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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

grocery

Online Grocer Boxed Bulks up by Going Public via SPAC

Boxed, a grocery e-commerce site that specializes in selling bulk items, is going public via special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). Announced today, the deal is being done via merger with Seven Oaks Acquisition Corp., and the combined company will be valued at roughly $900 million. To date, Boxed had raised $243 .6million in funding.

Founded in 2013, Boxed is kinda like a Costco without the membership requirement, selling bulk goods to both consumers and businesses. In addition to selling stuff online, Boxed also licenses out its order fulfillment and logistics technology to other retailers. In January of this year, the company entered into a multi-year partnership with Aeon Group, one of Asia’s largest retail conglomerates. (Aeon also led Boxed’s $100 million round of funding back in 2018.)

Boxed’s decision to go public via SPAC comes at a time of drastically increased interest in grocery e-commerce. COVID drove record amounts of people into online grocery shopping last year, and while those numbers have come down as the pandemic recedes, Coresight Research data shows that more than one-third of online grocery shoppers will keep up the new habit post-pandemic. Additionally, the ship-to-home category of grocery e-commerce that Boxed is in has hovered around $2 billion from month to month over the last year, according to Brick Meets Click.

All of this increased interest in online grocery shopping also means Boxed is facing increased pressure on a number of fronts. Not only does Boxed need to compete with traditional retailers like Walmart, which is rapidly expanding its delivery options and automating its fulfillment, but there is a raft of well-funded newcomers to contend with as well. On the ship-to-home side, companies like Imperfect Foods and Misfits Market both raised sizeable rounds of funding this year to expand. And on the smaller end of the spectrum, startups like Gopuff, Fridge No More and JOKR promise grocery delivery in as little as 15 minutes.

Boxed will now have additional funding to better compete. According to today’s press announcement Boxed “is expected to receive $334 million in net cash proceeds from a combination of Seven Oaks’ cash in trust of approximately $259 million, assuming no redemptions by Seven Oaks’ public stockholders, as well as a $120 million fully committed private placement financing.” Boxed CEO Chieh Huang will remain in charge of the new entity.

Hungryroot Raises $40M Series C for its Predictive Grocery Service

Hungryroot, which uses artificial intelligence (AI) to power its personalized online grocery service, announced today that it has raised a $40 million Series C round of funding led by the Growth Fund of L Catterton. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Hungryroot to $75.4 million.

Hungryroot is a little different from other online grocers in that it uses machine learning and predictive modeling to fill a customer’s cart. When customers first use Hungryroot, they take a quiz to tell the service their food and taste preferences. Hungryroot then runs that data through its algorithms to pre-fill the online cart with groceries and recipes it thinks the customer will like. Customers, however are free to remove and add items a la carte. Items are boxed up and shipped to the customer, starting at $59 per delivery.

It’s been a big funding year for grocery related startups, as just about any company related to getting you food has picked up fresh capital this year. Other mail-order grocery services that have received funding this year include Misfits Market ($200M), Imperfect Produce ($110M), and Weee! ($310M).

A big reason for this rash of funding, of course, is that the pandemic pushed people into online grocery shopping and that behavior appears to be sticking with consumers. Coresight Research reported that more than one-third of online grocery shoppers don’t plan on changing up their online grocery shopping habits once the pandemic ends. And according to Brick Meets Click, U.S. online grocery sales in April of this year were $8.4 billion, up from $7.2 billion year-over-year.

In its press announcement today, Hungryroot said that it has been profitable since the beginning of 2020 and is on track to reach $175 million in revenue this year. The company also forecasts more than $300 million in revenue in 2022. The company said that it will use its new funding to increase the number of groceries it carries, recipes offered and will invest in automation technology.

JOKR Joins the Speedy Grocery Delivery Fray in NYC

We are just about halfway through the year and the emerging food tech trend so far in 2021 is definitely fast grocery delivery from dark stores. New York City, which already has Fridge No More and Gorillas, can now add JOKR, which launched today, to its roster of super fast on-demand grocery delivery service.

JOKR’s service may sound familiar to avid Spoon readers. The startup operates a number of delivery-only grocery store hubs scattered across New York City. These smaller stores don’t carry as many items as a full-on supermarket, and only have a delivery radius of about a mile. Once an order is placed, JOKR fulfills and delivers it to the customer in under 15 minutes. There is no minimum order, no delivery fee and all delivery people are employees of the company.

