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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Walmart

With its own Grocery Delivery Service, Walmart Grabs More Data

Walmart is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to getting you your groceries. As of today, that includes testing out its own delivery service (h/t Food Dive). The retailing giant announced a pilot program for its new last-mile delivery service, dubbed Spark Delivery, which will deliver groceries directly to customers’ front door.

From a blog post announcing the service:

Spark Delivery is a crowd-sourced delivery platform that allows Walmart to learn even more about the full last-mile delivery process. The pilot uses an in-house platform that provides drivers with the ability to sign up for windows of time that work best for their schedule as well as Grocery Delivery order details, navigation assistance and more. Components of Spark are powered by Bringg, a leading delivery logistics technology platform. Walmart’s team of personal shoppers are an important component of the overall process as they meticulously shop for customers’ orders. Spark Delivery engages the services of independent drivers who partner with Delivery Drivers, Inc, a nationwide firm who specializes in last-mile contractor management, to complete deliveries.

There’s quite a bit to unpack there. First, the drivers are not Walmart employees; instead, they are contracted out through Delivery Drivers, Inc. (DDI), which does all the recruiting, screening and management of the drivers. Later on the post outlines how DDI can help drivers establish their own delivery business through the Contractor Entrepreneurial Program. This is similar to what Amazon offers through its Flex delivery program.

Second, the company is working with delivery logistics company Bringg, which also counts Coca-Cola and Panera as customers. The Bringg infrastructure includes live tracking of deliveries by the customer which, according to Food Dive, is rare in grocery delivery — this could give Walmart an edge.

What intrigues me most from the company’s post is Walmart’s desire to “learn even more about the full last-mile delivery process.” Once again we see how important data is. Right now, Walmart is contracting grocery delivery out to third parties like DoorDash and Deliv. This gets the retailer some insight into what people are buying and where, but inserting itself further up the logistics stack will provide the company more minute details about delivery routes, times, etc.. This, in turn, can be used to better understand and hyper-target specific neighborhoods and customers.

DoorDash, Deliv and any other delivery service contracting with Walmart might want to be concerned about their long-term prospects with the company. If its own delivery pilot works out, why hand off that customer understanding to a third party?

This move means more tumult in an already tumultuous time in the grocery biz. Ever since Amazon acquired Whole Foods last year, the grocery business has had a fire lit under its collective butt to up its technology and logistics game. Throughout 2018 we’ve seen retailers like Kroger, Albertsons, Target and Amazon all roll out expanded delivery options.

As mentioned at the top of this story, Walmart has been busy covering all of its grocery bases. It currently offers delivery in roughly 50 markets and is expanding that number to 100 metro areas, which will cover 40 percent of U.S. households. It’s also piloting a new robot-powered micro-fulfillment center for expedited and expanded grocery pickup. And it’s even testing out self-driving cars to chauffeur people to and from grocery pickups.

Walmart grocery delivery has a $9.95 fee and a $30 minimum order. Walmart Spark Delivery is currently being piloted in Nashville and New Orleans.

Amazon Opens Second Go Store Amid Rising Cashierless Competition

Amazon is opening is second Go store in downtown Seattle this morning. The new Go will be slightly bigger smaller (UPDATE: initial reporting on the second location was incorrect. Turns out the store is smaller.)than the first location, and will feature the same cashierless. technology that allows customers with the Amazon Go mobile app to walk into the store, grab what they want and leave without having to wait in line or stop to pay.

We loved shopping at Amazon Go and even named the store as one of our FoodTech 25 companies that are changing the way we eat. The seamless experience points to an inevitable future where high-tech cameras, sensors and computer vision all work together to make every grocery trip faster and checkout line free.

While Amazon would still be considered the leader in cashierless shopping, the landscape for the technology is more crowded since the first Go store launched in January. Cross-town rival Microsoft is reportedly working on such technology and chatting with Walmart about putting it to use in the retail giant’s stores.

Then there are smaller startups coming to market hoping to disrupt Amazon’s disruption. Zippin just unveiled its cashierless software platform and is set to open up in San Francisco next month. Israel-based Trigo Vision is piloting its software, which the company said can already scale to a full-size grocery store. Others such as Caper and AI Poly are also launching their own solutions.

Cashierless checkout certainly isn’t a zero sum game. There are plenty of retailers in the world looking to create a more efficient (and profitable) buying experience for customers. But for the time being, Amazon is definitely the pioneer. Its first-mover status gives it plenty of data and real-world experience to iterate faster than its competition.

