Heikkilän juustola
Bitwise built an entirely new kind of self-service shop for Heikkilän juustola that makes it easier to get local food to consumers. Maitolaituri is a pop-up shop that moves from place to place, with a door that opens with a PIN code. Customers can check Maitolaituri's real-time location in the online shop, place an order and collect their purchases on their own – even in the middle of the night.
The local food entrepreneurs behind Heikkilän Juustola and Tampere-based software company Bitwise have created an entirely new kind of self-service shop that makes it easier to get local food to consumers. Maitolaituri is a pop-up shop that moves from place to place, with a door that opens with a PIN code. Customers can check Maitolaituri's real-time location in the online shop, place an order and collect their purchases on their own – even in the middle of the night. “Maitolaituri is something special that nobody else has”, says Pekka Moisio, entrepreneur at Heikkilän Juustola.
The story began when Heikkilän Juustola's Pekka Moisio talked about the impact of the coronavirus on a small local food business on Yle's A-Studio on 18 March 2020. The company, run by Moisio and his wife, Annika Heikkilä, lost more than half of its revenue overnight. Software entrepreneur Tomi Mikkonen happened to see Moisio's interview and started thinking about how two completely different industries could benefit from each other. The next day, Mikkonen called Heikkilän Juustola and proposed working together.
Mikkonen's original idea was to pre-order all of 2020's staff and corporate gifts from Heikkilän Juustola. The order was placed, but the meeting led to something more. When entrepreneurs from two different fields met, an entirely new business idea was born – Maitolaituri 2.0.
How to bring local food close to urban consumers
Pekka Moisio had long been thinking about how to bring local food literally closer to people. He had an idea for a movable milk stand – a modern take on the roadside platforms where Finnish farms once left their milk churns for collection – from which customers could pick up their orders on their own. When Tomi Mikkonen heard the idea, he immediately said that Bitwise would design and build the software the stand needed. Moisio, in turn, would build the kiosk and get a cold room. That was the start of the “digitalised milk stand” project – Maitolaituri 2.0.
Maitolaituri is a self-service shop that moves from place to place, with a door that opens with a PIN code. Customers can check Maitolaituri's real-time location and shop online. They can collect their order at a time that suits them, using the unique PIN code sent with the order confirmation.
Pekka Moisio is proud of the result: “Maitolaituri is something special that nobody else has. Above all, I hope Maitolaituri will raise awareness of local food and Heikkilän Juustola.”
A product development speed record
A month after the first meeting, Maitolaituri's frame was up. Next, Bitwise built the software, Juustola's new website and the ordering system. “We were definitely setting some kind of product development speed record here”, says Mikkonen. The system designed by Bitwise monitors the cold room temperature in real time, wherever Maitolaituri happens to be. If the temperature changed, an alert would immediately go out to the entrepreneurs at Heikkilän Juustola. Sales data lets the entrepreneur track when Maitolaituri needs restocking and plan trips based on facts. The kiosk also has real-time video surveillance.
The concept was built around an online shop for customers, which communicates with Maitolaituri via a separate server. This architecture allowed the online shop, the physical trailer itself and the back-end systems to be developed in parallel. The solution is also scalable: in addition to the farm shop, an unlimited number of new Maitolaituri units can be connected to the system.
Alongside software design, Bitwise also acted as an advertising agency on this occasion (we're not afraid to roll up our sleeves when needed). Our marketing and communications team designed and produced Juustola's new visual identity, advertising and product photos, and the content for the juustola.fi website. Bitwise's chef,Äiti Aurinkoinen, prepared dishes in her kitchen for the mood photos. Maitolaituri's interior and exterior design, including its vinyl wrap and soundscape, was also a joint effort by various Bitwise experts. In total, sixteen Bitwisers had a hand in the pro bono project alongside their own work.
During the testing phase, a complete outsider walking by went shopping at Maitolaituri. Standing in a corner of Bitwise's car park, Maitolaituri had caught the attention of Tampere local Timo Punkka. A big cheese lover, he read the instructions on the side of the kiosk, made a purchase in the unfinished online shop and got in using the PIN code from his order confirmation. Inside, however, it became clear that Maitolaituri wasn't in use yet: “Visually, the shop was top quality, and that caught my eye from a distance. I went straight over to see what it was. I guessed it might still be in beta, but I like trying anything new. I started with just a basic order of about five euros to see how it worked first. Everything worked brilliantly at the trailer door, but inside there were Linux screens running, network gear all over the place and empty fridge shelves”, Punkka says. Bitwise's developers faced quite a mystery the next morning when the system reported that a real purchase had been made at Maitolaituri the previous evening. Pekka Moisio delivered the products to Maitolaituri's first customer at his front door.
Both Mikkonen and Moisio feel the project was worth it. “This may be the most expensive advert in the local food business, but at least it was fun”, Moisio laughs. Mikkonen continues: “It's always exciting to do something that hasn't been done before – in this case, an autonomous kiosk. It's completely absurd that the kiosk shouts ‘moooo’ at passers-by when they walk close enough to the door.”
For Pekka Moisio, one of the best things about the project has been working with another entrepreneur: “Maitolaituri has been a very different project, because people beyond our own team have been involved. Bitwise has a lot of expertise that we don't. The big realisation during the project has been how nice it is when someone is able and willing to help. Small operators like us often have quite limited resources to develop our business on our own.”
Maitolaituri opened to customers in summer 2020
Maitolaituri opened to customers for the first time on Friday 3 July 2020 in the courtyard of Rönnvik winery. Soon, people in Helsinki got to enjoy local food delicacies too, when the trailer was parked at Hietaniemi market square. Food lovers in the Helsinki region quickly took Maitolaituri to their hearts, and its door kept opening and closing at a brisk pace throughout the 2020–2021 winter season.
You can check the pop-up shop's current and upcoming locations on Maitolaituri's website.
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