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Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

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

#211

Post by rsynnott »

chairmansteve wrote: post #90
Scoundreller wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had a large-format (for its time) chain store in Canada like that until 1996: https://www.tvo.org/article/what-happened-to-consumers-distr... Basically a catalogue store without shipping to your door.

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're still there. Was surprised to run into one recently when I was in London (they pulled out of Ireland a while back, and I'd assumed they'd just closed totally at that point, because it _does_ feel like an increasingly marginalised business model.)

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

#212

Post by simgt »

graemep wrote: post #201
ben_w wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need to be in a city centre for small shops with bike racks. This is village with a population of a bit less than 3000, which I only know about because I have walked East-West across most of the state of Brandenburg (from Słubice in Poland to the city of Brandenburg) and this trains station was a convenient break point: https://www.google.com/maps/@52.3459295,14.2800967,3a,60y,14... Here's Aberystwyth, wher…

One of those shows several cars in the photo and a single bike. The other two show pedestrianised areas, and all three show pedestrians without any indication of how they go there. When I to to similar areas in my town (pop approx 23k) I have drive there, park, and then walk around. I have several shops within easy walking distance and many people (including me) do walk to them, but quite a few drive. Few bikes (kids…

The UK is strange, it's really not bike friendly but you do have rows of small shops outside of city centers and towns have many of them too. France is rather the opposite or simply worse on all aspects in the countryside.

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

#213

Post by taeric »

bena wrote: post #198
taeric wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad someone made this point. I'm curious how long people think most items in a grocery store last? Just consider the trucks you see stocking them on a daily basis. Typically it is bread and other high flow consumables, no?

Everything. Retail stores are logistics. And part of that is product flow. There are trucks coming in every single day. When you buy an item at a store, that item is deducted from the store's inventory, when that item's stock reaches a certain threshold, an order is immediately placed to the distribution center, and that item is loaded onto a truck and could arrive as soon as that night. There's no reason to keep any…

Right, I just meant that you have a high chance of seeing the bread and drinks/chips getting delivered. They turn over pretty much daily. I would imagine it is the condiments and other very long shelf stable things that you may not see getting restocked on a daily basis?

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

#214

Post by rsynnott »

adxl wrote: post #48

Whenn I lived in Atlanta the Krogers each had a nickname. There was disco Kroger because of its disco ball. There was murder Kroger that purportedly had been the site of a murder. This I guess is Robo Kroger.

> There was disco Kroger because of its disco ball.

... As in the supermarket had a disco ball? Was it spinning?

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

#215

Post by tstrimple »

AngryData wrote: post #21
da02 wrote: post #12

Here in the Houston areas, supermarkets like Kroger/Walmart/HEB/etc always have single floor buildings. Why can't they build multi-floor buildings for storage upstairs and retail walk-in sales on the ground floor? On the above ground floors, they can create an automated or semi-automated system for employees to gather up items for online/delivery orders.

Probably because you then need pillars throughout the entire building to support the second floor which you are loading down with a ton of weight. The average forklift weighs 3x or more the weight of the average car, and then adding racking and stock on top of that. Yeah if you completely redesign your storage system to not require forklifts you save weight there, but you end up adding the weight back with all the he…

I think this is correct. A lot of these buildings seem to be post frame or poll barn style. Relatively cheap for building large square footage buildings but add some limitations to multiple floors. Even if you put the storage floor under the shopping floor you'll run into tons of issues with buildings of these sizes that don't have a ton of pillars for additional support. I mostly see these stores built on vacant "rural" land on the outskirts of cities rather than in city centers themselves. Which means the single floor square footage is rarely an issue and not something worth designing a building around. If you have all the space you need to go wide, it's almost never worth going tall.

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

#216

Post by iambateman »

I’m regularly surprised by how important physically picking out groceries is for a large segment of the population.

We have done grocery pickup for years but the pickup lanes are almost always empty while dozens of shoppers walk into the store.

To me, shopping for groceries by hand is a waste of time but it clearly has some utility for a lot of people.

I wonder if that inertia is making traditional grocery shopping stickier than it should be and disincentivizing optimization.

I hope consumer tastes will change because there’s no reason for us to all walk into a giant warehouse every week.