In addition to the two Seattle locations open now, Amazon is opening up new Go stores in San Francisco and Chicago. And, lest we forget, Amazon owns Whole Foods, giving the company access to a network of full-sized retail locations in which to experiment and scale.

For those in Seattle who want to shop at the new Go store, you can find new the Seattle Central Library at 920 Fifth Ave.

Robot Fulfillment for Curbside Grocery Pickup is Becoming a Thing

Two-hour delivery may grab the lion’s share of headlines in the grocery news world, but store curbside pickup could wind up being a sleeping giant.

Case in point: Walmart announced last Friday that it is partnering with Alert Innovation to build out a robotic fulfillment center in its Salem, New Hampshire store. As Supermarket News reports:

“Walmart is adding a 20,000-square-foot extension to the Salem store to house the Alphabot system, warehouse online grocery orders and serve as a pickup point, with drive-through lanes for customers. When the project is finished, automated mobile carts will retrieve ordered items and ferry them to personal shoppers at one of four pick stations. The associates then will pick, assemble and deliver the orders to customers.”

You can get a glimpse of the system in action in this video:

Associates, Alphabot Team Up to Make Grocery Pickup Even Better

As you can see in the video, small, wheeled robots (Alphabots) scurry around on tracks to bring items to a human, who then puts them in the bag corresponding with the correct online order. Then, expanded, dedicated drive-through lanes provide a fast way for shoppers to pick up groceries (still loaded into trunks by humans… for now) without getting out of their car. The new system is scheduled to be up and running at the Salem Supercenter by the end of the year.

This might sound familiar to readers of The Spoon, as it’s pretty much what the startup Takeoff is doing: creating robot-powered micro-fulfillment centers within existing grocery stores paired with dedicated pickup areas. Takeoff says it only needs 6,000 – 10,000 square feet inside a store to build out its robot fulfillment system.

There’s a lot to unpack with these automated grocery centers. However, there are four major convergent factors that I think could drive their rapid adoption:

First is optimization. Walmart is big on robots, especially for tasks it says are manual and repetitive (oh hi, shelf scanning robot!). It makes more sense for robots to grab items from a backroom than a human to run around with a shopping cart. The Alphabot system, Walmart says, will allow its employees to focus on customer service and selling things. This is something we hear a lot — robots let humans prioritize the more human tasks (like picking produce).

Then there’s speed. A robotic system can fulfill orders faster than a human. While Takeoff currently has a two-hour pickup window for pre-ordered groceries, the company says the system actually completes an order in only two minutes and can ratchet the pickup window down to a half hour, if need be.

In terms of convenience, getting your groceries in half an hour makes curbside pickup competitive with a two-hour home delivery. There’s no need to wait at home (or let a stranger in) when you can pick up orders quickly from your trusted local store on your way home from work, or make them a part of your existing errand routine. Not to mention that curbside pickup from Walmart, at least, is free.

Finally, and this is probably not as huge of a deal as the other factors listed, studies show that a big reason people don’t buy groceries online is that they want to touch and feel a product before purchasing it. Having curbside pickup theoretically allows shoppers to get out of their car (gasp!) and inspect delicate items such as fruits and vegetables, then return them if the selection isn’t to their liking.

Seeing as how none of these robotic fulfillment centers in grocery stores have gone online yet, we don’t know how people will interact with them. But the idea isn’t something retail outlets should sleep on.

Walmart to Sell Gobble Meal Kits — but Only Online

Gobble announced a partnership today to sell its meal kits through Walmart’s e-commerce site (via Fortune). The move will get Gobble’s meal kits in front of Walmart’s vast online audience. However, it looks like it won’t put them physically in stores, which has been the trajectory for most remaining meal kit companies.

Gobble‘s hook in the crowded meal kit delivery space is that its meals only take 15 minutes — and one pan — to prepare. The company par cooks sauces, grains and pasta, and pre-slices vegetables and meat, to take some of the work out of meal preparation and shorten the cook time.

As we’ve seen, the logistics of providing fresh food for delivery by mail are complicated and expensive. Just last month, meal kit company Chef’d abruptly shut down because of exactly this issue. Its assets were acquired and going forward the company will foresake mail order to focus on retail opportunities.

Just about every meal kit company is jumping into the grocery aisle pool. Blue Apron is selling kits in Costcos, HelloFresh kits will be sold in Giant Food and Stop & Shop locations. Not to mention grocers like Kroger and Albertsons, who doubled down on meal kits and acquired Home Chef and Plated respectively. Even smaller supermarket chains like New Seasons are launching their own meal kits.

