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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Kroger

GE Appliances Partners With Kroger for Shoppable Recipes on Wi-Fi Connected Ovens

This week, GE Appliances (GEA) announced it has released a new software update that enables customers with GEA’s Wi-Fi-connected stoves to add items to their Kroger shopping carts through featured shoppable recipes on their wall ovens and slide-in ranges.

According to the announcement, the new partnership, which was distributed via an over-the-air update to what GEA says is 150 thousand appliances (which is, interestingly, a smaller number given to us when the company announced its ‘turkey mode’ software update in 2021), will enable customers to find a select set of curated recipes (13 recipes at release) from Kroger and select CPG brands (including King Arthur Baking). Once a customer chooses a recipe, the recipes will suggest what GEA calls precision cooking modes, which track cooking progress, modify temperatures and adjust cook times.

In addition to the guided cooking features built into the recipes. they also allow for some clickable commerce. GE Appliance users can click to view the list of ingredients and instructions within the recipe and, with an additional click, add all the recipe’s ingredients to their Kroger cart. GEA says customers can connect their GE appliance app to their Kroger account via a QR code scan setup.

This announcement from GE Appliances comes after the company announced an integration with Google Cloud’s Vertex generative AI integration with their cooking app earlier this year, which the company calls Flavorly. According to GE Appliances spokesperson Shawn Stover, the Flavorly AI integration enables customers to input items in their refrigerator, and the app will generate three suggested recipes to build around the ingredients.

Kroger Begins Testing Cake Printing Robot From Beehex at Location in Ohio

Late last month, grocery giant Kroger began to trial the use of a cake-printing robot made by Beehex in the Gahanna, Ohio, location, The Spoon has learned.

The new Cake Writer machine, which will allow consumers to input a custom message and watch as the cake is decorated in minutes on the spot, is made by 3D food printing startup Beehex. Depending on the message, the decoration process will take two to fourteen minutes. The machines will be loaded with hundreds of different pre-made designs and fonts for the customer to choose from.

Beehex CEO Anjan Contractor told The Spoon that the startup plans to install 10 Beehex Cake Writer machines in the Columbus market next year and has plans to install up to 350 machines in the future with Kroger.

Contractor says that a typical machine costs roughly $10 thousand when produced at scale, and the ongoing costs include $50 a month for cloud database management and about $5-6 for each 20 oz cartridge of frosting.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shorts/yNbBofgCp4s?feature=share

I don’t know about you, but I would gladly pay for a customized cake. We just celebrated a birthday in our family, and I had to buy a tube of frosting and scrawl the name on the top of the cake with my atrophied handwriting. A customized image with legible writing is something I’d pay for.

You can check out the Cake Writer in action below in the video provided by Beehex.

Kroger to Use Gatik Robotic Trucks for Middle-Mile Delivery of Fresh Products

This week Kroger announced a collaboration with Gatik, a company specializing in autonomous middle-mile logistics, to utilize autonomous box trucks in Dallas, Texas. According to the announcement, the partnership aims to enhance delivery frequency, reliability, and responsiveness for customers while streamlining costs and increasing efficiency throughout the supply chain.

Starting in the second quarter of 2023, Gatik’s medium-duty autonomous box trucks will be responsible for transporting fresh products from Kroger’s Customer Fulfillment Center (CFC) in Dallas to several retail locations. These trucks are fitted with a 20-foot cold chain-capable box, designed for the safe and efficient transportation of ambient, refrigerated, and frozen goods.

The two companies believe the collaboration will provide Kroger customers with an expanded range of same-day pick-up times and more flexible order cut-off times. Gatik will handle the transportation of groceries, foodstuffs, and general merchandise for 12 hours daily, seven days a week.

Gatik’s autonomous middle mile solution will assist Kroger in addressing the needs of customers who shop online and in-store, offering quicker and more dependable access to products. Since commencing commercial operations in 2019, Gatik says it has successfully delivered half a million customer orders using its robo-trucks.

The deal is another win for Gatik, which has previously secured middle-mile delivery contracts for Walmart in Louisiana and Arkansas and for Loblaws in Canada. The company, which raised over $121 million in funding, was recently rumored to be in talks with Microsoft to raise more funding at a $700 million valuation. The Microsoft deal would be a strategic investment that would result in the autonomous truck company using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to develop technology for autonomous delivery vehicles.