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

#217

Post by georgefrowny »

tstrimple wrote: post #208
georgefrowny wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but "we're going to cut the costs of horizontal drilling to a tiny fraction" was the Boring Company's original stated goal. And not all of it does need to be underground. Even if it was a good idea (which I doubt, it's just a idle thought), I don't think there's a practical way to retrofit such a system in existing cities due to the costs, planning and presumably private funding for a non-public network, becaus…

> Sure, but "we're going to cut the costs of horizontal drilling to a tiny fraction" was the Boring Company's original stated goal. Sounds like the sort of idea a con man would pitch. Oh wait...

To be fair, he did do that for kilos to orbit via reusable rocket, so there was a moment when everyone went "hmm maybe there is a TBM equivalent of the Falcon 9".

But presumably it turned out that actually Herrenknecht and Hitachi aren't stupid, whereas, say, Boeing had been leaving opportunity for radical cost reduction on the table.

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

#218

Post by squeedles »

imtringued wrote: post #210
squeedles wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that HD (and Lowes) massively subsidizes their delivery ops simply because they don't want to cede the space to Amazon. It allows them to under-stock the stores but still maintain a reasonable range of products. However each time I have ordered, they have delivered a ~$2 part via Fedex, at no extra cost to me. They are a bigger fish than the mom and pop stores but that just means that it will take a little…

Reading these two comments is bizarre from my perspective. How is Amazon competitive with anything? They tend to have higher prices than other online retailers and the intransparent market place system tries to protect shady sellers with product focused reviews instead of seller based reviews. The moment you get even a single fake product or wrong delivery all the perceived savings evaporate at once. The idea of payi…

It's the all you can eat buffet effect. Pay the price and don't have to worry about shipping, can watch (some) streaming without having to worry about paying, and whatever else they decide to roll into their monopoly black hole today.

Sure, if you do a full accounting of costs you may win or lose, but fundamentally people are paying for simplicity. Because almost everyone is lazy, or too busy, or too afraid of random scammers, or whatever, and they played their cards right to become the Sears Catalog from the 19th century in the 21st century.

edit - and one thing that helped them get there is the return policy, so if you get one of those scam sellers, or they sent you wrong crap, opened crap, or just plain everyday crap, you press a couple buttons, maybe drop something off at a UPS store, and problem solved. That definitely shields them from the fallout from their endless listings from sellers like QWERTY123 and ZXCVBN789, and provides an advantage over any other online ordering that doesn't have the same massive advantage of scale.

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

#219

Post by dredmorbius »

Animats wrote: post #75
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…

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...

There were also automats, automated restaurants serving all food through a vending machine (or more accurately, wall). Classically all for a single fixed price (a nickle).

These are featured in several cultural references, such as the 1962 Delbert Mann film That Touch of Mink, and PDQ Bach's "Concerto for Horn and Hardart" (being named after a prominent New York City automat chain).

Mink: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=Y3GXMB4VPY8>

Concerto: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=NT6bxlnS1Is>

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

#220

Post by sokoloff »

imtringued wrote: post #210
squeedles wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe that HD (and Lowes) massively subsidizes their delivery ops simply because they don't want to cede the space to Amazon. It allows them to under-stock the stores but still maintain a reasonable range of products. However each time I have ordered, they have delivered a ~$2 part via Fedex, at no extra cost to me. They are a bigger fish than the mom and pop stores but that just means that it will take a little…

Reading these two comments is bizarre from my perspective. How is Amazon competitive with anything? They tend to have higher prices than other online retailers and the intransparent market place system tries to protect shady sellers with product focused reviews instead of seller based reviews. The moment you get even a single fake product or wrong delivery all the perceived savings evaporate at once. The idea of payi…

For most everything I'm giving as Christmas gifts this year, Amazon has the best (often tied for the best) price. Things from Apple are cheaper on Amazon than from Apple (Airpods Pro 3, M4 Air, etc.)

Predictable delivery, easy/generous customer service, best/tied-for-best price, excellent selection. I'm not sure which part of that is uncompetitive...

(If you know a better price on Airpods 3 Pro or a base M4 Air, do let me know as I'm always happy to save money.)

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