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Why robots? Wouldn’t it be easier to have a wharehouse with a giant vending machine type of distribution of products into packages ready to be delivered.
Why robots? Wouldn’t it be easier to have a wharehouse with a giant vending machine type of distribution of products into packages ready to be delivered.
I doubt they could make that work. Some grocery items are more fragile than others. Some are quite long or wide.
The first attempts at grocery delivery in the early 00s often failed because they used the warehouse model and carrying costs and spoilage for that ended up being a lot more expensive than just hiring people to go to the stores was. The warehouse model also limited scope to larger higher density metro areas.
It'll be interesting to see if that model can work now and if so how small metro/small town services where it doesn't make sense to have a warehouse within a two hour drive are handled.
Another company tried that concept — twenty years ago in 2001. WebVan used its dot com bucks to build a 350K SF automated grocery warehouse a few miles from my home north of Atlanta, GA. The facility was never used and all the exotic machinery was sold as scrap. Some ideas just don’t pencil out.
Why robots? Wouldn’t it be easier to have a wharehouse with a giant vending machine type of distribution of products into packages ready to be delivered.
That would be a robot. Mechanical selection and distribution.
Another company tried that concept — twenty years ago in 2001. WebVan used its dot com bucks to build a 350K SF automated grocery warehouse a few miles from my home north of Atlanta, GA. The facility was never used and all the exotic machinery was sold as scrap. Some ideas just don’t pencil out.
Except now we’ve had corona and we’re all getting having things delivered ingrained in our dna.
Even the 90 year old grandmother that hardly uses a computer now has her groceries delivered.
I even think pre covid delivery services were much more widely accepted than 10-20 years ago and covid just supercharged it.
For sure. Groceries are probably the last thing I actually go to the store for; but that’s just cause I’m terrible at it and more or less just grab what I need for a day or two. I’m sure when I’m no longer living by myself that’ll change.
My current business supplies basically all come from Amazon.
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