Kroger and Kitchen United Partner to Bring Ghost Kitchens to Grocery Stores

Kitchen United (KU) will expand its ghost kitchen network to include Kroger locations thanks to a just-announced partnership between KU and the grocery retailer. KU kitchens will be located at various Kroger locations, the first of these being at a Ralphs in Los Angeles slated to open this fall. 

Participating Kroger stores will house a KU location that includes “up to six local, regional or national” restaurant brands, according to today’s press release. Customers can order meals from these restaurants via the KU mobile app or onsite at a self-service kiosk. They will have the option to bundle items from different restaurant concepts together into a single order, a concept that KU’s Chief Business Officer Atul Sood recently said was technically complex but extremely important to the future of online ordering.  

While customers can choose to have their meal delivered (via KU’s third-party delivery service partners), the bigger appeal here might be the pickup option. Since the kitchens will be located onsite at stores, Kroger customers can order food while they shop for groceries and simply pick their meal up at the end of their trip.

The partnership is another example of the lines between the restaurant ghost kitchen and the grocery store fading. A year ago, Euromonitor predicted such a shift would happen. In keeping with that, the last several months have seen companies like GoPuff, Ghost Kitchens, and Food Rocket launch initiatives that sit squarely between the grocery and the ghost kitchen.

Moving towards this gray area is intentional on the part of KU. “We are proud to have launched a number of successful ghost kitchen centers across the country, and now we are applying our experience and taking steps to expand in non-traditional ghost kitchen formats such as retail shopping centers and food halls like our newest kitchen center location in Chicago alongside our efforts with Kroger,” Sood noted in a statement. 

He added that KU’s tech stack is an important part of this setup and can optimize “any kitchen setting for streamlined and profitable off-premise business.”

More KU-Kroger locations are planned for the coming months. In the meantime, those interested in learning more about ghost kitchens and the ghost kitchen tech stack can tune into The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17. The virtual event will feature KU’s CTO Jessi Moss along with many other restaurants, tech companies, and thought leaders in the restaurant space. Grab a ticket here.

Upcycled Food Association Launches Open Enrollment as Upcycling Momentum Grows

This week, the Upcycled Food Association announced that it had opened the doors for anyone who wants to apply for certification.

This news marks the culmination of a year of steady progress for the organization, which is made up of a number of startups and larger companies creating products out of food waste that would have otherwise gone to the landfill.

Last May, the organization put out its official definition for the term “upcycled food:” “Upcycled foods use ingredients that otherwise would not have gone to human consumption, are procured and produced using verifiable supply chains, and have a positive impact on the environment.”

At the beginning of 2021, the group launched its certification program for upcycled foods, and this past April it showed off its new certification mark. And during the first half of this year, the group ran a pilot program with 15 members to work out the kinks for its certification process, resulting in companies like Regrained getting certification for its ingredient product.

Now, every company who wants to apply for UFA certification can do so.

For an industry that some market sizers have as big as $46.7 billion, why did it take so long to get serious about certification? While making something valuable out of discarded food outputs is a centuries-old practice, the rapidly growing interest by consumers and new companies positioning their product in recent years was a signal for the industry to get serious about creating an organization that could create a standard.

Retailers also see a bright future in upcycled food. Whole Foods named upcycling as one of the big trends for 2021, while Kroger, a supporter of the UFA, has been investing in young upcycled food brands. And, in the end, it’s this interest by the food retailers that may matter most as they will likely make compliance with UFA certification as one of the key requirements before getting into the store for any upcycled product.

The interest in upcycled food is also a part of a broader interest in companies up and down the food system in tackling the problem of food waste. The pandemic helped accelerate this interest as everyone saw entire crops go to waste, but the reality is rising costs of food products has made reducing food waste not only appealing to sustainability-oriented organizations, but also to the bottom-line focused types in big corporates at CPG, retail and restaurants.