Founded in 2010, Gobble has raised nearly $30 million in venture funding, and Fortune estimated that the company brought in between $25 and $50 million in revenue last year, but has still not made money. An interesting footnote to this Gobble/Walmart deal is that Gobble’s VP of Supply Chain and Operations used to be the VP of Supply Chain at Walmart.

While this is undoubtedly a good step in the right direction for Gobble, it seems like just that — a step. Part of the issue we’ve had with mail order meal kits here at The Spoon is their inflexibility. Parmesean chicken and brown sugar salmon may sound good at the time I click to purchase them online, but by the time the meal kits arrive, my palate may have moved on — and I’m stuck with a box of food that I have to make before it goes bad.

Convenience makes meal kits in the retail aisles a much better play. The ability to select and grab a meal kit for that evening while you’re already out running errands (or even from the office fridge on your way home) better aligns your preferences and your actual meal.

You also have to wonder how this fits in with Walmart’s overall meal kit plans. As of June this year, Business Insider reported that the retailer was selling individual and small meal kits from Home Chef, Sun Basket and Takeout kit online — but those specific Walmart links in the story no longer work.

Perhaps more importantly, Walmart is working on its own meal kits, which will be available in more than 2,000 of its stores this year. On the surface, it seems like Walmart is leaving the logistical hard parts of meal kits to someone else (read: Gobble), and keeping the retail aisles for itself.

Now we just have to wait and see if Walmart shoppers want to gobble up Gobble’s meal kits.

Zest Labs Sues Walmart for $2B Alleging Food Waste Tech Theft

Fighting food waste is a big problem with a big business opportunity for the growing number of companies trying to reduce it. Whenever there’s big money to be made, lawsuits are sure to follow. Sure enough, yesterday Zest Labs and its parent company, Ecoark Holdings, sued Walmart for $2 billion over Walmart’s Eden technology, which aims to reduce food waste by improving the shelf life of produce (hat tip to Silicon Valley Business Journal).

As we’ve written before: “Zest Labs offers Zest Fresh, a sensor-based logistics system to measure produce freshness. Zest Fresh assigns each pallet of produce an individual code that marks product type and data related to its exposure to the elements which would impact its spoilage. That information is uploaded to the company’s proprietary cloud where the data can presumably be tracked by anyone in the value chain from farm to distributor.”

According to Zest, the company met with Walmart in 2015 to demonstrate its technology for the retail giant, and from Zest Labs’ lawsuit announcement: “During this time, Zest Labs’ proprietary information and trade secrets were shared with Walmart, including members of Walmart’s executive leadership team.”

In March of this year, Walmart announced its Eden technology. The company said it monitored food freshness, and was developed over a six month period, starting with a company hackathon. From a Walmart blog post announcing that technology: “Eden’s suite of apps helps Walmart associates better monitor and care for fresh fruits and vegetables that are waiting to be shipped from distribution centers to stores. That could mean more efficiently ripening bananas, predicting the shelf life of tomatoes while they’re still on the vine, or prioritizing the flow of green grocery items from the back of the store to the shelf.”

Part of Walmart’s approach, the company told Business Insider at the time, was the use of tracking devices on cases of produce.

Zest believes similarities between the two are not coincidental. Again, from the Zest Labs lawsuit announcement:

“This concern led to the action we have taken today, which was to file a lawsuit with the federal district court in Arkansas claiming that Walmart has violated the Arkansas Trade Secrets Act and the federal Defend Trade Secrets Act. In addition, we are also filing claims for unfair competition, unjust enrichment, breach of the covenant of good faith and fair dealing, conversion and fraud. We believe strongly in the need to protect our intellectual property, recognizing the importance of preserving the value to our shareholders and customers. We are asking the court for over $2 billion in damages, based in part on Walmart’s claim in their March 1, 2018 announcement that Eden will provide that measure of benefit to Walmart over the next five years.”

The grocery sector is ripe (sorry) with competition. Giants like Walmart, Amazon, Kroger and more are fighting each other for your food dollars. Any edge in reducing costs from food waste or extending shelf life of produce is worth a lot of money to companies at that scale. Just last month, Costco started using Zest’s technology for its produce. And elsewhere in the fight against food waste, yesterday Apeel raised $70 million for its plant-based peels that prevent food degradation.

