AI runs a San Francisco store
A San Francisco shop called Andon Market opened under operational control of an AI system while two humans staff the floor. The experiment shows AI moving from recommendation and marketing tasks into day-to-day retail management — handling things like staffing and stock decisions — and raises questions about where software will sit in luxury retail operations (nbcnews.com).
A new shop in San Francisco opened with no human manager behind the counter, because the manager is an artificial intelligence system named Luna that asks customers what they’re buying over a corded phone and then rings them up on an iPad. The store is called Andon Market, and it sits at 2102 Union Street in Cow Hollow with plants, books, candles, artisan food, chocolate bars, granola, and store-branded sweatshirts on the shelves. (andon.market/) Two humans still work the floor, but Andon Labs says Luna chose the merchandise, set the prices, picked the opening hours, designed the wall mural, and ran the hiring process that brought those workers in. That is the jump here: plenty of stores already use software to suggest products or target ads, but this system is being used as the boss that makes day-to-day operating decisions in a physical retail shop. Andon Labs did not start with a full boutique. In June 2025, Anthropic and Andon Labs published an earlier experiment called Project Vend, where an Anthropic Claude model ran a small office shop for about a month by handling inventory, prices, and supplier requests. That earlier shop was basically a mini-fridge and some baskets with an iPad on top, so moving from that setup to a leased storefront on Union Street is like going from running a snack table to running a real neighborhood business. Andon Labs says it signed a three-year lease and gave Luna a corporate card, a phone number, email access, internet access, and a view through security cameras so the system could make choices with real money and real consequences. The company says Luna posted job listings on LinkedIn, Indeed, and Craigslist within five minutes of being deployed, screened applicants, held phone interviews, and offered jobs to about half the people it interviewed. One employee, Felix Johnson, told NBC News he found the job on Indeed, took a Zoom interview, and ended up being hired by the artificial intelligence system itself. The founders, Lukas Petersson and Axel Backlund, started Andon Labs in 2023, and NBC News says their goal is not just to sell snacks and sweatshirts but to show what happens when autonomous software starts hiring and managing humans in ordinary businesses. The question hanging over the store is not whether a chatbot can recommend a candle. It is whether landlords, brands, and retailers will get comfortable with software deciding who works, what gets stocked, and how a storefront runs while humans become the hands and eyes on the floor.
