They literally went too far…

But I think in the cities Kroger grocery stores serve as the fulfilment centers, so they don't need robotic ones.

There's probably still room for automation, but it might have to be different than warehouse automation.

“Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway”

In the AI analogy, never underestimate the productivity of a human when dealing with a giant pile of groceries. You can throw all the AI and robots you can at something but sometimes a $20 an hour human picking from stacks of goods and produce simply destroys it in raw economics

What you've re-invented is Keydoozle, from 1937.[1] This was the first automated grocery store. Three stores were opened, but there were enough mechanical problems that it didn't work well.

[1] https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/keedoozle-automated-store-p...

Sounds like the old general store model, you didn’t browse yourself, the shop keep would bring out what you wanted, it was always behind the counter. I experienced this in China when I started visiting in 1999/early 2000s, it’s mostly not like that anymore though. You still have department stores where you need to buy things first before touching them, though.

You'll obviously buy fewer things that way, and I can't see that making business sense.

Sounds like a lot of waiting around, versus just browsing the aisles. Maybe today’s consumers need to rediscover cash-and-carry, though.

That was Best store in the 1980s

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_Products

Something like this?

https://www.untappedcities.com/automats-cafeterias-nyc/

You've reinvented the Soviet grocery store, but with robots instead of people and with a $7 cup of coffee.

You’ve just described B&H in New York City.

I think we are mixing up two things here.

Robotics for picking and the general feasibility of grocery delivery in the US.

Ocado is good because their stock levels are far more accurate than the other supermarkets for online ordering, so you don't get as many substituted/missing items. This is sort of a side effect of having dedicated picking facilities Vs "real" supermarkets. I would not be surprised if they "lose" less stock as well compared to in supermarket fulfillment.

Then you have "is online grocery good in the US"? There's a lot of areas of the US that have reasonable density for this kind of service imo, and the road infrastructure is generally far superior to the UK which negates any loss of density (as you care about time between deliveries, not distance per se). I imagine the much better parking options in most suburbs in the US also helps efficiency (it's an absolute nightmare for a lot of the online delivery cos when there isn't off street parking in the UK and they have to park pretty far from the drop).

It sounds to me that Kroger just messed up the execution of this in terms of "marketing" more than anything.

> failure of business model and logistics

Just the model. They optimized for tax outcomes. They obviously wanted in on the "Amazon race to the bottom" game.

https://www.leesburg-news.com/2025/11/30/kroger-took-incenti...

> the real issue was delivery distances and times.

Which they could care less about. Where else are you going to go?

Probably because you then need pillars throughout the entire building to support the second floor which you are loading down with a ton of weight. The average forklift weighs 3x or more the weight of the average car, and then adding racking and stock on top of that. Yeah if you completely redesign your storage system to not require forklifts you save weight there, but you end up adding the weight back with all the heavy duty track systems and extra heavy duty racks that are required to eliminate the forklifts. Plus there is liability of having that weight up top, a rack failure on a second floor could take down half the building.

It is possible, but you end up spending 10x as much on the building.

Good construction is not cheap and takes many quarters. Land outside the urban area is far too cheap and probably subsidized (directly or with free oversized infrastructure) because local government always wants jobs, even small numbers of shitty jobs.

I thought about this a lot with parking spaces, nobody like big, open, tree-less parking lots. Why not just build them up adjacent to the grocery store.

The answer is $. It costs too much and land is cheaper than building up (In most places).

I would guess that having everything on one floor optimizes the unloading, restocking and logistics. Also construction is cheaper.

The vast majority of the inventory is already on the sales floor.

Also, the backstock is minimal. Stores are designed for turnaround.

Doesn't that support the article? their bet was massive robotics in centralized warehouses, but that turns out not to be profitable.

Unsure how the headlines doesn't align. Maybe it's different than what I'm seeing:

> Kroger acknowledges that its bet on robotics went too far

McDonald’s is an interesting example because they’re increasingly replacing cashiers with kiosks. Robotics/LLMs seem to have diminishing returns compared to that in the order taking realm.

Taco Bell by us has AI order taking and it is amazing. Quick, always has been getting it correct, and easy to understand. Granted, it's probably very abusable, but for someone just wanting to put in a quick order it is way better than a person.

In Charlottesville all the Krogers are quite different.

A weird, dark, maze-like warehouse-feeling Kroger that just closed.

We have a really nice Kroger a bit outside town. I always think of it as the Gucci Kroger.

A college-kid, cheaper Kroger close to the center of town. The cheaper version of the Harris Teeter nearby.

There's as much variation in individual Krogers as between other grocery chains!

I like to imagine that whenn is like iff -- ie, when would mean "when and only when", lol

A common practice in Denver. Kroger's local brand is "King Soopers". There's Scary Soopers, Queen Soopers, and ironically El Safeway and Soviet Safeway.

it's just a wheeled bot that's driven by a joystick by some offshore person /s

I like being able to see the thing I'm going to get and holding it in my hand.

I'll believe it when i see it

There are examples of the warehouse-based model working, but they clearly require both density _and_ mindshare. Its not clear Kroger had either based on the other comments in here. FreshDirect in NYC has been operating since the early 2000s with a fleet of tiny trucks with a couple of employees in them and a giant FC with essentially zero retail footprint.

(As an aside, they also have some of the best meat and produce you can get in the city without going to a farmers market. So many retail grocery stores here lack loading docks, the food handling getting from the truck to the sidewalk to the basement of the store to the shelves is really, really rough especially during the summer months. Skipping that and going warehouse-to-home has advantages)

"Something, something, ... omelettes ... few eggs" -- mouthpiece from corporation that lobbies to cut regulations