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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Walmart

Gatik’s Autonomous Middle-Mile Trucks to Go Full Driverless for Walmart

Self-driving delivery vehicles along the middle mile just got a little more autonomous. Walmart announced today that the Gatik self-driving delivery box trucks it uses on one Arkansas delivery route will remove the safety driver from the vehicle in 2021.

Gatik had quietly revealed plans for this driverless delivery last week. As Gatik explained then, one of the reasons it was able to go full driverless is because of the company’s focus on the middle mile. The middle mile is the business-to-business path when moving goods — between a warehouse and a store, for example. Because this route is clearly defined, fixed and repeatable, it decreases the number of variables a self-driving car will encounter. Gatik said this limited autonomous scope made it easier to gain regulatory approval necessary to for true humanless driving.

In addition to driverless deliveries in Arkansas, Walmart is expanding where and how it will use Gatik trucks. From the Walmart blog post:

We’ve tested multi-temperature Autonomous Box Trucks on a small scale in Bentonville and have learned how we might use autonomous vehicles to transfer customer orders from a dark store to a live store. Now, we’re expanding our pilot with Gatik to a second location to test an even longer delivery route and a second use case – delivering items from a Supercenter to a Walmart pickup point, a designated location where customers can conveniently pick up their orders. The Autonomous Box Trucks in Louisiana will initially operate with a safety driver.

The new route will be between New Orleans and Metairie, LA. But more interesting than the geography is the new use cases Walmart is outlining. By delivering to a pickup location, Walmart could provide a way for people who don’t live near a Walmart to shop at one. People in these more remote areas could order online and pick their items up closer to home. As Walmart describes, the use of autonomous trucks could essentially create a constant conveyor belt style loop of of deliveries from supercenters to pickup points throughout the day.

Autonomous delivery has been making some nice, errr, inroads this year. Back in February, Nuro got federal approval for its pod-like autonomous delivery vehicles to operate on public roads, and in April the company got approval to operate on California’s roads. In October the company announced that its vehicles had been running in three states with no drivers, no occupants and no chase cars.

In addition to its middle mile, Walmart is also testing out autonomous grocery delivery with cars from Cruise in Scottsdale Arizona.

Part of what’s spurring all this autonomous action is, of course, the COVID pandemic. Autonomous delivery helps reduce the amount of human-to-human contact when transferring goods, and as noted above, could be a means for operating a continuous supply chain so there are fewer product shortages.

Will Removing the Minimum Order Give Walmart+ a Boost with Grocery?

Walmart announced today that starting Dec. 4, it will remove the $35 shipping minimum on Walmart.com orders for its Walmart+ members.

An answer to Amazon’s Prime Membership, Walmart+ launched in September of this year. With today’s announcement, Walmart+ members will get free next-day and two-day shipping on items from Walmart.com no matter the size of their shopping basket.

Normally, we wouldn’t cover this type of announcement because it has to do more with the shipping of non-grocery goods ordered through Walmart’s website. In its press announcement, Walmart even specifically said that grocery deliveries will still carry a $35 minimum.

But we are covering it because Walmart and Amazon are currently duking it to grab your grocery dollars. Both Walmart+ and Amazon Prime offer free grocery delivery as part of their member perks, but the war between the two companies has steadily escalated.

By some accounts, Amazon has more than 120 million Prime members in the U.S. This is a massive base to which it can upsell its grocery services. Of course, Amazon has been building that user base for years, but over the past year, the company has also been building out its grocery infrastructure. In addition to owning Whole Foods, Amazon has launched its real-world Go Grocery stores and Fresh supermarkets, as well as expanded its free grocery delivery for members to provide services like in-garage delivery.

But it’s in that real world where Walmart has its biggest advantage over Amazon. Walmart already has a gigantic, nationwide footprint of more than 4,700 stores in the U.S. Walmart+ members already get free unlimited grocery (though, as noted, there is an order minimum), but Walmart can tie in other real world services like curbside pickup, discounts on gas and mobile scan-and-go cashierless shopping.

In short, if Walmart can attract more people to its Walmart+ offering, that will help it stave off Amazon from gobbling up more of the grocery biz. It’s still a big if, but removing the minimum order amount as Walmart did today could help it sway more users to join Walmart+ and use the service for more grocery delivery.

Walmart to Test Autonomous Grocery Delivery With Cruise’s Electric Cars

Walmart announced today that it is hooking up with self-driving electric car company Cruise to experiment with autonomous grocery delivery. The two will pilot a program in Scottsdale, Arizona starting early next year.

The corporate blog post announcing the partnership was light on details, so we don’t know how many stores in the Scottsdale area will be participating, where the service areas will be or how big the fleet of self-driving vehicles will be.

