Breaking Down the Nation’s First Robotic Grocery Fulfillment Center
Wakefern Food Corp. is the 20th largest grocer in the US, with $16.6bn in 2019 retail sales across ShopRite, Price Rite, Gourmet Garage, Fresh Grocer, and Dearborn Market subsidiaries. Last summer, it opened the first standalone robotic grocery fulfillment center in the country inside of a 27,000 square-foot Clifton, NJ warehouse powered by Takeoff Technologies software and Knapp Logistics robots. The center is responsible for picking everything that isn’t deli or produce for Shoprite’s online pick up and delivery for five of its 23 stores in New Jersey as part of its “Shoprite from Home” service.
As grocers raced to figure out solutions to compete against Amazon’s arrival in 2017, startups like Takeoff have raised hundreds of millions in venture capital to help bring retailers into the 21st century. Microfulfillment is one of the most talked about solutions in the industry at the moment, relying on robots instead of humans to pick inventory in dedicated warehouses or underutilized space within existing retail. Last weekend, I visited the Clifton facility and one of its sister retail locations to better understand how it all works. Unlike other microfulfillment…