Kroger’s Drone Delivery Officially Takes Off in Ohio

Kroger launched its first retail drone delivery on Wednesday of this week in Centerville, Ohio. The Dayton Daily News reported that the drone’s maiden voyage dropped off two packages of rice to Centerville Mayor Brooks Compton on the front lawn of the city’s offices.

Kroger announced the drone delivery program at the beginning of May, and while it had been running test flights in the Centerville area since then, Wednesday’s mayoral run was the first official delivery for the service. According to the Dayton Daily News, Kroger customers within a mile of the 1095 S. Main St. store can place an order for drone delivery and, as of now, there is no delivery fee for the service.

As we wrote last month, Kroger isn’t just looking to drop off food on your front yard. It’s aiming to get you items whenever/wherever you need it. Think: picnic supplies to a park or drinks at the beach. The drones can carry a five-pound payload and eligible orders should arrive within 15 minutes.

Kroger officially launching this program is the latest step towards drone delivery becoming a reality around the globe. So far in 2021, Flytrex has received Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval to expand its drone delivery program (which includes Walmart grocery deliveries) in North Carolina, Manna has been conducting 50 – 100 drone deliveries a day in Ireland, and Pizza Hut has partnered with Dragontail Systems for drone deliveries in Tel Aviv, Israel.

While there are regulatory and safety hurdles that still need to be overcome, drones hold a lot of promise, especially for food-related deliveries. Drones are faster because they don’t get stuck in traffic, so hot food or coffee arrives hot. Because they are up in the air, drones don’t add to traffic congestion on the roads. And they could also potentially make deliveries more economical because one operator can coordinate more drone deliveries per hour.

Kroger’s drone delivery will probably be more of a novel curiosity for customers at first. But if it can fulfill the promise of faster, more convenient food, we’ll be writing a lot more about drone delivery launches across the U.S. throughout this year.

Kroger Taking Flight with Drone Delivery Pilot This Spring

Kroger announced today that it is working with Drone Express, a division of TELEGRID Technologies, to launch a drone delivery pilot starting this spring.

The first test of the new drone delivery will begin this week near the Kroger Marketplace in Centerville, Ohio (just outside of Dayton). Actual customer deliveries are scheduled to begin later this spring with a second pilot launching this summer at a Ralphs in California.

But Kroger isn’t just planning on sending drones to your front yard. In the press announcement, the company indicated that it’s looking to get customers the last minute items they need, wherever that may be. So that could be picnic supplies to a park, or cold drinks at a hot beach. Kroger said that drone deliveries will be limited to a payload of around five pounds and deliveries of eligible orders should arrive within 15 minutes.

When we talk about drone food delivery, it’s usually centered around restaurants. Because drones can reach their destinations so quickly, they are shaping up to be a viable option for hot restaurant meal delivery. But we are starting to see drone delivery gain traction with grocery retailers. In Ireland, Manna has a partnership with Tesco, and here in the U.S., Walmart is working with Flytrex to test out drone deliveries in North Carolina and Rouses Market is using Deuce Drone to trial deliveries in Alabama.

It should also be noted that with this drone trial, Kroger continues to show its tech-forward thinking. So far this year, Kroger has opened the first of its robot-powered customer fulfillment centers, and started piloting more automated checkout via Caper’s smart shopping carts. Plus the fact that Kroger is launching two drone delivery pilots this year shows the company is being more aggressive about aerial delivery than its competitors (at least publicly).

If you are interested in the future of drones delivery, then you must come to ArticulATE, our food automation virtual summit happening on May 18. We’ll have a full panel devoted to drones featuring the CEO of Manna. Get your ticket today!

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. 

 

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!

Kroger “Soft Opens” First Ocado-Powered Automated Warehouse

Kroger has “soft opened” the first of its Ocado-powered automated Customer Fulfillment Centers in Monroe, Ohio, Kroger CEO Rodney McMullen said during an earnings call this week.

According to Dayton 24/7, the new facility is 335,000 square feet, costs $55 million and employs 400 people. The new warehouse will use totes on rails to help assemble orders for delivery, pickup and distribution.

The opening comes almost three years after Kroger announced it was upping its investment in and bringing Ocado’s automation technology here to the U.S. In that time, it selected a number of additional sites across the U.S. that will be home to more fulfillment centers.