This isn’t Walmart’s first ride with self-driving delivery vehicles. In the summer of 2018, Walmart partnered with Waymo in a small pilot to autonomously chauffeur people from their homes to Walmarts to pick up their orders. The goal of that pilot was to learn more about curbside pick up. In 2019, Walmart worked with autonomous van company Gatik for deliveries along the “middle mile” between its stores. And at the end of 2019, Walmart announced it was using Nuro’s self-driving pod vehicles for grocery delivery in Houston, Texas.

This time around, Walmart’s pitch is less about self-driving and more about the environment, as Cruise’s vehicles are all 100 percent electric. Should this pilot prove successful, it will align with Walmart’s stated goal of achieving zero emissions across all its operations by 2040, including the electrification of all of its vehicles.

Walmart and other retailers will need to offer all the delivery options they can in the coming years. Online grocery is projected to hit 21.5 percent of total grocery sales by 2025, which means grocers will need to boost their capacity for increased delivery. Walmart is already among those leading that charge with two-hour delivery as well as it’s Walmart+ delivery service, which gives members free unlimited delivery. The company has even enlisted Instacart for help with same day grocery delivery.

Full-sized self-driving vehicles still have a lot of regulatory hurdles to overcome, but kudos to Walmart for helping push the technology forward (while getting food to our doors).

Walmart to Stop Using Bossa Nova’s Shelf-Scanning Robots

After touting their efficiency and effectiveness for years, Walmart has decided to stop using Bossa Nova’a autonomous shelf-scanning robots to monitor inventory, according to a scoop in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Almost exactly three years ago, Walmart announced it was deploying Bossa Nova’s ‘bots to 50 stores. At that time, the company hailed the robots’ efficiency, saying the machines were 50 percent more productive and three times faster than a human at the job of taking inventory. In April of 2019, Walmart announced it was broadening Bossa Nova’s use to 300 locations, and just in January of this year, Walmart bumped the deployment number up to 1,000 stores.

Of course, shortly after that January announcement, the pandemic hit, which precipitated a massive surge in online grocery shopping. And this seems to have had an unintended consequence when it comes to automation, writes the Journal:

Walmart ended the partnership because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful, said people familiar with the situation. As more shoppers flock to online delivery and pickup because of Covid-19 concerns, Walmart has more workers walking the aisles frequently to collect online orders, gleaning new data on inventory problems, said some of these people. The retailer is pursuing ways to use those workers to monitor product amounts and locations, as well as other automation technology, according to the people familiar with the situation.

Additionally, the Journal reported, Walmart was concerned with how shoppers were reacting to seeing the six-foot tall robots roaming the aisles.

The pitch from Bossa Nova and other players like Simbe Robotics and Badger Technologies is that shelf-scanning robots can provide a more accurate and up-to-date accounting of inventory on store shelves. As the CEO of Simbe Robotics told me in August, better data about what’s in stock can alleviate product outages like those experienced during the panic buying early on in the pandemic.

At the same time Walmart is retreating on shelf-scanning robots, other retailers are increasing their use. Schnuck Markets is expanding the use of Simbe’s Tally robot to 62 locations across the Midwest. And Woodman’s Market in Wisconsin will add Badger Technologies’ shelf scanning robot to all of its 18 stores and Illinois and Wisconsin by the end of this year.

For all their advantages, robots were always kind of a stopgap technology for grocers. Robots still need time to go up and down store aisles, and as noted above, interact with human shoppers. Cameras, sensors and the burgeoning world of cashierless checkout technology can do much the same in real time (or near real time) without intruding on a shoppers’ space.

Walmart debuted its IRL store last year that uses cameras and computer vision to monitor inventory. Trax installs cameras on ceilings and store shelves to do much the same. And lineless checkout companies like Grabango monitor what people are taking from store shelves and charging them automatically as they leave the store.

The Journal reports that Bossa Nova, which has raised more than $100 million in funding, laid off 50 percent of its staff after the Walmart contract was terminated.

We have reached out to both Walmart and Bossa Nova and will update as we hear back.

UPDATE: A Walmart rep sent us the following statement via email:

We’ve worked with Bossa Nova for five years and together we learned a lot about how technology can assist associates, make jobs easier and provide a better customer experience. This was one idea we tried in roughly 500 stores just as we are trying other ideas in additional stores. We will continue testing new technologies and investing in our own processes and apps to best understand and track our inventory and help move products to our shelves as quickly as we can.