Unlike rivals Fridge No More and Gorillas, however, JOKR isn’t just operating in Brooklyn neighborhoods. The company’s current delivery zones include most of Manhattan below 35th street, Williamsburg, and Long Island City, and Queens. More neighborhoods will be added in the coming weeks, and Zach Dennett, Co-Founder of JOKR told me by phone last week that the company will be expanding to Boston “very soon.”

Speedy grocery delivery has exploded over the past six months around the globe. In Europe, services like Weezy, Glovo, and Getir have all raised money to expand their services. Here in the U.S., Gopuff raised $1.5 billion for its half hour delivery, 24 hours a day, and in San Francisco, Food Rocket launched its delivery in San Francisco last week.

I asked Dennett why he thought this new market category was erupting so quickly. “The pandemic has accelerated customers’ learning to shop for groceries online,” he said, “as soon as they’ve gotten to experience 15 minute delivery? That’s what they want.” Dennett also said that the pandemic caused a depression in commercial real estate, so companies are able to lease store locations much more cheaply than before.

During JOKR’s beta right now, Dennett said that a typical customers first uses JOKR because they forgot something (Think: milk, eggs, etc.). Once they use the service, however, Dennett said those customers then transition into more traditional grocery shopping, increasing their basket size.

The big challenge for JOKR, according to Dennett, is inventory management. “We have this very interesting problem,” Dennett said, “We have to achieve every customer need in the fewest SKUs possible,” because the stores themselves are not that big. Plus, the inventory for each neighborhood is different, which means JOKR has to cover a lot of bases in an efficient manner. “We have to have a pasta that you’re happy with,” Dennett said, “Are you brand loyal, are you shape loyal? Are you interested in gluten-free or kosher?”

The bigger question for JOKR and all of these services now is whether customers will change up their grocery habits and switch over to speedy delivery.

Report: Instacart Looking to Add Automated Grocery Fulfillment

According to a story out in Bloomberg today, Instacart is looking to create automated fulfillment centers, which would use robots to assemble grocery orders. These fulfillment centers would either be standalone or attached to an existing grocery store.

From the Bloomberg story:

Under one proposal, Instacart would create a network of stand-alone fulfillment centers that would handle more than 3,500 orders a day with more than 100,000 units sold, according to documents reviewed by Bloomberg. More than 700 robots and about 160 people would do the work, with the machines fetching most of the items and workers gathering fresh and perishable food. The installation would cost $20 million, with annual maintenance costs of $380,000 a year. A second option is a smaller 25,000-square foot attached to a store that would handle more than 700 orders a day totaling 22,000 items. It would have more than 150 robots, 40 workers and would cost $6.5 million to set up and $270,000 a year to maintain, according to the documents.

The reason for this automation plan is simple: speed. Speed of order fulfillment is becoming more critical to a grocery retailer’s success than ever. The pandemic forced a lot of people into trying online grocery shopping last year, and while overall grocery e-commerce numbers have dipped since the record highs of 2020, the habit appears to be sticking with people. Brick Meets Click data showed that online grocery sales for pickup or delivery were $6.6 billion in April of this year. That’s down from the $7.1 billion in grocery e-commerce sales in March of this year, but up from $5.3 billion in April 2020.

All those online grocery orders need to be picked and packed before they get to the customer. Instacart’s current solution is to have human gig workers (Instacart’s “Shoppers”) do this. But a robotic fulfillment center can assemble a grocery order in minutes, which is much faster than a person wandering the aisles looking for particular brands of peanut butter and loaves of bread.

This need for speed is why so many existing grocery retailers are investing in automated fulfillment. Kroger recently opened up the first of its standalone, automated Customer Fulfillment Centers powered by Ocado’s robotic technology. And both Walmart and Albertsons are expanding their use of automated fulfillment centers as well.

Instacart is obviously feeling the time crunch. Earlier this month, it launched a 30-minute delivery service of its own, but that service is only available in 15 cities right now. But Instacart faces pressure from a new wave of delivery-only startups vying for your speedy delivery dollar. Gopuff averages half-hour delivery times and operates 24 hours a day. And startups like Fridge No More and Gorillas offer delivery with no minimum order in just 10 – 15 minutes. No wonder Instacart is eyeballing automating some of its processes.

