Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

grocery

Tastermonial Lets You Scan Grocery Items to See Which are the Best Fit for Your Diet

Sticking to a diet — or avoiding an allergen — is hard enough without having to worry about potentially hidden ingredients in grocery products. Does that jerky have soy in it, or do those potato chips actually contain dairy?

One startup is trying to make grocery shopping more transparent and personalized. Tastermonial is a new startup based in the Bay Area which offers a link between personalized nutrition services and actual food brands. Users can download the Tastermonial app and use it to scan products on grocery shelves. The app then extracts nutritional data and gives viewers a readout of the item, noting whether or not it would be a good fit for them to eat, based off of their pre-saved dietary profile. If it’s not, Tastermonial will recommend other, better-suited grocery products available via delivery through one of their retail partners.

Founded in July 2019 by Bude Piccin, the startup launched a beta version of its app in January 2020 and currently has about 200 users. Thus far Tastermonial’s database includes over 400,000 SKUs, including everything from CPGs to frozen and refrigerated foods. Piccin said that they pull nutritional data from public databases.

On a recent phone call, Piccin told me that the app can only scan items and give both a general evaluation (good choice for many diets) and a personal evaluation (not suitable for you based on your profile). They plan to roll out the ability to purchase through retail partners later this year, starting with Piccin’s former employer, Amazon.

Thus far, users have to input their own dietary preferences and any food allergens, however, Tastermonial plans to let users link its app to microbiome- or DNA-driven food personalization services to automatically upload their nutrition profile. The company is already in talks with DAYTWO, a personalized nutrition company which recommends recipes to individuals based on their microbiome.

Tastermonial’s app is free to use. The company plans to make money by adding a small fee (5 to 10 percent) onto each sale through their retail partners. There’s also a SaaS play. Piccin said that Tastermonial will partner with personalized nutrition services, like DAYTWO, to provide the ingredient layer to those recipe recommendations. She explained that Tastermonial’s database could help users select the most health-appropriate foods for their suggested meals — all of which could be delivered to their door.

Since the company is so early-stage, it’s hard to predict if it’ll be able to follow through on its plans to become the go-to interface for grocery shopping based on your nutrition. But Tastermonial is tapping into a trend that, like Hansel, is so hot right now: personalization. (So hot, in fact, that we had a whole conference dedicated to personalization a few weeks ago in NYC.)

In addition to Tastermonial, there are several other companies racing to bring personalization to the grocery store. Pinto (formerly Sage Project) and DNA Nudge are two startups that pull from individuals’ nutrition profiles to help them decide which retail products are best suited to their needs. According to Piccin, Tastermonial’s differentiator is its ability to connect users with alternative products that are better for them, if the grocery options don’t cut it. “We’re connecting to that practical side,” she told me.

My question is whether or not consumers will actually take that extra step. Will people really create an entire online grocery order for one or two items, pay a premium for delivery, and wait for it to show up at their door?

Tastermonial is betting on it. Considering that 81 percent of consumers never order groceries online, that’s a risky bet, which is why I think that Tastermonial’s SaaS play has more potential than the app itself. As personalized nutrition services become more popular, more and more people will be looking for ways to easily shop for the best ingredients for their individual needs. If it becomes part of the personalized nutrition services themselves, Tastermonial could help make the process just a little bit easier.

Coolhobo is Developing AR to Identify Dietary Restrictions in the Grocery Aisle

I’ve been on a diet since the beginning of the year. It’s nothing crazy, just trying to cut out a lot of sugar and carbs. This involves more time at the grocery store because I have to read the label and inspect the nutrition facts on every item before I buy it.

So I was intrigued when Chinese AR startup Coolhobo posted a video of a new technology its working on called Hobose that uses your phone’s camera and computer vision to quickly find foods that fit your particular dietary needs/restrictions. The Hobose technology can be integrated into a native app from a partner like a grocery retailer, and once opened, Hobose creates a personalized “Traffic Light” for shoppers. Users go through and select what they want to avoid, things like high calories, or high carbs, high fats, etc.. There’s also a ranking for how many additives a shopper will tolerate.

Once in the store, the shopper fires up the mobile app and points the camera at various products on the shelves. As each item is scanned, Hobose comes back with a green light (good!) or red light (too much of what you don’t want). You can see it in action in this demo video that Coolhobo posted.

Hobose in action, green is a go, red is a no!

When we first wrote about Coolhobo almost two years ago, the company was working on much bigger, virtual assistant for grocery shoppers. It would direct people to items in the store, provide lots of information on that product (like the story of an imported wine), and also had social features.

