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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

common sense robotics

Fabric (Formerly Common Sense Robotics) Raises $110M Series B for More Automated Grocery Fulfillment

Fabric, the fulfillment automation company formerly known as Common Sense Robotics, announced today that it has raised a $110 million Series B round of funding led by Corner Ventures with participation from Aleph, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB), Innovation Endeavors, La Maison, Playground Ventures and Temasek. This brings the total amount of funding raised by the company to $136 million.

Fabric builds out robotic micro-fulfillment centers that allow retailers such as grocers to process online orders quickly. A combination of lift and ground robots autonomously shuttle items around precisely where they are packed by a human and sent out for delivery or pickup. These fulfillment centers can be built off-site and squeezed into smaller spaces, giving retailers micro distribution hubs that are closer to consumers to facilitate faster delivery. For example, Fabric is building 18,000 sq. ft. facility in an underground parking structure in Tel Aviv.

Though they are still new, micro-fulfillment centers have the potential to be great disruptors in the grocery space. Online grocery shopping is currently a very small slice of overall grocery spending, but it’s growing. The ability for a retailer to fulfill and deliver online orders more quickly should create a virtuous cycle that begets more online grocery shopping.

Because of this potential to get you your groceries faster (so you presumably buy more), Fabric is among a bunch of companies looking to automate order fulfillment. Takeoff Technologies also creates robot-powered micro-fulfillment centers, typically built into the back of existing grocery stores, and is currently working with Albertsons, Ahold Delhaize and ShopRite. Walmart has partnered with Alert Innovation to pilot an automated fulfillment center at a store in New Hampshire, while Kroger is building out standalone robotic smart warehouses around the country.

As noted, last month Common Sense Robotics rebranded as Fabric, in a move that seemed to de-emphasize the “robot” part of its offering. In a press statement at the time, Elram Goren, CEO and co-founder of Fabric, explained the rebranding by saying “For us, our robots and software are critical to what we do, but at the end of the day, they’re a means to an end. What we’re really here to do is to be the fabric that binds retailers and their customers together, enabling goods to be fulfilled and delivered faster and cheaper within cities.”

As part of its re-brand, the company moved its headquarters from Tel Aviv, Israel to New York City, where it is building its first U.S.-based fulfillment center. According to today’s press release, Fabric says it has contracts to build out 14 more centers in cities across the U.S. in 2020 and will use the new funding to expand operations here.

Common Sense Robotics De-Emphasizes Robotics with “Fabric” Re-Branding

Common Sense Robotics announced today that it is changing its name to Fabric in a move that emphasizes the company’s focus on overall logistics and puts its robotic origins on the back burner.

Up until now, Fabric had been best known for building out automated robot fulfillment centers that could be built into dense urban areas to facilitate fast delivery of online grocery shopping orders. The hook for the company was its ability to build its robotics vertically to make more efficient use of the spaces it built into. In July, the company announced it was breaking ground on an 18,000 sq. ft. facility in an underground parking structure in Tel Aviv.

In today’s press announcement, Elram Goren, CEO and co-founder of Fabric, provided a statement about the rationale for the name change and the removal of robotics from its name, saying “For us, our robots and software are critical to what we do, but at the end of the day, they’re a means to an end. What we’re really here to do is to be the fabric that binds retailers and their customers together, enabling goods to be fulfilled and delivered faster and cheaper within cities.”

We reached out to Fabric to find out more about the impetus for the name change, and was told that all of the messaging could be found in the press release.

Fabric is part of a wave of companies looking to automate and subsequently speed up online grocery order fulfillment, which is a small-but-growing slice of overall grocery shopping. Takeoff Technologies, which builds similar fulfillment centers in-store, is working with Sedano’s, Ahold Delhaize and Albertsons, and recently announced a standalone fulfillment center in New Jersey for ShopRite. Kroger is building out robotic fulfillment centers using Ocado’s technology. And Walmart is using Alert Innovation for its own back-of-house automated fulfillment.

In addition to the re-brand, Fabric also announced today that it will move its corporate headquarters from Tel Aviv to New York City. So now we’ll have to see if a new name and a new town can help Fabric weave itself into the U.S. grocery business in a meaningful way.

Kroger and Common Sense Robotics Each Announce New Grocery Robotic Fulfillment Centers

I get that it’s supposed to be three of something to make a trend, but the fact that two different companies a world apart made robot-fulfillment center opening announcements on the same day is totally indicative of a broader move towards grocery automation.

Here in the U.S., Kroger announced that Forest Park, GA, just outside of Atlanta, will be the next home of its Ocado-powered customer fulfillment center. Kroger will spend $55 million on this “shed,” as Kroger calls the centers, which will feature automated, robot-driven fulfillment of grocery orders. This is the third such shed of a planned 20 that the company plans to build. Other announced sheds are in Monroe, OH and Groveland, FL, with another one coming to the Mid-Atlantic region.

Over in Tel Aviv, Venture Beat reports that Common Sense Robotics has broken ground on a completely underground automated fulfillment center for an unnamed grocer. The new facility will be in a parking structure under the Shalom Meir Tower and will be 18,000 sq. feet. One of Common Sense’s selling points is that its vertically-oriented systems can better maximize available space and thus deliver full grocery store levels of product fulfillment in a fraction of the space.