Of course, any talk of automation immediately brings up the question of jobs and who will get replaced. It’s a big, ongoing discussion around the push and pull of innovation, equality and what kind of society we want to create. In the case of Instacart, it’s a natural question to ask as the company swelled its gig shopper ranks to more than 500,000 shoppers during the height of the pandemic last year. What happens to all of those people when the robots come in?

We reached out to Instacart for comment on the Bloomberg story and received the following emailed statement:

We’re constantly exploring new tools and technologies that support the needs of the 600 retailers we partner with and further enable their businesses to grow and scale over the long-term. Shoppers are and will continue to be central to Instacart and our service, and any suggestion otherwise is wholly inaccurate.

Bloomberg writes that Instacart hasn’t signed on any retail partners for its automated fulfillment plans as of yet, and as of right now any speculation around Instacart’s automation plans is just that, speculation. Instacart is undoubtedly exploring a number of different technological options as it marches towards its inevitable IPO, and those plans will most likely include robots of some kind.

Survey: More than One-Third of US Online Grocery Shoppers to Keep E-Commerce Habit Post-Pandemic

One question looming over U.S. grocery retailers is how many of their customers who were pushed into online shopping last year will continue to do so after the pandemic recedes. Thanks to new data released from Coresight Research this week, we are starting to get an answer.

According to US Online Grocery Survey 2021: Post-Surge Prospects (subscription required), more than one-third of online grocery shoppers don’t plan on changing up their online grocery shopping habits once the pandemic ends. In addition to that, more than one-quarter of shoppers said they expect to buy groceries online more frequently than they did during the pandemic. Roughly 30 percent of survey respondents said that they’ll shop “slightly less frequently” or “much less frequently” post-pandemic, and 6.3 percent said they’ll stop buying groceries online altogether.

Demographically speaking, Coresight found that online grocery shoppers aged 30 – 44 are most likely to continue with grocery e-commerce, with roughly 63 percent saying they expect to continue online grocery shopping at the same or increased frequency after the pandemic. Coresight attributed this to this age group being familiar with digital channels and often having young families that drive up basket sizes and typically involves planning ahead for grocery purchases.

One interesting note from Coresight’s research is that home delivery was the default option for online grocery purchases. The survey found 56 percent of respondents who had bought groceries online over the previous 12 months had their orders delivered, whereas 43 percent chose curbside pickup. This data runs counter to what Bricks Meets Click/Mercatus have found in its surveys. In April Brick Meets Click reported that curbside pickup attracted the biggest share of monthly shoppers with 53 percent, compared to ship-to-home and delivery. The discrepancy could be because Coresight’s data looked back 12 months prior to April, during the thick of the pandemic, when lockdowns were keeping people across the country at home. Brick Meets Click’s data is more recent and comes at a time when vaccinations are rolling out in earnest.

Of those people who opted for delivery, Coresight found that 42.7 percent used same-day shipping service and more than one-quarter used faster two-hour delivery services. This actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that Coresight also found Amazon to be the most-shopped retailer, followed by Walmart in the second spot. Amazon offers free two-hour grocery to its Prime members and Walmart+ offers same-day delivery.

While this is just one survey, data points like this are important as grocery retailers decide where to invest their resources. Walmart and Albertsons, for instance are expanding their use of automated fulfillment, curbside pickup and delivery options to accommodate the growth in e-commerce. In order for those investments to be worth it, online grocery needs to remain popular with consumers.

Trigo Partners with German Grocer REWE for Cashierless Checkout Stores

Israel-based Trigo announced today that it has partnered with Germany’s second largest grocery chain, REWE, to create a cashierless checkout store in downtown Cologne, Germany.

Founded in 2018, Trigo is practically an elder statesman in the world of cashierless checkout. The company uses a combination of shelf sensors, cameras, computer vision and AI to creat a “grab and go” shopping experience. Customers scan a mobile app upon entering the store, take what they want and get charged automatically upon exit.