This is definitely more of a stripped down solution from the company. Coolhobo Co-Founder and CEO Loic Kobbes told me via email “We’ve learned from many iterations that users don’t want to be overloaded with information, they just want to know what’s good for them.”

It’s easy to see the appeal of this type of fast, should I/shouldn’t I information at the grocery store where there are a ton of products, some of which may make health claims that are at the very least, misleading. Other companies are working on nutrition guidance solutions as well, such as DNA Nudge, which uses a combination of your DNA and a wearable that scans products to give you a thumbs up or thumbs down on particular items.

Right now, Kobbes said that Hobose is in the development stage and the company is looking for partners to test it out. While Coolhobo may be offering a more svelte AR application than its previous work, it is expanding its worldview for the first time and looking to bring in partners from countries outside of China.

I’m not sure if it will make it to my local market, but who knows? Perhaps I can replace reading each box I pick up with a quick scan of my phone.

Report: Amazon’s Grocery Store Will Have Robotic Fulfillment

When Bloomberg surfaced a report last week giving us a first-look inside Amazon’s new grocery store, we were struck by how conventional it was, especially when it came to automation and robotics. But a report from the HNGRY blog this week says that actually, the Amazon grocery store will have robot-powered micro-fulfillment.

From HNGRY’s story:

HNGRY has now confirmed that Amazon is working with Dematic to provide this very technology inside of its new stores, which will ultimately enable faster than average last-mile delivery and in-store pickup. The company has carefully designed this 7,200 sqft area to house room-temperature robotic-picked storage aisles that will house everything from alcohol to packaged food, occupying about 21% of its 33,574 sqft total footprint.

If HNGRY’s reporting is accurate, this actually makes more sense than Bloomberg’s report in a lot of ways. First, Amazon loves robots. It bought robotics company Kiva Systems a long time ago for automating Amazon warehouses. And Amazon is building a big new, dedicated robotics center near Boston.

But it also makes sense from a competitive standpoint. Automated order fulfillment can translate into faster turnaround for grocery pickup or delivery. Already, Walmart is working with Alert Innovation on robot micro-fulfillment, and Albertsons has partnered with Takeoff Technologies.

It would be highly unlikely that Amazon, which prizes speed and efficiency above all else, would cede this type of advantage to its competitors. Amazon offers two-hour delivery for Prime members and waived the delivery fee for Prime members towards the end of last year.

Amazon is also seeing growth in its grocery delivery business. In its most recent earnings report, Amazon said that delivery orders from Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods doubled year-over-year in Q4 of 2019.

HNGRY’s report is reassuring, in a way. I was worried Amazon’s supermarket was shaping up to be a bit of a bore. But it’s likely the company still has a few more technological surprises in store.

Peapod Shutting Down Online Grocery Shopping and Delivery in the Midwest

Ahold Delhaize USA announced this week that it is shutting down the Midwest division of its Peapod online grocery business. Starting Feb 18, customers in Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana will no longer be able to place online grocery orders through Peapod.

As part of this move, Ahold said it will close distribution and food preparation facilities across Illinois which will cause the loss of 500 jobs. According to Milwaukee News and Events, 50,000 people use Peapod in the Midwest, placing 10,500 orders weekly. Ahold said that Peapod’s Midwest operation accounted for $97 million of the company’s overall $1.1 billion in revenue.

Selma Postma, President of Peapod, told Milwaukee News and Events that the issue for Peapod in the Midwest was that it was online only, so there was no network of physical stores for its supply chain or for customers to visit and get to know the brand.

Ahold’s Midwest contraction comes at a time when grocery retailers are aggressively expanding their online, delivery and pickup operations. Kroger is building out automated fulfillment warehouses. Alberstons is placing robotic micro-fulfillment centers in the backs of its stores. Walmart is rolling out its Delivery Unlimited service nationwide. And Amazon waived its grocery delivery fee for its Prime members (oh, and it’s building out its own chain of physical supermarkets).

Ahold said it closing down Peapod’s Midwest operations to focus on the East Coast, where it is actually trying out different e-commerce-forward store formats. Last year, Ahold subsidiary Giant Foods opened up a physical hub powered by Peapod that services delivery and pickup of e-commerce orders.

There’s a saying that vertical cuts are better than horizontal ones. So while we never applaud people losing their jobs, the decision to lop off the Midwest to strengthen Ahold’s position on the East Coast makes sense. Now Ahold will just need to keep innovating and pushing to keep up with the grocery delivery competition.

