Grocery retailers prep big bets on micro-fulfilment tech

Several large grocery retailers will soon announce micro-fulfilment centre (MFC) technology partnerships, probably with AutoStore. That’s the view of Brittain Ladd, a supply chain consultant and former Amazon exec.

Ladd made the prediction as he responded to a LinkedIn post flagging up new online grocery research from Takeoff Technologies and Professor Tim Laseter.

“Amazon is building stores with MFCs inside. I anticipate that Amazon will soon unveil a 20,000 square feet MFC inside one of their supermarkets and/or at an offsite automated dark store.”

“It is testing robots to shuttle inventory from the back rooms of their stores to the shelves in the store. Within two to three years, the shuttle bots will place the inventory on the shelves with little to no human intervention,” Ladd said.

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Amazon has no choice but to test and utilise super MFCs inside Whole Foods, he added. It is testing a grocery store inside a Kohl’s store. “If the pilot is successful, I anticipate Amazon will open hybrid grocery stores in every Kohl’s. I also believe it will acquire Kohl’s,” he commented.

Grocery retailers must embrace technology and remove the use of pickers in their stores, according to Ladd, who advised Instacart to better invest in opening MFCs across the USA so it could fulfil online orders on behalf of grocery customers. Otherwise it will be replaced, he warned.

This is why several large grocery retailers will soon ink partnerships for MFC technology. “The status quo is a death sentence,” Ladd concluded.