The partnership marks Trigo’s first expansion into Germany. The company already has arrangements with grocery retailer Shufersal in Israel and Tesco (which is also an investor in Trigo) in the U.K. Initially, the cashierless checkout experience at the Cologne REWE store will be for employees only. Cashierless checkout will expand to the wider public later this summer, and REWE will still have cashiers for those who want to pay the old fashioned way.

The entire cashireless checkout sector has seen a lot of activity since the start of the year, but Europe in particular has been a hotbed of news. Nomitri (also in Germany) came out of stealth. Portugal’s Sensei raised funding. Outisde players like Imagr established new headquarters in Amsterdam while Amazon opened up a cashierless Fresh market in London. And retailers like The Netherlands’ Wundermart partnered with AiFi to launch a thousand cashierless checkout stores.

I expect we’ll be seeing more announcements from big grocery store chains experimenting with cashierless checkout as the year unfolds. The pandemic has retailers re-thinking the in-person shopping experience and cashierless checkout brings a number of benefits on that front. Cashierless checkout reduces human-to-human interaction between store staff and shoppers. It also keeps shoppers from congregating in checkout lines and can shorten the amount of time they spend in the store altogether.

Autonomous checkout is a topic we’ll be covering at our upcoming ArticulATE virtual conference on May 18. Execs from both Zippin and Nomitri will be discussing the state of cashierless checkout, implementing such technology and what’s coming next. Don’t miss out, get your ticket today!

Instacart Expands EBT SNAP Payments to Three More Grocers, Now Available at More Than 4,000 Stores

Online grocery delivery service Instacart announced today an expansion of its EBT Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) payment integration to three new retailers: Publix, The Save Mart Companies and Price Chopper/Market 32. This boosts Instacart’s EBT SNAP availability by more than 1,500 stores across 15 states. Once complete, Instacart will offer EBT SNAP payment options in more than 4,000 stores across 38 states and Washington D.C.

From today’s press release announcing the news:

EBT SNAP is now available at all Publix locations in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia. The Save Mart Companies – including Save Mart, Lucky California, Lucky and FoodMaxx banners – is now available across California and Nevada, making them the first Northern California retailer to offer EBT SNAP online. Price Chopper/Market 32 is now available across its New York stores, and will soon expand to its Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Vermont locations in the coming weeks. 

Instacart began accepting EBT SNAP payments in pilot program with grocery retailer ALDI back in October 2020. That program expanded to more than 2,000 ALDI locations nationwide. Earlier this year, Instacart announced EBT SNAP payments program Food Lion stores.

The Center on Budget Policy and Priorities writes that 38 million people in the US, or 12 percent of the country’s population receive SNAP benefits. Until a couple of years ago, those on the SNAP program were unable to use their benefits to buy groceries online. In April of 2019, the USDA announced a pilot program allowing SNAP participants to purchase groceries digitally.

Instacart’s expansion also comes on the heels of USDA announcing this week that it is expanding the Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program to provide food to kids over the summer who would otherwise get free meals at school. According to NPR, the P-EBT program takes the value of the meals kids would normally receive at school ($6.82 per weekday) and puts that on a debit or existing SNAP card to be used at grocery stores.

Increasing access to online grocery e-commerce to those on SNAP is an important step to begin bringing about more equity to our food system. Being able to buy groceries online for pickup and delivery became even more critical during the pandemic, when trip to the grocery store could literally get you sick.

It should be noted that EBT SNAP money can only be used to buy food, it cannot be put towards Instacart’s delivery fees or tips. Those add-ons can get expensive and may price out those who could use the convenience of Instacart the most. As I’ve written before, it would be nice if Instacart, which has raised $2.7 billion, put more resources towards solving issues around fees and tips for those on SNAP. The company has taken what amounts to a baby step on that front as Instacart says it will waive delivery or pickup fees through June 16, 2021 on up to the first three EBT SNAP orders for each customer.

Amazon Expands In-Garage Grocery Delivery to 5,000 Cities and Towns Nationwide

Amazon announced today that its Key by Amazon In-Garage Grocery Delivery is expanding to more than 5,000 U.S. cities and towns. Key In-Garage Delivery launched in five cities last November, and with today’s expansion will become available everywhere Amazon delivers groceries.

