We're proving that automation can happen in that space profitably if done right - carefully, surgically and with a small, focused team. There's Autostore in that space and that system has a massively different economics than Ocado's solution, despite the similarities.
Automation in in logistics and warehousing has been happening extensively for decades. However, with margins in large scale grocery retail are often far below 5%, any significant investment in unproven innovation will impact profits in a way that will be extremely noticeable to boards and shareholders.
This isnot to say it can not be done, as clearly the other side of the coin is that operational efficiency gains are also much more noticeable on the bottom line than in higher margined businesses, but it is higher risk/reward for low margin sectors. This will favor developing/proving the early TRL stages in new entrant or niche players, then buying out the successes when they hit early maturity.
Right now we're doing two robotic arms and a lot of conveyor belts - some conveyors serve as just transport, others storage of order totes and some others serve a dual purpose (they move the totes but due to the length we let them buffer for a bit). Additionally, a lot of software automation to help people.
Do you work at Ocado? Ever thought of working in AV? We're a young startup in SF, have a couple customers, just raised our seed, and are now expanding our team with some very critical high-ownership founding engineers.
