Bullring & Grand Central is one of Britain's largest and most visited shopping destinations. Covering 200,000 m² across four floors, with 140 retail outlets and 39 million shoppers passing through its doors each year, the centre sets a high bar for the visitor experience in every dimension.
With contactless payment now standard and shoppers navigating, photographing, and sharing their experiences on mobile, phone power had quietly become infrastructure — as essential as Wi-Fi or car parking. The shift to mobile wallets made this more acute: a dead phone didn't just inconvenience shoppers, it stopped transactions.
Bullring's team recognised the problem and set out to find a solution that matched the scale and standard of the centre. They needed something shoppers could access quickly and easily, that wouldn't create congestion or require staff involvement, and that felt like a genuine retail amenity rather than an afterthought.
Bullring didn't switch to Joos on faith. Prior to deploying Joos, the centre — and Hammerson's wider portfolio — had already invested in a solution: complimentary mobile phone charging lockers. Shoppers could leave their phone in a locker, free of charge, and collect it later.
Joos was piloted alongside those lockers. The results were unambiguous. Shoppers were actively choosing to pay to rent a Joos portable power bank rather than use the free locker. The reason was simple: portability. They didn't want to leave their phone behind — they wanted it with them while they shopped, paid, navigated, and shared. A locker solves the battery problem by removing the phone from the experience. Joos solves it without removing anything.
That insight — customers voluntarily paying for the better experience — was the data point that drove Hammerson's decision to retire the lockers and roll Joos across its entire portfolio.
The placement strategy reinforced the uptake. Joos worked with the Bullring team to identify high-traffic locations — entrances, food courts, transition zones — where shoppers would encounter a station naturally, without any promotion required.
Orders completed since launch at Bullring & Grand Central
Tens of thousands of pounds in income generated — at zero cost to the centre
Shoppers chose to pay for Joos over the centre's complimentary charging lockers
Bullring pilot scaled to the full Hammerson UK shopping centre portfolio
Shoppers who stay powered stay longer, explore more, and spend more per visit. They share their experience in real-time, extending the centre's reach beyond its four walls. Tenants see the difference. Footfall metrics follow.
