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Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

grocerydive.com

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Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#121

Post by zuppy »

imroot wrote: post #103

I've always said that in the back of my mind, the most successful grocery store would be the 'walls' of the store -- bakery, deli, produce, meats, floral, cheeses, dairy and having a little selection of store brands in the middle where consumers can pick up (and vendors can pay a premium for endcap space, because they're the only non-branded products out there), with the rest of the SKU's behind the walls of the groc…

that is a guarantee for less sales, not sure it makes business sense. for example, i don't buy generic products, i want specific properties from them. and sometimes i don't know what i want, i look at the isle and only then decide. and let's not forget about impulse shopping.

honestly, i wouldn't shop at this store, i want to get the items myself, without any interaction. interactions add delays.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#122

Post by ssl-3 »

ZeWaka wrote: post #107
zrobotics wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So what grocery stores used to be ~90 years ago, when the norm was you would give the clerk a list and they would grab your items from the back? The only stores I'm still aware of that are setup like this are auto parts stores, where 90% of the inventory is in the back.

Only other places I can think of is weed dispensaries and pharmacies. You could also count shoe stores and high-end jewelry and watch stores in that the clerk has to go in the back to fetch the non-display model.

Professional supply houses are usually that way, too.

Graybar[1], for instance: There's a counter with bar stools, and behind that counter are people who know their inventory very well.

I just walk in and tell them what I want. They write it all down on paper faster than I can say the words and then disappear into the back to fetch it while I help myself to a free ice cream sandwich from the freezer over on the right that one of the local trade unions provides.

[1]: Graybar is a US-based electrical supply place. The companies I work for have accounts there, but as far as I know anyone can walk in and buy stuff. They also have some datacom stuff. If I'm in the middle of Nowhere, Ohio and need, say, a single-mode patch cord today, then there's probably a Graybar less than an hour away that has one in stock. Otherwise, they'll have one for me tomorrow before 7:00AM.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#123

Post by karamanolev »

I work in this exact space (online grocery retailer in Europe). We're profitable and one of the few companies to be so in the sector - many online divisions are losing money and being bankrolled by the parent company with physical stores. Alternatively, burning VC money.

The thing that's wrong with Ocado's technology is that it's ridiculously expensive and tailored for huge FC's (fulfillment centers). The problem with that is that it needs to serve a large population base to be effective and that's hard - in dense metros, the driving times are much longer despite smaller distances. In sparse metros, the distances are just too long. In our experience, the optimal FC size is 5-10K orders/day, maybe up to 20K/day in certain cases, but the core technology should certainly scale down profitably to 3-5K. Ocado solves for scaling up, what needs to be solved is actually scaling down.

There are a lot of logistical challenges outside the FC, especially last mile and you need to see the system as a whole, not just optimize one part to the detriment of all others.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#124

Post by kakacik »

NegativeLatency wrote: post #114
gambiting wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here in the UK it's common for online grocery sites to say "fresh for at least X days" on every item, so bread will usually say 5 days, eggs 7 days etc etc. Doesn't matter if I select collection(so someone is picking those items for me at the store) or delivery(so they come from a larger warehouse). They stick to that promise.

An example of my experiences: you’ll get the apple with the bruise and maybe some damage instead of the nice one you’d pick out if you’re shopping for yourself.

A counter-example - with a weekly shopping list way too long (family of 4), its hard for the husband to pick up all items as fresh as possible and do all necessary checks on each of them. Or in other words - even people themselves do make same mistake, I certainly do.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#125

Post by tdeck »

imroot wrote: post #103

I've always said that in the back of my mind, the most successful grocery store would be the 'walls' of the store -- bakery, deli, produce, meats, floral, cheeses, dairy and having a little selection of store brands in the middle where consumers can pick up (and vendors can pay a premium for endcap space, because they're the only non-branded products out there), with the rest of the SKU's behind the walls of the groc…

This reminds me of the retail chain Service Merchandise which apparently used to operate this way. You'd walk around the store looking at display products, pick things out on a sheet, and then they'd appear on a conveyor belt.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Merchandise

I have never been to one because they went out of business decades ago.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#126

Post by Terr_ »

system2 wrote: post #106
Animats wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you've re-invented is Keydoozle, from 1937.[1] This was the first automated grocery store. Three stores were opened, but there were enough mechanical problems that it didn't work well. [1] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/keedoozle-automated-store-p...