SECOND UPDATE: We received the following statement from Bossa Nova CEO Sarjoun Skaff via email:

“I cannot comment on Walmart, however the pandemic has forced us to streamline our operations and focus on our core technologies. We have made stunning advances in AI and robotics. Our retail AI is the industry’s best and works as well on robots as with fixed cameras, and our hardware, autonomy and operations excelled in more than 500 of the world’s most challenging stores. With the board’s full support, we continue deploying this technology with our partners in retail and in other fields.”

SideChef Now Offers Shoppable Recipes Through Walmart

Smart kitchen platform SideChef revealed to The Spoon this week that it is now offering shoppable recipe fulfillment through Walmart.

Consumers using SideChef’s app and website can now buy all the ingredients for a recipe with one click and choose from more than 3,300 Walmart stores across the U.S. for curbside pickup or delivery.

Right now, there are 150 shoppable recipes available on SideChef, but that number will bloom to more than 10,000 recipes later this month and in time for the holidays. In addition to shopping directly for recipe ingredients, customers will be able to adjust serving sizes, swap brands, and convert cooking units, as well as see the percentage of each product used so they know what leftovers they will have.

After being dormant for a while, the shoppable recipe space is suddenly seeing a flurry of activity. In July Thermomix launched shoppable recipes through its Cookidoo platform. In August, Swedish shoppable recipe company Northfork (which also works with Walmart) raised $1.1 million. And just last month, Fexy Media sold off its Serious Eats and Simply Recipes to DotDash in order to focus more on its shoppable recipe platform.

Why are shoppable recipes suddenly so hot? Could be because that most of us are still stuck at home, thanks to the global pandemic. Online grocery shopping has shot through the roof, thanks to COVID and improved fulfillment systems from grocery retailers. In fact, the grocery e-commerce sector is expected to hit $250 billion in sales by 2025, so there is plenty of opportunity for shoppable recipe providers like SideChef to get in on the ground floor, as it were, to capitalize on this long-term growth.

Partnering with Walmart, and it’s massive retail footprint, could help push shoppable recipes more into the mainstream. With winter coming and more people stuck at home, there could be a greater need for recipe discovery to mix up any meal monotony that might have set in. Nearly 90 percent of U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Walmart, so shoppable recipes is sitting right in the middle of a Venn diagram of audience and immediate action.

For it’s part, SideChef hasn’t been a slouch itself over this past year. The company’s app landed on Facebook’s Portal smart assistant, and launched a premiums subscription service. To learn more about SideChef and shoppable recipes, check out this deep dive interview with the company’s founder, Kevin Yu, over at Spoon Plus (subscription required).

With App-Based Navigation and Contactless Payments, Walmart’s Store Re-design Is More Digital Forward

Walmart announced today that it’s giving its stores a facelift to provide a more digital experience that includes in-store navigation and contactless payments through the Walmart mobile app.

In a corporate blog post, Janey Whiteside, EVP and chief customer officer, Walmart U.S., explained some of the changes, including a new greeting at the store that encourages shoppers to download the Walmart app. The app, along with letter and number combinations on aisles, will provide digital navigation to help customers find products in-store.

Stores will also now include self-checkout kiosks and contactless payments via Walmart Pay and other (unspecified) payment services. Some locations will also have Walmart’s Scan & Go cashierless checkout option.

While these in-store changes have undoubtedly been in the works for quite some time, they are also reflective of the recently changing nature of grocery retail. People have their phones while they shop, you may as well put it to good use by providing navigation (and alerting shoppers to sales, promotions, etc.). This app-centric approach also seems easier than creating fleets of robot shopping carts that monitor your biometrics.

Additionally, the pandemic has made contactless payments pretty much table stakes at this point, so incorporating more of those options is a must-have for a giant retailer like Walmart.

Finally, and not for nothing, the Walmart refresh comes at a time when Amazon is beginning to launch it’s own chain of supermarkets. This shiny new kid on the block features digital-forward features like Alexa integration, smart shopping carts and, like Walmart, an emphasis on low prices.

Walmart’s changes will be in 200 Supercenters by the end of its fiscal year before expanding to roughly 1,000 stores by next the company’s next fiscal year.

Food Tech News: Cryogenic Avocado Trees, Vegans Take Over Television

This Friday, I bring you news on freezing avocado trees for future generations, vegan food brands advertising on television, and plant-based seafood hitting the frozen food aisle of Walmart. Between avocados and vegan food, these news tidbits are a direct appeal to millennials. Now all I need is some food tech news about brunch.

