Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

grocerydive.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

311–320 of 342 posts

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

#311

Post by wiether »

sroussey wrote: post #287
infecto wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least for me. I buy fresh food via online ordering because I hate wasting time these days. Driving even to a nearby store takes 10mins round trip. Then having to walk through the store and fine what I need and checkout. I would much rather order online and get it delivered. Produce can still be a gamble, pickers have no incentive to pick the best produce but for the average meal, that’s fine.

We have mapped the planet, yet no grocery has a freaking map to find what you need.

Is this a US thing?

I think here in France the best example is Lidl. The stores are laid out the same, so not only your usual store doesn't change, but you can go to any store in the country and find what you want at the same spot.

Personally, with self-checkout, I spend less than 15mn in the store to do a week of groceries.

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

#312

Post by admirethemeyer »

NicoJuicy wrote: post #241
NicoJuicy wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because autostore shared trade secrets with Ocado. The lawsuit was found to be not valid. Note: Ocado was a customer of Autostore in 2012 and just copied them. Sharing IP basically invalidated the lawsuit.

https://www.blackstonechambers.com/news/autostore-technology... Autostore disclosed their design externally before the patents. So the patents were "invalidated" by themselves

At least read what you’re posting:

AutoStore claimed that several of its European patents covering cube-storage robots and grid-based systems were infringed by Ocado’s Smart Platform robots and storage grid. The judge looked closely at the “central cavity” robot patents (EP 2 928 794 and EP 3 070 027) and two other related patents and compared them to earlier disclosures and designs. He found that the claimed inventions lacked novelty and/or an inventive step, meaning they did not add enough new technical idea over what was already publicly available, so the patents were revoked.

Additionally, even if the patents were not invalidated, the judge found that Ocado did not infringe them, even if they were valid. Specifically, Ocado’s robots and grid as actually built and used did not fall within the wording of AutoStore’s patent claims. The court concluded that, on proper claim construction, Ocado’s design did not use several key features required by the claims, so there was no infringement in any event.

This is all in the judgment.

Finally, Autostore had to pay Ocado $256M USD: https://www.therobotreport.com/autostore-to-pay-ocado-256m-i...

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

#313

Post by wiether »

VLM wrote: post #238
wiether wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have this conversation regularly with friends, family, coworkers... And I've not yet been able to establish the right criteria to guess how a person is buying their groceries. Location, age, income, number of people in the household, physical ability... A single guy living in the city center with good income? Takes his car to go in big supermarket outside the city. A family with four kids living in the suburbs? Goe…

I've found two very general personality criteria for online ordering. Planners. The people who have a meal plan in Google Calendar for the next week and rarely have to "grab one thing on the way home from the store". The people who literally have no idea what they're eating on Thursday will go to the store today or tomorrow, who knows what they'll buy. Multitaskers. The people who do their grocery shopping on the cou…

That's interesting.

I'm a planner and that's one of the reasons I don't order my groceries. If there's one thing I know I can't rely on, it's to be delivered on schedule and/or receiving exactly what I ordered.

Meanwhile if I go to the store, I can find an alternative or go elsewhere if I can't find what I wanted.

And I'm also a "natural food" person, so I'd rather pick things myself. Furthermore, if I crush a fruit on my way home, it's on me and I'll deal with it peacefully. If I'm being delivered a crush fruit, I'll get mad at the company I ordered from and I'll have find a way to be compensated.

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

#314

Post by marcosdumay »

tart-lemonade wrote: post #297
marcosdumay wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, it's not only pickup. Online retailers UIs are all extremely bad for browsing. One would imagine they would be better, because they can reorganize any way they want, without any limitation, personalize it to each customer, and have several different organizations at the same time available for people to pick what's best each time. But no, browsing universally sucks.

My grocery store's website (Jewel-Osco) doesn't even work on Firefox; searching for anything just gives me a loading screen that never goes away, even on a brand new profile with all cookies accepted and no adblocker or other extensions. On Chrome it works, but it's comically slow, and the mobile app is somehow even worse. The really confusing part is the parent company's website (Albertsons) works just fine, though…

Kudos for all the "smart" managers that throw direct sales away so they can spy on the more price-sensitive people that endure a bad experience in exchange for discounts or not owning a car.

It happens on so many kinds of store, it's baffling.

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

#315

Post by infecto »

wiether wrote: post #311
sroussey wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have mapped the planet, yet no grocery has a freaking map to find what you need.

Is this a US thing? I think here in France the best example is Lidl. The stores are laid out the same, so not only your usual store doesn't change, but you can go to any store in the country and find what you want at the same spot. Personally, with self-checkout, I spend less than 15mn in the store to do a week of groceries.

Not sure if it is just a US thing but it to add a little more depth. Most stores as already stated want you to wander a bit to possibly purchase more things but the other piece is most stores custom to local preferences both on what they carry and where it’s located.

Thought differently most major chains capture all of this data and can optimize stores for sales.

I think the bigger complaint is a typical US grocery store carries an insane amount of SKUs. If I was just going to Trader Joe’s it’s no problem. Low sku count layouts never change. Walmart has probably 10x the skus and it’s a struggle sometimes just finding what you want. Oh I need dry dill, well in the spice section there are 3 or 4 brands. Within those sometimes it’s not in alphabetical order. Things are misplaced or just out of stock.

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

#316

Post by bunabhucan »

>Sargent also said Kroger would refocus its e-commerce efforts on its fleet of more than 2,700 grocery supermarkets because it believed that its stores gave it a way to “reach new customer segments and expand rapid delivery capabilities without significant capital investments.”

Someone didn't read the 26 year old Webvan case study at CEO-school.

https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=26728

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

#317

Post by karamanolev »

algo_trader wrote: post #130
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

Ours is profitable enough. And it can scale but covering more area with FC's of a profitable size. Additionally, market penetration of online grocery shopping is growing rapidly and has no reasons (that we see) to stop growing (as a % of all grocery shopping).

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

#318

Post by nrhrjrjrjtntbt »

PeterStuer wrote: post #249
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…

I've done a few projects in (traditional, not pure ecommerce) retail, and in my experience it is a very low margin business. This contrasts sharply with being an innovator in the robotics space, which typically is extremely capital intensive with very long ROI trajectories.

Does low margin matter? If you are replacing paid people, arent you trying to replace that cost part of the equation?

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

#319

Post by themadturk »

infecto wrote: post #289
sroussey wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We have mapped the planet, yet no grocery has a freaking map to find what you need.

That’s mostly my problem. Some of the apps have locations, often I find things not there. But for most stores they want you to wander and shop.

Though I don't like shopping at Walmart, I still have to (no store in my area, even "supercenters," has everything I need), and their phone app is absolutely stellar at telling me where a particular product is. Especially handy where there's no staff on the floor (as often happens).

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

#320

Post by themadturk »

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…

I've been scolded online for buying from Amazon. "Oh, if you look around enough you can get anything locally." I live in the Seattle area, and I certainly cannot get everything I want locally, unless by "locally" you mean taking an hour or two to drive a 40 mile round-trip to a suburb to the north. I know, of course, that Amazon is partly responsible for being unable to find some things locally, but if I want or need something and I can't get it here in town, yeah, I'm using Amazon.
Post reply on HN