Merryfield Raises $3.5 M, Set to Launch App That Rewards Clean Label Purchases

Merryfield, a soon-to-launch app that rewards shoppers with gift cards for buying clean label products, announced this week that it has raised $3.5 million in a seed round.

Merryfield, which will launch on iOS in April, was founded by David Mayer, a former healthcare private equity investor, and Joe Dickson, former director of quality standards at Whole Foods Market. The app curates a list of packaged goods products that meet Merryfield’s set of clean label standards, with participating companies paying membership fees to Merryfield as well as the costs of the points when shoppers buy their products.

The platform is retailer agnostic — all Merryfield users need to do is look at the app for clean label products when shopping and then scan their receipts that include any qualifying purchases. Points will then be added to their accounts that can be used for gift cards from brands such as Adidas, Amazon, Sephora, Starbucks, Target and Whole Foods.

Dickson told The Spoon during a phone interview that Merryfield chose to go the app route instead of a package label sticker because it easily allows shoppers to research products and track shopping lists.

“It takes hours to go down the aisles to figure out what brands people should trust — that’s why we’re here,” he said. “We want to incentivize people to try new brands and for continuing to choose those products. We’re looking to thoughtfully curate the brands and products to focus on the true innovators and standard bearers.”

Merryfield’s appeal to brands is that it can be difficult and expensive for individual companies to create their own loyalty programs, a necessity amid increasing competition and rising customer acquisition costs in the food space, Dickson said. Speaking of members, Merryfield boasts of well known food companies: Applegate Natural & Organic Meats, Beyond Meat, Califia Farms, Good Culture, GoMacro, Health-Ade Kombucha, Justin’s, Once Upon a Farm, Thinksport, RightRice, Stonyfield Organic and Vital Proteins. Merryfield said in a press release it is looking to add six to eight additional brands covering different product categories ahead of its April launch.

Merryfield will eventually be available on Android devices, and Dickson said his team is looking into possibly including ecommerce purchases. The Boston-based 2-year-old startup is a public benefit corporation that donates 1 percent of its sales directly to No Kid Hungry.

The CPG industry is increasingly leaning toward cleaner labels, but as Dickson pointed out, average consumers either have to rely on label claims or conduct their own research to find products that meet their needs. A third party that verifies products may be welcomed by consumers, especially with the promise that their purchases also lead to rewards.

Halla’s CEO is Trying to Netflix-ify the Grocery Aisle

Anyone who’s visited the cereal aisle of a grocery store knows that every time we shop for food, we’re bombarded with choice. Which product will be the best on for our tastes, our diets, and our family’s preferences?

That’s why I typically end up reaching for the same box of cereal (and jar of peanut butter, loaf of bread, etc.) every time. But some companies — like startup Halla — are trying to make grocery shopping a more individualized experience.

That’s why we can’t wait to hear Halla’s CEO Spencer Price speak at Customize on February 27th. To learn more about how Price is leveraging data to make grocery shopping a super personalized experience, check out his Q&A below. Then use code SPOON15 to get 15% off your tickets to Customize here!

Tell us a little bit about what Halla does.
Halla is a taste intelligence company that enables retailers to predict the preferences of their shoppers in real-time. Our enterprise APIs power highly-personalized shopping experiences across all retail environments, driving double-digit increases in basket size and customer retention for retailers across the globe.

There are lots of companies out there that facilitate online grocery shopping — how is Halla unique? 
We know that great recommendations lead to more purchases and better experiences, but existing options for retailers are costly, complicated, and ineffective.

Halla is different. We’re obsessed with understanding food. Because when we know food, we know people. And when we know people, we get to help retailers deliver delightful shopping experiences through deeper customer insight. 

Unlike anything else on the market, Halla is delivering food recommendations with more precision due to our proprietary data that’s able to break food items down to the molecule. With a deep understanding of each item we’re then able to make smarter recommendations based on the human experience, such as delicious food pairings or individual dietary restrictions.  

What are the benefits of a personalized grocery shopping experience, both for the retailer and the consumer?
Think about the Spotify ecosystem, versus Apple Music or YouTube. Think about the Netflix interface, versus any other streaming platform. When personalization is deeply integrated into the user experience, it leads to significant increases in conversion rates, customer retention, and all-around engagement.

So, shoppers will see only the items that are relevant to them, and will be inspired to discover new products — all while helping complete their cart as efficiently as possible. The retailer sees bigger baskets, happier customers, and has finally created a shopping environment that drives true shopper loyalty.