Amazon Key In-Garage delivery is available to Prime members shopping through Amazon Fresh and Whole Foods Market. To use Key, the customer must have a compatible connected smart garage door opener. When the order is placed, the customer selects “Key Delivery” for no extra charge. When the order arrives, delivery people open the smart garage door, place groceries inside, close the door and notify the customer.

Placing grocery deliveries inside a garage can have a number of benefits for the customer, including keeping food out of direct sunlight and other weather-related elements, as well as helping prevent theft by porch pirates. It also adds flexibility for customers who don’t have to be at home to wait for a delivery.

In-garage delivery followed a previous attempt by Amazon to offer in-home delivery when customers weren’t there. But customers weren’t too keen on letting strangers open their front doors and placing packages inside their homes while they were out. In-garage delivery was a bit of a social compromise. Amazon could still securely deliver packages inside a domicile while customers were out, but weren’t granted access into someone’s actual house.

Grocery delivery experienced a record year in 2020 as the pandemic pushed people into grocery e-commerce. As a result, all the major grocery retailers invested heavily in systems to meet that accelerated demand and provide faster service to customers. Amazon’s chief retail rival, Walmart, for instance, launched its Delivery+ subscription service last year and is trialing delivery to connected smart lockers that sit on a customer’s porch.

While Key In-Garage Delivery is probably not a resource-intensive program for Amazon to implement, one has to wonder if the company shouldn’t be focusing more attention on curbside pickup. Recent data from Brick Meets Click show that the majority of grocery e-commerce customers choose curbside pickup over delivery or ship-to-home options. And during its earnings call yesterday, Albertsons said that curbside pickup was up 865 percent over the course of 2020.

Prime members interested in trying out Key In-Garage Delivery can check its availability by visiting www.amazon.com/key-grocery.

Kroger Launches a Recycling Program in Partnership With TerraCycle

Grocery retailer Kroger announced today the launch of its Kroger Our Brands Recycling Program, an expansion of an earlier program developed in partnership with TerraCycle. The program aims to make it easier for consumers to recycle flexible plastic packaging. 

Flexible plastic packaging includes things like snack pouches, potato chip bags, packets of cheese, and frozen food pouches, among other items. While this particular type of packaging keeps food fresh, it’s also very difficult to recycle and not eligible for curbside pickup in most parts of the U.S.

TerraCycle, meanwhile, specializes in hard-to-recycle items such as flexible plastics. The company has several different recycling programs in operation, and also runs Loop, which offers common CPGs in reusable containers.

The Kroger/TerraCycle program means customers can sign up for free to ship them to TerraCycle using a prepaid shipping label. Users earn points for every pound of packaging sent. Points can be redeemed as donations to participating charitable organizations.

Having to take the extra steps to separate flexible plastics and actually put them in the mail might deter some customers. However, Kroger said in today’s press release that it saw “great success” with an earlier version of the program, which recycled flexible packaging from the company’s Simple Truth brand. The new program is available to schools, offices, and other organizations, in addition to individual consumers and households. 

All packaging collected through the program will be melted into hard plastic and used to make new products. 

For now, only the following Kroger brands are eligible to be recycled via the program: Private Selection, Kroger Brand, Comforts, Luvsome, and Abound. 

 

Egypt: Grocery Delivery Service Appetito Raises $450K Seed Round

Cairo-based grocery delivery service Appetito has raised a $450,000 Seed round of funding, reports Business Africa Online. Ahmed Al Alola and a group of Saudi Angel investors led the round along with Afropreneurs Fund, with participation from Jeda Capital.

Formed in March of 2020, Appetito originally started out with a chain of delivery-only (or “dark”) grocery stores that offered next-day and pre-scheduled grocery delivery service. The company recently pivoted to a more on-demand model, offering delivery of 1,000 SKUs in 60 minutes or less to certain parts of Cairo.

Appetito’s funding is the first we’ve covered for an Africa-based grocery startup this year, but it is certainly part of a larger trend we’ve been following. Grocery-related startups (grocery delivery in particular) are hot with investors all over the world right now.

In Europe, Gorillas, Getir, and Glovo have each raised nine-digit funding rounds for their particular fast grocery delivery services. In the U.S. goPuff raised $1.5 billion to scale out its chain of dark convenience stores. And in China, grocery app Xingsheng Youxuan raised $2 billion and Nice Tuan raised $750 million

A big reason for the boost in grocery app funding is the global pandemic, which pushed a record number of people into grocery e-commerce. With various lockdowns enforced in different parts of the world throughout 2020, people limited trips outside their homes. Grocery apps and delivery services became a way to help cut down on human-to-human interaction when getting food.