Incredible, they were 75 years ahead of their time.

That kinda stuff is why I'm an incrementalist, as opposed to "Great Man" theories of civilization. A big impressive product or leap-forward is mostly luck and thousands of cascading preconditions on small improvements everywhere else, and often not even the first person to try.

It's not hard to imagine that if a fundamentally similar store today that took the world by storm, there would be a profusion of news stories asserting that the founder is a genius visionary, with nary a peep for Clarence Saunders et al.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#127

Post by adaml_623 »

lmm wrote: post #102
chairmansteve wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argos in the UK was similar. You would go into the store and look up the product in a catalog. Then go to counter and order it, wait 2-5 minutes and they give you the product. I found it quite convenient.

They still exist. Tend to be pretty competitive on price, although they must be losing out to online shopping in a lot of places since they don't offer any showroom advantage.

In my experience because you're picking up from the Argos you can do an instant return if you realize you ordered wrong (or the item is rubbish). Not perfect but a good way to get your hands on the product with an easy refund option

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#128

Post by tdeck »

markus_zhang wrote: post #25

I had a wonderful retro futuristic dream about an automated Costco warehouse a few weeks ago. It was one of the less weird dreams so I still remember it clearly. Basically, each section is like a closed areas with some windows. Customers order at the computers by the windows and flash their membership cards. Robots glide left and right to move 10 samples to the customer, in an arm with rotating clips. Customers can p…

If you wish to experience more futuristic fever dreams, I present the Dahir Insaat YouTube channel:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Xc_6wfDYuFU

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#129

Post by georgefrowny »

mosura wrote: post #3

Sounds like they just put them in the wrong places. > Fenyo added that Kroger’s decision to locate the Ocado centers outside of cities turned out to be a key flaw. > “Ultimately those were hard places to make this model work,” said Fenyo. “You didn’t have enough people ordering, and you had a fair amount of distance to drive to get the orders to them. And so ultimately, these large centers were just not processing en…

I idly wonder if what would actually make sense here is a hybrid model that combines a gigantic fulfillment center with tens of thousands of products located "far" from people, with a large physical footprint and near to road/rail arteries, but with a mid-bandwidth, high-granularity, low-latency physical link to "near" places.

For example, imagine you had an upscaled pneumatic tube system (don't get hung up on the exact implementation, it could be a small gauge train system or conveyer belt: whatever floats your Factorio-addled boat) with a diameter around, say, half a metre to a metre, packed goods into canisters and shot into town where they pop out at local distribution centres for pickup or last-mile delivery.

This is where I thought the Boring Company might be going back before it was obvious it was an anti-public transit gambit.

Possibly the curse of rail systems applies where the maintenance of the track (tube) costs so much that it's cheaper to fly (done delivery) or drive all the way on public roads (current solution). The advantage over rail is that the land footprint is very small: the tract is about a metre wide and can be buried if needed. Perhaps it's just not really different enough to trucking it all into town using semi trailers, which would still be required for large items and especially construction materials.

Then again, even if this hare-brained system were to work, this assumes we actually want to continue to reduce most human commercial interactions to gigantic, remote, anonymous capital-intensive megasystems producing pods that pop out of the ground into robotic vending stations.

Re: Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

#130

Post by algo_trader »

karamanolev wrote: post #123

I work in this exact space (online grocery retailer in Europe). We're profitable and one of the few companies to be so in the sector - many online divisions are losing money and being bankrolled by the parent company with physical stores. Alternatively, burning VC money. The thing that's wrong with Ocado's technology is that it's ridiculously expensive and tailored for huge FC's (fulfillment centers). The problem wit…

> FC size is 5-10K orders/day, maybe up to 20K/day in certain cases, but the core technology should certainly scale down profitably to 3-5K.

deja-vu from the e-scooter business. even with a good product, its just not profitable/scalable enough

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