What do you think personalized food or drink will look like 5 years down the road?
While there are many efforts and initiatives in “standardization” — as opposed to personalization — like we see in protein bar brands, all-in-one shakes, and the likes of Soylent, there are still over 30,000 unique products in the average supermarket, and counting. The need for “product navigation”, “product discovery”, and personalization solutions will only continue to grow. How precisely this will manifest remains to be seen.

One choice that is easy to make is whether or not you should join us at Customize (hint: you should). Use code SPOON15 to get 15% off your tickets here.

Study: Online Grocery Sales to Hit $143 Billion by 2025

A newly released report from Nielsen and the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) saying that online sales of food and beverages will reach $143 billion by 2025 (hat tip to Grocery Dive). Nielsen and FMI also said that this $143 billion will represent 30 percent of all omnichannel food and beverage sales.

What’s notable about these new figures is how much online grocery shopping is accelerating. In 2017, Nielsen and FMI predicted that online grocery sales would hit $100 billion by 2025. The two firms then updated their figure last year to say online grocery shopping would hit $100 billion between 2022 and 2024.

This acceleration is due in part to the logistics and delivery infrastructures being put in place by retailers. Grocery Dive writes that according to Nielsen and FMI, things like Amazon auto replenishment, two-hour delivery and the widespread availability of buy online and pick up at stores are contributing to the boost in online sales.

We’ve written before about how grocery retailers are in a Field of Dreams scenario. All the major grocery chains are investing heavily in logistics and building out delivery infrastructure now for the online grocery shoppers to come. Amazon waived its delivery fee for Prime members. Walmart is rapidly rolling out its Delivery Unlimited program nationwide. Albertsons is building out micro-fulfillment centers. And Kroger is doing everything from robot-powered fulfillment warehouses to testing self-driving grocery delivery vehicles.

All this investment will (and is, evidently) moving more people towards buying groceries online.

And in what may come as a surprise, “the olds” are driving this adoption of online grocery shopping. Nielsen and FMI found that shoppers between the ages of 45 and 64 held the largest amount of omnichannel grocery spending. Gen Z shoppers still prefer to do their grocery shopping in-store.

I expect we will see continued acceleration in the space, especially as grocery stores expand the delivery of food to include things like deli and made to order meals.

How will Amazon’s 150M Prime Members Tip the Grocery Scales?

Amazon announced its fourth quarter earnings yesterday, and among the big numbers the company released was the news that it now has 150 million Prime members worldwide. That’s a lot of people with access to Fleabag. Well, more germane to our purposes here at The Spoon, that’s a lot of people who can get free grocery delivery courtesy of Amazon.

We should caveat that the 150 million number is global, and Amazon didn’t break out how many of those members are in the U.S. What we do know is that number is a 50 percent increase in the number of memberships from April 2018, when the company said it had 100 million Prime members worldwide. And while this isn’t a first-hand source, in January of last year, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated that Amazon had 101 million Prime members in the U.S.

Prime members in more than 2,000 U.S. cities get free one- and two-hour grocery delivery from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh, a perk Amazon added in October of last year (we explained why Amazon did this). In yesterday’s earnings, Amazon said that delivery orders from Whole Foods and Amazon Fresh more than doubled in the fourth quarter year-over-year.

To be fair, “doubling” is a vague and almost useless stat since we don’t know what the previous number was. But flipping that one lever had an immediate impact. What happens as Amazon starts ramping up its grocery efforts?

While Amazon owns all of the Whole Foods locations, the company is building out its own grocery stores, the first of which is slated to open next month in Woodland Hills, CA. Having its own grocery chain is important for a number of reasons.

First, Amazon stores won’t be bound by the same food restrictions as Whole Foods, which doesn’t stock items that contain things like artificial sweeteners or colors. So Amazon will be able to carry more of the products people want.

Second, Amazon is building its own grocery supply chain and logistics from the ground up, so speed and order fulfillment are bound to be innovative and fast. Additionally, as it builds out more physical locations, Amazon will be able to offer more grocery pickup options instead of just delivery.

Finally, the company has tons of data on its Prime members. It knows what they buy, how often, etc.. It will be able to leverage this to make recommendations (perhaps a nudge from Alexa), create promotional offers or bundle in other services (package pickup or return).

All of this comes amidst a fierce battle for grocery supremacy in the U.S. Walmart is rolling out its Delivery Unlimited service nationally, and Kroger is building out robot-powered smart warehouses across the country to speed up online grocery order fulfillment. And both of those retailers are experimenting with grocery delivery via self-driving vehicles.