Avocados can now be cryogenically frozen for the future

I am pleased to share that my descendants will now be able to experience avocado toast. Chris O’ Brien, a Ph.D. student at the University of Queensland in Australia was able to revive avocado plant cuttings that he froze at -320°F with liquid nitrogen. Avocado trees are susceptible to disease, pests, disasters, and climate change; this discovery is important because it may help ensure that we will have avocados for future generations. Beside avocado trees, other plants like potatoes, grapevines, apples, bananas, and berries have all been successfully frozen then revived using cryopreservation.

Vegan foods brands are advertising on T.V.

Big names in the plant-based space have started running T.V. advertisements this year. Beyond Meat ran its first television campaign in August during the Lakers vs. Jazz game, with actress Octavia Spencer as the narrator. The Meatless Farm showcased its pea protein meat alternatives in a tantalizing commercial that ran in the UK, and Dr. Praegers used vegetable superheroes to promote its veggie burgers.

Vegan food brands seem to also be expanding their advertisements off the television. In the past week, I have personally seen ads for OZO pop up on my computer, and cheeky Oatly ads on the side of bus stops.

Sophie’s Kitchen brings plant-based seafood to Walmart

Sophie’s Kitchen, which makes plant-based seafood, will launch in Walmart this month. The company’s frozen plant-based crab cakes and shrimp will be made available in 400 Walmart locations. Sophie’s Kitchen joins other vegan brands available at Walmart including Gardein, So Delicious, Beyond Meat, and Lightlife.

Produce Grower Houweling’s Group Partners With Apeel to Ditch Plastic-Wrapped Cucumbers

Greenhouse vegetable grower Houweling’s Group announced this week it has partnered with Apeel to launch its plastic-free cucumbers at select Walmart locations, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Cucumbers very often land on grocery store shelves shrink-wrapped in plastic. This is done to protect the skin, which on a variety like an English cucumber, is especially thin. The plastic wrapping also extends the shelf life of the cucumber once it’s in your fridge.

Apeel, which raised $250 million in May of this year, is in the business of extending produce shelf life without the need for extra packaging materials. The company makes an edible “peel” that can provide the protection and shelf-life extension of plastic. It does this with a foodsafe powder derived from plant oils. When applied to produce, it creates a barrier that keeps water and oxygen out. Apeel has developed different proprietary coatings for different produce types, including apples, avocados, and, now, cucumbers. 

Apeel is one of several companies working to make produce last longer. It’s most notable counterparts right now are Stix Fresh, which makes a sticker that can extend produce shelf life by two weeks when placed on the fruit or vegetable, and Hazel Technologies, whose packaging inserts for bulk fruit and vegetable boxes slow ripening. Apeel’s most obviously parallel competitor is Sufresca, a company that also makes an edible coating for produce.

The partnership with Houweling’s Group marks the first time Apeel has used its coating technology to not just extend the life of produce but also do away with extra packaging. Houweling’s said in this week’s press release that every 500,000 cases of English cucumbers shipped with Apeel’s coating eliminates the equivalent of 820,000 single-use plastic water bottles from the supply chain. 

Walmart Sets Goal of Zero Emissions by 2040

There are multiple layers of good news in Walmart’s announcement today that it’s targeting zero emissions across all of its operations by the year 2040.

First, on its face, it’s good news when the world’s largest retailer decides to do something beneficial for the planet (though one could argue the actual the “good” here doesn’t balance out the company’s main business of selling us more stuff). According to today’s press announcement, Walmart says it will:

  • Convert to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035 through a mix of wind, solar and other energy sources
  • Electrify and zero out emissions from all of its vehicles including long-haul trucks by 2040
  • Shift to “low-impact” refrigerants for cooling and electrify the climate control of its stores, clubs, warehouses and data centers by 2040

As part of today’s announcement, Walmart also said that it will “manage or restore at least 50 million acres of land and one million square miles of ocean by 2030.” The company also pledged to drive the adoption of regenerative agriculture practices and management of sustainable fisheries.

This is not the first eco-initiative from Walmart, a company that has a complex history of “greening,” as this paper published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review back in 2008 points out. But Walmart’s current renewable efforts are coming at a time when the company is possibly changing its relationship with consumers. The pandemic has spurred people towards new heights of online shopping, and Walmart recently launched its Walmart+ subscription service, which offers free same-day delivery of groceries as a perk.

Online commerce and increased need for delivery changes how Walmart will move goods around. Instead of just going from distribution centers to stores, it will be driving more goods around directly to people’s doors across the country. More deliveries means more trucks on the roads (or drones in the sky), more often, which means that actually, that electrified vehicle fleet should probably come sooner than 2040.

But the year 2040 is actually the other layer of good news from Walmart’s announcement. At least the company thinks there will still be a planet to sell goods on by then.