Grocery e-commerce and the need for more robust fulfillment logistics has exploded over the past year, thanks to the pandemic. As such retailers of all stripes have been investing in more automation to accommodate online grocery shopping. Albertsons has expanded its use of robotic micro-fulfillment and started testing automated curbside pickup kiosks. And Walmart has partnered with three different technology provides to expand its use of automated order fulfillment.

As the Biden administration accelerates the availability of vaccines and the warm weather of spring and summer fast approaches, the question of how much consumer behavior has changed remains. While industry watchers expect there to be a short-term correction in the use of grocery e-commerce, there is a sense that after a year of lockdowns and social distancing, new habits have set in. Online grocery sales are projected to hit $250 billion and take up 21.5 percent of total grocery sales by 2025.

Kroger’s new Customer Fulfillment Center in Monroe is expected to have an official, grand opening launch soon.

Kroger’s Zero Hunger/Zero Waste Foundation Is Taking Applications for Its Innovation Accelerator

Startups, take note. The Kroger Co. Zero Hunger | Zero Waste Foundation (aka, the “Foundation”) is now taking applications for the second cohort of its Innovation Fund. The program, done in partnership with Village Capital, looks for companies developing new technologies, processes, and other solutions that combat food waste.

The Foundation says this could include rescuing and upcycling “imperfect” food. “Upcycled food is the next frontier in recovering and repurposing food that may otherwise go to landfills,” the Foundation said in a statement this week. In this context, upcycling could mean either using discarded food to create new foods (e.g., upcycled cookies), ingredients, or even meal kits. The program also lumps food rescue — selling surplus food to consumers — as part of the upcycling process, too.

Both areas are becoming more popular in the U.S., with companies like Imperfect Foods, Misfits Market, Renewal Mill, and Goodfish leading the way. Imperfect was actually a part of the first cohort for the Innovation Fund, along with Food Forest, mobius, Replate, and others. About 400 startups applied for the first cohort, so we can expect as many if not more vying for a spot in this next installment of the program.

The six-month-long Kroger program includes one week of virtual programming followed by monthly cohort sessions. The entire program runs from late May through November 2021.

A total of 10 startups will be selected from the applicant pool. Selected companies each receive $100,000 in upfront seed grant funding, with the chance for an additional $100,000 grant based on “achievement of identified program milestones.” Virtual workshops that cover investment readiness and technical skill development, and also provides networking opportunities with mentors and potential investors.

Two startups of the chosen 10 will be picked at the end of six months to receive an additional $250,000 in funding.

Applications are open until April 1, 2021.

Kroger Building Ocado-Powered Warehouse in Phoenix, AZ

Kroger announced on Friday that it will build out its next automated customer fulfillment center (CFC) in Phoenix, AZ. This marks Kroger’s first robot-powered warehouse in the U.S. Southwest region.

These CFCs use robotic technology from UK grocery Ocado (which Kroger is an investor in). Online orders are assembled automatically inside the center through a series of totes on rails, and packaged up for delivery.

Kroger announced a few years back that it would build out 20 such warehouses across the U.S., and has since started work on sites in a number of different locations including: Monroe, OH, Groveland, FL, Forest Park, GA, Dallas, TX, and Pleasant Prairie, WI, Frederick, MD, Romulus, MI, as well as the Pacific Northwest, Great Lakes and West Regions. The first Kroger CFC is expected to open in Monroe this year.

Ocado Robotic System For Kroger

Grocery e-commerce, which got a boost last year thanks to the pandemic, is expected to become the new normal for many shoppers. Online grocery is projected to grow over the coming years and take up 21.5 percent of overall grocery sales by 2025.

As such, grocery retailers are building out a variety of automated systems to keep up with that increased demand. While Kroger is building out these centralized delivery warehouses that serve large areas of customers, others are taking a more local approach. Albertsons built out micro-fulfillment centers in the backs of two of its Bay Area stores, and is expanding to more. And Texas grocery chain H-E-B is adding automated micro-fulfillment to a number of its locations.

Kroger’s CFCs are the opposite of “micro” fulfillment. The forthcoming Phoenix facility will be 200,000 sq. ft., and will open 24 months after groundbreaking to support customers across Arizona.