But Amazon’s Prime Membership gives it a unique weapon in grocery wars — an army of people paying for a closer relationship with Amazon. For better or worse, Amazon is a deeply embedded part of many people’s lives here in the U.S., which means Amazon will be able to tie together technology and data and convenience together in a package in a way its rivals will be hard pressed to match.

Walmart’s Super Bowl Ad Uses Famous Characters to Push Grocery Pickup

You know something has officially “made it” when it has its own Super Bowl ad. So by that completely arbitrary standard, it’s safe to say that grocery pickup is now “a thing,” thanks to Walmart.

Walmart shared its Super Bowl spot on its company blog today. The retail giant’s Big Game ad touts the convenience of grocery pickup using a host of sci-fi related pop culture icons like C3PO, Bill S. Preston from Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, Buzz Lightyear, The Lego Movie‘s Wildstyle and Benny the Spaceman, Groot and a (much older) Flash Gordon, the titular character from the 1980s movie.

This is Walmart’s first Super Bowl ad and was, I imagine, a licensing logistical nightmare. It follows Walmart’s similar grocery pickup campaign from last year that featured famous cars like the Batmobile and Scooby-Doo’s Mystery Machine.

Walmart’s doubling down on its famous cameo count reflects the company’s continued push for consumer adoption of grocery pickup. According to a recent Retail Info Systems story, Walmart’s grocery pickup is currently available in roughly 3,000 stores.

Last year, Walmart also started experimenting with back-of-house automated fulfillment at its Salem, New Hampshire locations. Using Alert Innovation’s robotic system, Walmart can automate the assembly of an online grocery order so a consumer can pick it up directly from the store in as little as a half hour. Walmart’s automated fulfillment is similar to the ones powered by Takeoff Technologies, and both solutions aim to make the fulfillment of online orders faster and give the consumer flexibility to pick up their groceries while they are out and about (rather than having to wait at home during a specific time for delivery).

It’s not too surprising that Walmart is putting its marketing dollars behind grocery pickup instead of delivery right now. As noted, Walmart grocery pickup is broadly available, and the company only started rolling out its Delivery Unlimited subscription service nationally in September of last year. At that time, Delivery Unlimited was expected to hit 50 percent of the country by the end of 2019.

But if delivery keeps pace and spreads across the entire U.S. this year, then perhaps we’ll see a Super Bowl ad with a cavalcade of pop culture icons getting their groceries delivered directly to their doors next year.

Ready Meal Delivery From Grocery Stores Could Be a Really Big Deal

It’s not uncommon in the Albrecht house to, at four o’clock in the afternoon, realize that we don’t have anything really for dinner. More often than not, the solution is to swing by the grocery store and pick up a broiler chicken from the hot bar. And while we’re at it, maybe a salad and sides too.

It’s a lot cheaper than getting a restaurant meal, and we can bundle it in with any other groceries we need to get. Plus, while we have done nothing other than pay, having a roast chicken kinda provides the illusion that the family is eating a home cooked meal.

Instacart announced this week that it was rolling out delivery of made-to-order foods, and this move could be a very big deal. And not just for the Albrechts.

The Instacart press announcement mentioned the deli counter of a grocery store in particular, but it’s not hard to imagine all of the hot bar and salad bar areas of a retailer jumping on board. Rotisserie chickens, flatbread pizzas, orzo salads all of it available for delivery to customers.

Supermarkets are already focusing more on prepared foods. A Progressive Grocer Retail Deli Review survey last year found:

The vast majority of survey respondents said that their prepared food programs are increasing both in dollar (78 percent) and unit (80 percent) sales. Additionally, nearly 70 percent of respondents said that they’re either “significantly” or “modestly” increasing the space devoted to prepared foods.

While online grocery shopping is still a small percentage of overall grocery sales, adding the ability to get hot, prepared grocery food delivered to your door is a good way for a retailer to get a halo of additional sales online. Much like when I pick up a roast chicken, I also get milk and probably a dessert of some kind, it’s likely that when ordering a hot, prepared meal I’d throw a few more things into the basket.

In particular, Amazon and Walmart could get a nice jolt from selling more prepared foods for delivery. A quick perusal of Amazon/Whole Foods and Walmart websites shows that they currently offer some prepared foods for delivery, but there is a lot of room to add more. Given the lightning fast logistics of both companies (Amazon Prime members get two hour delivery, Walmart offers Delivery Unlimited), it’s not hard to envision just in time delivery of a hot dinner to your door.

