The newest employee at a Tokyo 7-Eleven works through the night without a single break. It silently stocks drinks and other products with mechanical precision, and cleans and mops the floor whenever needed. Of course, this tireless worker isn’t a person; it’s a robot.

We’ve gotten used to companies using AI and robots for marketing and publicity but this time, it’s different. This robot is part of a frontline response to a crisis that could grind Japan to a halt. The country is running out of people.

Innovation Born Out of Necessity

Restocking inventory and mopping floors are probably the types of jobs you’d want robots to carry out. It’s a menial and unrewarding activity, and it takes a fair bit of time. 7-Eleven estimates that employees spend, on average, 1–2 hours per day transporting beverages from storage to display. Why not have a robot do that?

Over the next three months, the company will assess just how effective robots are at saving labor. For now, the trial is underway at Arakawa Nishiogu 7-chome store in Tokyo. If it works fine, they will expand the robot use to other stores. Overall, 7-Eleven officials hope that the robots can reduce employee workload by 30%.

“We aim to increase productivity and create an environment where we can challenge ourselves to create new product assortments and services,” Hiroki Takei, head of operations at 7-Eleven, said in a statement shared with local media.

But while the company presents this as progress, it’s actually a dire need that’s pushing it.

Japan is facing a demographic downturn of unprecedented scale. For years, the nation has witnessed a plummeting birthrate and one of the world’s longest life expectancies. The result is a rapidly aging and shrinking population. The numbers are stark, with around a third of Japan’s population now over the age of 65. The working-age population, the engine of any economy, has been in free fall since the late 1990s.

This labor shortage is an existential threat to the Japanese way of life, and particularly to the “konbini” — the beloved 24/7 convenience stores that have become pillars of Japanese modern society. These stores are community hubs where you can pay bills, pick up packages, print documents, and find a hot meal at 3 a.m. Yet, keeping them staffed around the clock has become a mammoth task for store operators, who are being crushed by the dual pressures of a non-existent labor pool and rising wage costs.

This is the bulldozer driving Japan’s automation push. The country is turning to technology not to replace its human workers, but to supplement them and fill the millions of phantom jobs that have no one to do them. The goal is economic survival.

Robots in the Shops, Robots in the Streets

Japan currently ranks fifth globally in robot density in its manufacturing sector, but the new frontier is the service industry. The stores, restaurants, and delivery routes that form the backbone of daily life increasingly employ robots.

In a previous trial started just a couple of months ago, 7-Eleven has been testing a fleet of four-wheeled delivery robots on public sidewalks. Developed with startup Lomby Inc. and auto giant Suzuki, these squat, friendly-looking machines navigate the city at a pedestrian-friendly top speed of 6 kilometers per hour (a fast walker’s speed).

These street robots have eight cameras and are monitored remotely as they ferry goods from the store directly to customers’ homes. A customer simply places an order through the “7NOW” app, and within as little as 20 minutes, the robot arrives. A quick scan of a QR code on their smartphone opens the machine’s compartment, revealing their purchase.

That trial seems to be doing well even in a challenging location. They chose Hachioji, a city in western Tokyo, specifically because it’s not an easy site.

“We deliberately targeted an area with slopes and an aging population to clarify the problems we would face ahead of putting the service into practical use,” a 7-Eleven spokesperson said.

This isn’t just about solving the driver shortage, another critical labor gap in Japan. It’s also a direct response to the needs of an aging clientele who may have difficulty shopping for themselves. The delivery trial is one of the largest of its kind in Japan, covering 10,000 households and set to run until early 2026.

And the automation doesn’t stop there. Back inside the store, another piece of technology addresses the grueling late-night shifts. Some locations have introduced remote customer service screens at checkout. If a cashier isn’t physically present, a customer can interact with a remote support agent via a high-definition screen, preserving the 24/7 service model without needing a human on-site at all hours.

A New Age for Convenience Stores?

This multi-pronged robotic approach, involving stocking, cleaning, delivering, and customer service, is a big step from things like self-pay checkouts. And 7-Eleven isn’t alone. Online retail giant Rakuten Group is using similar robots to deliver Starbucks coffee, while Panasonic has trialed robots and drones to deliver hot food from popular chain Yoshinoya. The legal framework is already in place; a revision to Japan’s Road Traffic Law in April 2023 officially sanctioned the use of these delivery bots on public streets. The race to automate the service economy is on.

Japan may be ahead of the curve, but it’s experiencing something many developed nations will likely face soon. As populations age and workforces shrink globally, the question of how to keep society running becomes urgent.

In many Western countries, the conversation around automation is dominated by the fear of job displacement. Robots are often seen as a threat, poised to make human labor obsolete. But in Japan, the context is flipped on its head. The primary fear isn’t that robots will take jobs; it’s that there won’t be enough humans or robots to do the jobs that need doing.

Still, this automated future raises profound questions. What is the long-term social impact of outsourcing everyday tasks to machines? Does the seamless convenience of a robot-run store come at the cost of human interaction, the casual chat with a clerk that can brighten an elderly person’s day? What happens when things go wrong?

For now, the focus is only on function. The robots are a pragmatic solution to an immediate problem. But as they become more integrated into the fabric of society, they will undoubtedly change it in ways we can’t yet predict.