on how technology, policy, and culture will shape our food systems in the near future. It forces us to ask:

• Who benefits from these innovations, and who is left behind?

• How much control are we willing to hand over to automation and AI in our food choices?

• Can we ensure that efficiency and convenience do not compromise ethics, sustainability, or personal autonomy?

This workshop left me with more questions than answers—but perhaps that’s exactly the point. Speculative design allows us to explore multiple futures, and in doing so, we can shape the one we actually want.