Additionally, think about all the new types of data that could be gleaned selling prepared meals for delivery would translate into. In addition to a customer’s CPG buying habits, the company would get much more insight at what people eat and they actually eat it.

For its part, Instacart can provide the delivery and logistics to its retail partners, but then retailers are turning over that customer relationship to a third-party delivery service. If made-to-go meal delivery takes off, it could wind up biting Instacart in the basket and retailers bring that customer relationship back in-house.

This could also set up another front in the third-party delivery wars. Postmates, Door Dash and Uber Eats have dabbled in grocery, leaving it mostly to Instacart. But when the groceries you’re delivering are actual hot meals for dinner, you could see Door Dash and Uber Eats get more aggressive about forming grocery relationships.

There are still plenty of ifs, surrounding the idea of delivery of made-to-go meals from grocery stores. But at least Instacart isn’t too chicken to try the idea out.

Trax Uses Shelf Cameras and Computer Vision to Track Grocery Inventory

For grocery retailers that operate at scale, small improvements can have a big impact on the bottom line. One of the ways to boost that bottom line, according to Trax, is better shelf inventory management.

Based in Singapore, Trax uses a combination of shelf and ceiling cameras, along with computer vision, to give retailers and CPG companies a more accurate reading of what’s on store shelves.

Trax installs customized camera modules on store shelves to keep tabs on products. Trax also augments these shelf cameras with ceiling mounted cameras for monitoring fresh sections of stores. The cameras take a picture of the every hour, and those images are sent to the cloud, where they are analyzed to ensure that products are available, on the correct shelf and price compliant. Based on what the system reports back, store associates can be dispatched to address any issues.

I spoke with Mark Cook, Head of Retailer Solutions for Trax, by phone this week, and he told me that retailers using the Trax inventory management system have seen a 1 percent bump in sales by just ensuring that more product is in stock. One percent may not sound like a lot, but again, when multiplied across all the shelves in a store, and across all the stores in a chain, that small percentage can represent big money.

In addition to grocery retailers, Trax also counts CPG companies like Coca-Cola and Henkel as customers. CPG companies use Trax basically for auditing. With the system, they can monitor their shelf presence in stores and ensure they are getting what they are paying for in terms of promotion.

Trax has a SaaS business model where the hardware is provided and the customer pays a subscription fee for the analytics.

If Trax’s solution sounds familiar, that’s because other companies are taking similar approach to automating shelf management. Walmart is deploying Bossa Nova shelf-scanning robots to roam it store floors, and the mega-retailer also launched its IRL store this year, which uses banks of cameras to monitor store inventory in real-time.

Trigo is another company using cameras to help stores with inventory management, though Trigo is mostly focused on using computer vision to help create cashierless checkout systems for stores. I asked Cook if cashierless checkout was on Trax’s roadmap and he said the company is more focused now just on shelf management. “There’s money on the table with inventory.”

Founded in 2010, Trax is headquartered in Singapore and has roughly 800 employees. The company has CPG customers in 70 different countries. Cook wouldn’t disclose retail partners, but said it is working with retailers in the U.S., U.K. and Israel.

Aeon to Bring Ocado’s Robotic Grocery Fulfillment Centers to Japan

Over the recent holiday break, Aeon, one of Japan’s biggest grocery store chains, announced a partnership to build out Ocado’s robotic fulfillment centers (h/t to ZDNet).

Based in the UK, Ocado is an online grocer with a high-tech platform that combines software and robotic smart warehouses to facilitate fast delivery for customers.

From the press announcement:

Aeon will launch a new company by March 2020 to enhance digital, using AI and robotics, to provide a more convenient online shopping experience for our consumers. Leveraging [Ocado Smart Platform], the first [Customer Fulfillment Center] in Japan will be built by 2023.

This is the latest international partnership for Ocado. The company has similar agreements with ICA Group in Sweden, Group Casino in France, and with Kroger here in the U.S. Kroger invested in Ocado and has already started building out a number of Ocado-style robotic warehouses in places like Dallas, TX and Monroe, OH.

Online grocery shopping is still a small percentage of overall grocery shopping, but it’s growing. Automated fulfillment facilities like those from Ocado and Takeoff will be coming online throughout the next year and could give online grocery shopping a boost by providing ultra fast order processing for either pickup or delivery.

It’s a trend we’ll definitely be watching, around the world, in 2020.