Posted on 08/23/2018 6:34:35 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
There could be a future where robots will do most of your grocery shopping for you. And for some Walmart shoppers, that future is getting even closer.
Walmart (WMT), the world’s largest seller of groceries, will begin piloting a robotics system for its fast-growing online grocery pickup (OGP) service in one of its stores. The retailer has teamed up with Massachusetts-based Alert Innovation to deploy its Alphabot, a first-of-its-kind technology, in its supercenter store in Salem, New Hampshire just off of Interstate 93.
“This is about the evolution of retail,” Alert Innovation CEO John Lert told Yahoo Finance. “So, we believe that this really marks the dawn of a new era and in which robots are going to increasingly pick orders for customers and relieve them of that burden.”
Alphabot automates specific steps of the online grocery pickup process by using autonomous mobile carts to gather shelf-stable, refrigerated, and frozen items from a high-density storage system. Alphabot’s robotic carts retrieve and deliver these items to store associates to quickly fulfill online orders. What’s more, all of this happens at the back of the store, out of the view of customers....
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
Probably so. And, ultimately, delivered to your home by a self-driving vehicle.
I don’t buy many groceries at Walmart. I get better prices at Kroger and Meijer. I’ve been told, though, that their online ordering system for general merchandise is solid.
Almost all grocery stores are offering delivery services now. I suppose eventually they will be delivered via drones and/or robots.
Believe it or not WalMart has almost brutal standards for Produce and meat. I’m picky on Produce but they have some good stuff reasonably priced.
The model is wrong.
Instead of running robots around a random environment guaranteeing poor quality service, set up an organized no human facing robot friendly warehouse to handle the automated SIDE of the business.
Walmart pickup is kind of misleading. They’ve gone through all the trouble of pointing people to pickup at the front of the store. All orange signs pointing that way. BUT IT’S ONLY FOR GROCERIES!!!! Order any other merch and trudge to the back of the store to pick it up. Bah.
We have to have groceries and food delivered since we both lost a leg. I don’t know what we’d have done 10 years ago.
Will these robot pickers be roaming the aisles and picking orders while in store customers are pushing their carts around doing their own shopping? It’ll just about have to be that way if Walmart plans to offer this pickup service at all its super-centers.
No. Go watch the video.
Just have a warehouse with robots compiling orders that are then delivered on refrigerated trucks.
Wow, a better idea popped in my head just on seeing this headline.
How about customer-operated drone-carts so one can shop at home but pick out what they REALLY want? IOW, same as shopping in person, but via camera-on-robot.
Problems still crop up with this on-line catalog ordering trend, including not being sure which is the right thing, and/or not being able to get a feel for the real product (such as something one has never actually tried before) such as size/weight.
If people could grab a robo-drone-cart and drive it around the store and pick up stuff themselves, I’d bet sales would actually go up from “on-line”.
“We have to have groceries and food delivered since we both lost a leg”
I’m sorry to hear that. I didn’t know.
My Kroger is less than a mile away. Plus they have installed monitors all over the place that customers can see that, for me, is unnerving even though I have nothing to hide.
I’ve considered having groceries delivered, but I’m not sure I trust them to provide quality produce.
How do you pay for delivery? Meaning, how much do they charge?
It’s just not clear if they expect this set-up to be installed in existing stores, or if it’ll be pickup only stores, or some new hybrid.
The pickup business will really have to become huge to justify very much duplication of stocked items in different parts of a store. Many people will still want to do their own shopping and everyone does not make a complete list of every thing they end up buying. And this pickup shopping will put a heck of a dent in the sale of all those impulse items around the checkout counters.
Sounds like a significant expansion of existing super-centers would be necessary to set up this system.
I guess we'll see whether Walmart and others are overestimating the demand for online/pickup grocery shopping. My guess is they might be, but I guess their experimental stores will answer that.
I’ve been ordering a bunch of crap from Walmart lately.I’m happy I’m not using amazon, and walmart is free 2-day shipping. And the prices are better in many cases. My only problem with walmat is the amount of packages and packing material they are using. It completely filled up my trash and recycle bins this week.
I work in a major grocery retailer AND I do ALL of my grocery shopping at Walmart!!! I shop VERY EARLY in the morning to avoid the normal Walmart shoppers but the quality of meats AND produce are better than where I work!!! I used to shop at the military commissary with my mom HOWEVER Walmart has the same if not BETTER pricing than the commissary!!!!
I LOVE shopping on line HOWEVER for groceries I want to see and feel what I am buying, EVERYTHING else it’s online for me, I haven’t walked into a brick and mortar store in at least 3 years!!!
More people without jobs.
According to the reporterette it increases jobs somehow.
*** Walmart pickup is kind of misleading. They’ve gone through all the trouble of pointing people to pickup at the front of the store. All orange signs pointing that way. BUT IT’S ONLY FOR GROCERIES!!!! Order any other merch and trudge to the back of the store to pick it up. Bah. ***
My Walmart has the lockers at front for pickup for items like electronics, but I also use the grocery pickup which is not limited to groceries. I have added other household items to my order such as dishwashing liquid, shampoo, pet foods, and supplies.
If you have the app on your cell phone, it notifies the grocery pickup person as soon as your car hits the lot. By the time you pull up to the pickup area at the side of the building, they come out to load your groceries. You sign on their tablet, and that is it.
They pick out the best produce, and meats as they want their service to succeed. I like it as I impulse by when I shop inside the store. With the online grocery, it is easier to stick to what I need, rather than, “oooh, that looks good”.
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