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At a Brooklyn warehouse, robots are reshaping the grocery-delivery business

Livemint · 2m

- A pilot program in Brooklyn, NY is using robots to fulfill grocery orders and claims that shoppers can save nearly one-third on their grocery bills. - Robots in a warehouse pluck bins of groceries and send them to other robots on the ground for delivery by workers and Uber drivers, assembling 50-item orders in just six to eight minutes. - The automated micro-fulfillment center in Brooklyn, part of the Save A Lot discount grocery chain, offers grocery prices about 30% lower than those sold at a traditional supermarket. - The center aims to provide quicker delivery within an 8-mile radius of Brooklyn, promising half-hour delivery windows compared to the four-hour windows offered by most other supermarkets. - The use of robotics in grocery delivery is part of an industry-wide movement to make online grocery shopping faster and more cost-effective, addressing the challenges and complexities of fulfilling perishable items and reducing labor costs. - Save A Lot is partnering with Fabric, an Israeli company that owns the technology and leases the warehouse, to create a lower-cost, limited-offering grocery fulfillment center that requires a smaller real estate footprint and minimizes overheads.