Packageless stores may seem like a recent trend in Taiwan, but they’ve actually been around for decades — though in a different form. The staff at San Shi Living Lab (三時生活實驗室) say that the shop is popular with the older folks due to their familiarity with traditional markets, while the younger customers at the vegan Zero Living (零生活) have fond recollections of the Green Bean (小豆苗) bulk snack shops that were all the rage in the 1990s.
“Then, the supermarkets took over,” Zero Living owner Boris Su (蘇冠宇) says. “And these shops declined.”
But concerns over the huge impact packaging has on