That both of these stories happened on the same day is a coincidence, but it also highlights the moves grocery stores are making towards automation. Robotic fulfillment centers like these use totes on rails to quickly assemble items from online orders and hand them off to a human who puts them into bags for pickup or delivery. Robots can move faster than humans, they don’t get tired or need breaks, all of which can reduce the order fulfillment time down from hours to as little as a half hour for some systems.

This faster fulfillment is why so many grocery retailers are trying out robots. Takeoff Technologies has partnered with Ahold Delhaize and Albertsons, and Walmart is testing out automatic fulfillment through Alert Innovation. In each of those cases, robot-powered fulfillment centers are being built into the back of existing stores rather than off-site locations like Kroger and Common Sense’s.

These robotic fulfillment centers are very much in the early stages, but you can expect to see more of them over the next year as more grocers test and implement automation to get you your groceries faster.

Here’s The Spoon’s 2019 Food Robotics Market Map

Today we head to San Francisco for The Spoon’s first-ever food-robotics event. ArticulAte kicks off at 9:05 a.m. sharp at the General Assembly venue in SF, and throughout the daylong event talk will be about all things robots, from the technology itself to business and regulatory issues surrounding it.

When you stop and look around the food industry, whether it’s new restaurants embracing automation or companies changing the way we get our groceries, it’s easy to see why the food robotics market is projected to be a $3.1 billion market by 2025.

But there’s no one way to make a robot, and so to give you a sense of who’s who in this space, and to celebrate the start of ArticulAte, The Spoon’s editors put together this market map of the food robotics landscape.

This is the first edition of this map, which we’ll improve and build upon as the market changes and grows. If you have any suggestions for other companies or see ones we missed you think should be in there, let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at tips@thespoon.tech.

Click on the map below to enlarge it.

The Food Robotics Market 2019:

Takeoff is Creating New Hybrid, Hyperlocal Robotic Grocery Fulfillment Centers

This fall, startup Takeoff will be launching its first hyperlocal grocery micro-fulfillment center powered by robots and artificial intelligence (AI). Whew! There’s a lot to unpack in that opener, mostly because Takeoff is at the center of quite a few trends we’re seeing in grocery retail.

First, a brief explainer. Takeoff partners with existing grocery retailers (the company declined to provide specifics names at this time) and builds mini-robotic fulfillment centers inside these stores. Takeoff co-founders Jose Vicente Aguerrevere and Max Pedro told me in an interview that their system requires 6,000 – 10,000 square feet, which is “an eighth or less” of the size of a typical grocery store.

As you can see in the video below, these fulfillment centers are big, automated system that shuttle around crates of products, bringing them to a human picker, who bags the items for pickup or delivery. The robots are from KNAPP, and Takeoff has built an end-to-end software solution that manages inventory, robotic fulfillment and customer delivery logistics for its system.

Depending on the partnership, customers will either order groceries through the Takeoff app, or through the retailer’s app. Once placed, the order is sent to the robot fulfillment center where it automatically grabs the selected items. After the items are sorted and bagged, customers can either pull up to a special Takeoff drive-through at the store or schedule a delivery within a two-hour window.

Because Takeoff partners with existing retail stores, it doesn’t have to manage its own inventory. Vicente Aguerrevere and Pedro said that additionally, with Takeoff being embedded in the store, they get a hyperlocal view into what products are popular in each neighborhood. With this data, Takeoff can fine tune its own stocking and fulfillment procedures to be more efficient.

While it remains to be seen what Takeoff will look like when it actually launches (location TBA), the startup is worth watching because it will sit in this nexus of so many grocery trends: microhubs, robotics, and pick-up/delivery.

At first glance, Takeoff is kind of like Farmstead, which is using AI to precisely manage inventory and deliver groceries from smaller, urban microhubs. By skipping big warehouse fulfillment centers (a la Good Eggs) and their requisite zoning requirements, Takeoff can go deeper into urban areas to facilitate faster grocery service by being closer to the customer. But where Farmstead is using humans, Takeoff is relying on robots.

This robotics approach is then similar to Common Sense Robotics, which is using robots to speed up delivery in its own microhubs. Robots can move quickly and accurately, and operate heavy loads without a break. But Common Sense builds its own bespoke micro warehouses to re-shape the supply chain. Takeoff is working within existing supply chains in grocery stores, leveraging supermarket infrastructures and neighborhood locations.

Hooking up with grocery stores doesn’t just help Takeoff leverage someone else’s inventory — it also helps with the last mile. Because Takeoff functions inside grocery stores, which are already close to where people live, customers can either pick up their groceries while running errands or let Takeoff’s software coordinate a drop-off through various delivery services.

Takeoff plans to make money through revenue sharing with potentially no up-front cost for the store, depending on the arrangement. Takeoff is based in Waltham, MA, has 75 employees and recently closed a $15 million Series B round, bringing its total fundraising to $37 million.

There is definitely a lot to unpack with Takeoff, now we’ll just see if retailers bring them on board to pack more of their groceries.