As vaccinations continue to roll out in different countries, We will have to wait and see if consumers keep up with the online grocery or return once again to stores in-person. One thing is for sure, post-pandemic, there will be a lot more grocery delivery options for people than ever before.

For its part, Appetito said it will use its new funding to expand across Egypt and beyond.

Ocado Invests £10M in Oxbotica to Develop Self-Driving Vehicles

UK-based grocer Ocado announced today that it has invested £10 million (~$13.8M USD) in autonomous vehicle (and fellow UK) company Oxbotica. The investment is part of an broader, multi-year deal to develop self-driving hardware and software.

For Ocado, autonomous vehicle tech could have a number of uses, from self-driving warehouse vehicles to delivery vans to smaller autonomous robots.

That Ocado bought Oxbotica to bring autonomy further up and down its tech stack makes a lot of sense. The grocer already makes autonomous smart warehouses filled with robots zipping along grids assembling items for grocery orders. It’s natural to extend that autonomy throughout its warehouses and into delivery vehicles. It’s easy to envision robots picking and packing grocery orders, which are then handed off to warehouse robot that places it in a self-driving delivery van that drives off to a customer’s house.

Ocado has also shown that it’s not shy about spending money on autonomous systems. Last year purchased Kindred Systems and Haddington Dynamics to enhance its robotics capabilities. And prior to that it led the $9 million Seed round in cafeteria robot company Karakuri.

Ocado’s investment in Oxbotica actually caps off what has been a big week for autonomous vehicles. Udelv announced its new self-driving Transporter platform. Domino’s tapped Nuro to make autonomous pizza deliveries in Houston, Texas. And Walmart announced it had invested in self-driving startup, Cruise.

It’s also been a big news week for Ocado. The company’s technology powers Kroger’s Customer Fulfillment Centers, the first of which opened up in Monroe, Ohio this week. For its part, Kroger has dabbled in self-driving delivery before through a partnership with Nuro.

If you want to learn more about robotics in grocery, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food automation virtual summit happening on May 18. There will be a number of autonomous vehicle companies as well as Karakuri speaking!

Kroger Officially Launches its First Robotic Customer Fulfillment Center

Grocery giant Kroger officially opened the first of its automated Customer Fulfillment Centers today in Monroe, Ohio, just north of Cincinnatti. Kroger had soft-opened the facility at the beginning of March, but today marks it’s official debut.

The Monroe CFC is 375,000 square feet and is powered by Ocado‘s automation technology. The CFC features 1,000 robots scurrying around carrying food items on giant 3D grids, managed by a proprietary air-traffic control system. When an order comes in, the robots assemble the items, which are bagged and placed in a temperature-controlled van and sent out for delivery. The CFC currently services a 90-mile radius from the hub location, though that radius will increase as spokes are set up that can extend that reach.

Kroger first announced its automated CFC initiative back in 2018, well before the pandemic pushed record numbers of people into grocery e-commerce and delivery. The opening of Kroger’s first CFC couldn’t have come at a better time for the company. In a press announcement released today, Kroger said that 2020 saw its e-commerce business scale to more than $10 billion with a record digital sales increase of 116 percent.

Online grocery shopping is predicted to hit $250 billion by 2025, taking up 21.5 percent of total grocery sales. As such, the entire grocery sector has been adapting to this e-commerce shift. Stalwarts like Kroger, Alberstons and Walmart have all invested heavily in automation and order fulfillment. Amazon is building out its own chain of physical grocery stores. And there has been a massive funding spree since the start of the year on grocery related startups.

The Monroe CFC is just the first such facility Kroger is opening. The company says the next CFC to open will be in Groveland, Florida this spring. After that, the company will open CFCs in Atlanta, Georgia; Dallas, Texas; Frederick, Maryland; Phoenix, Arizona; Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin; Romulus, Michigan; and centers in the Pacific Northwest and West regions.

If you are interested in the future of grocery automation, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our virtual food robotics summit on May 18!