Walmart’s Drone Delivery Pilot with Flytrex Takes off in North Carolina

Walmart announced today that it has partnered with Flytrex to start a drone delivery pilot program in Fayetville, North Carolina. The drones will deliver select groceries and household essential items.

Neither company provided more details about specific service areas or hours, but we do know that Flytrex has already been operating drone deliveries in Iceland since 2018 and more recently in North Dakota here in the U.S.

As we’ve written before about Flytrex:

The Flytrex drone is a hex-copter capable of carrying a 6.5 pound payload (enough to feed a family of four, said Bash), up to 40 m.p.h., with a range of six miles. The system is really built for suburban sprawl, and uses a tether to lower deliveries down to people when it arrives at its destination. Bash said that while a human driver can typically only make two to three deliveries an hour, a Flytrex drone operator can make up to 15.

Fytrex’s other pitch is that is has numerous safety-related redundancies that allow its drones to withstand catastrophic events like motor loss, battery loss and communication failure.

Walmart’s announcement comes just weeks after its retail rival, Amazon, won approval from the FAA for its own drone delivery program. Elsewhere in the U.S., Google Wing has been making drone deliveries in Virginia, Deuce Drone will start making grocery deliveries in Mobile, AL, and Uber had plans to do drone delivery in San Diego this summer.

But given the complexities of drone delivery (flight paths, added layers of safety in the event of a drone failure, etc.), we aren’t anywhere close to hearing a steady drone of drones overhead anytime soon. Walmart even conceded as much in its announcement today, writing, “We know that it will be some time before we see millions of packages delivered via drone. That still feels like a bit of science fiction, but we’re at a point where we’re learning more and more about the technology that is available and how we can use it to make our customers’ lives easier.”

It’s only a bit like science fiction now though.

The Food Tech Show: Walmart+ and Ghost Kitchen Robots

It may be the waning days of summer, but there’s still time to get outside for a walk and listen to podcasts and the Spoon team is here to help with our latest episode of The Food Tech Show.

This week, the team discusses the launch of the strategy behind Walmart+, Walmart’s long-rumored membership program centered around grocery and food which will now launch on September 15th.

Other stories discussed on the podcast include:

You can subscribe to the Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts and Spotify or wherever you listen. If you’re a regular listener, we’d really appreciate a review!

You can also listen by clicking play below or downloading direct to your device.

Walmart to Launch Its Walmart+ Membership Service on September 15

Walmart today announced it will launch its own membership service, Walmart+, on September 15. The service will be available for $98/year or $12.95/month and include free same-day delivery from Walmart stores, fuel discounts, and other perks.

A Walmart+ membership gets you free, unlimited delivery “on more than 160,000 items” from Walmart stores (with a minimum order of $35), access to the company’s Scan & Go tech that lets customers skip the checkout line, and discounts on fuel. Walmart said in today’s press release that “the list of benefits will continue to grow over time.”

Walmart has been testing free delivery through its Delivery Unlimited program since last year. When Walmart+ launches across the company’s stores nationwide, current Delivery Unlimited subscribers will automatically become members of Walmart+.

Walmart+ was first revealed in February of this year in a move that immediately invited comparisons to Amazon and its Prime membership service. Speaking to TechCrunch today, Walmart said it was “not launching Walmart+ with the intent to compete with anything else.” And the service is by no means a mirror image of Prime, especially considering that Prime includes free access to streaming movies, music and more.

At least initially, Walmart+ seems to be focused more on groceries and household items (along with some toys and electronics), an area the company is already strong in. This focus on grocery makes sense given the record amounts of online grocery shopping still happening because of the pandemic. A recent survey showed that Walmart has actually overtaken Amazon as the leading retailer for online grocery shopping, and adding Walmart+ could help solidify its lead.

Walmart and Amazon have actually kind of switched places over the past week with their announcements. With today’s news, Walmart, which has a vast network of real-world stores, is announcing it’s Prime-like service. Last week, Amazon, the online retail giant, announced the opening of its first full-on real world supermarket in Woodland Hills, CA. Both moves help illustrate how important the grocery category has become for each company.

Another thing to watch with Walmart+ is how many customers will adopt the Scan & Go technology, which allows shoppers to skip the checkout line by scanning product barcodes with their phones. Walmart’s approach is more manual than that of an Amazon Go store, which uses cameras and sensors to automatically track what shoppers are buying. Will the extra scanning step inhibit adoption of Scan & Go? Also, in the pandemic era, where contactless payments are increasingly table stakes, will Walmart incentivize more people to use Scan & Go, and will customers like the system?

We’ll mark our calendars and see.

Additional reporting by Chris Albrecht.