For those wanting more information on the lawsuit, the case is Zest Labs, Inc., et. al. v Walmart, Inc., case number 4:18-cv-500-JM, in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Western Division.

Walmart, Amazon and Target Make Same-Day Delivery Moves (on the Same Day)

Walmart announced yesterday that it was partnering with Postmates to expand the retailer’s online grocery delivery ambitions. This new delivery option started in Charlotte, NC, as of yesterday, and will expand to more markets “in the coming months.”

The news comes less than a month after Walmart announced plans to expand its online grocery delivery service to more than 100 U.S. metro areas by the end of the year. Walmart has existing delivery partnerships with Uber and Deliv, which have been delivering groceries already in select markets. Same day grocery delivery from Walmart carries a $9.95 delivery fee and requires a $30 minimum purchase.

Not to be outdone, Amazon announced yesterday that its Prime customers in Los Angeles can now get free, two-hour delivery from Whole Food stores there. That the two announcements happened on the same day illustrates how fierce that battle is between Amazon and Walmart to bag your grocery business. The two have been locked in a tit-for-tat arms race (in-home delivery, anyone?) ratcheting up features and services to become your grocer of choice. Perhaps feeling left out, Target too announced yesterday its plans to expand its Shipt same day delivery service across Arizona and New Mexico later this month.

The added twist to the Walmart/Postmates announcement is that Postmates had reportedly discussed the idea of merging with restaurant delivery service DoorDash, according to Recode. Though nothing came of any such discussions, and Postmates denied the report, that move was supposedly motivated in part by Postmates and DoorDash wanting to fend off the ever-growing, all-consuming Amazon.

And if all that weren’t enough, last week Instacart confirmed that it had expanded its Series E with an additional $150 million to expand its same day grocery delivery ambitions. Instacart has partnerships with grocery retailers such as Albertsons, Kroger, Costco, and even Whole Foods.

All of this activity points to just how hot and important the same day grocery delivery space is for everyone involved. It’s hits the sweet spot where human laziness and hunger intersect. We’re always going to buy food, and if one of these players becomes our go-to grocer, they’ll reap a recurring weekly revenue source.

Instacart Takes Home Another $150 Million

Instacart, the grocery delivery startup, has raised an additional $150 million in funding. This new cash is part of its existing Series E round and in addition to the $200 million the company raised in February. Axios broke the story this morning with the company later confirming it.

This new money brings the total amount raised by Instacart to more than a billion dollars. According to Bloomberg, the additional funding raises the company’s valuation to $4.35 billion.

Instacart is going to need all the money it can get as it works to fend off Amazon, which started rolling out two-hour deliveries from its subsidiary Whole Foods earlier this year. Instacart actually has its own delivery partnership with Whole Foods, but obviously with Amazon’s latest moves, that deal is not long for this world.

To make up for this expected loss, Instacart has been busy signing up additional retailers like Costco, Kroger, Albertsons and Sam’s Club. That last one is of particular interest as Walmart owns Sam’s Club. Walmart shut down 63 Sam’s Clubs in January, but if the Instacart partnership bears fruit, it could lead to bigger opportunities for for both companies as they look to keep Amazon at bay.

Having a variety of large partners is good for Instacart, but it will have to battle Amazon on the technology front as well. Just today, Amazon announced expanded smart lock compatibility for its Key service in a bid to bolster its in-home delivery capabilities. Whether or not people will ever be comfortable with letting strangers into their unattended home is TBD, but the point is that Instacart will need to use this money to both expand and innovate.

AgShift Raises $2M, Reveals RJO as First Client

Today AgShift, a startup that uses computer vision and deep learning to reduce food waste, announced its first client: RJO Produce Marketing. This news comes just days after AgShift raised $2 million in its first seed round

Agshift uses its technology to attack food waste generated in the supply chain. Right now food inspection is done manually at different points along the food system, with workers literally eyeballing product to assess its quality using their own judgment, which can vary.

“The food supply chain is fragmented,” said Miku Jha, Founder and CEO of AgShift. “Inspections are done by different people at different points.” The results, according to Jha, are “subjective and inconsistent.” One person’s Grade A is another person’s Grade B.

Jha wants to take the subjectivity out of this process with — what else? — a mobile phone app. Instead of just looking at a piece of fruit, inspectors at wholesalers and distributors hold the produce up to the phone’s camera and take a picture (like depositing a check via mobile app, the software guides you for proper positioning). AgShift’s software in the cloud analyzes that image to quantify its bruising, color distribution, average size, mold, etc. to determine its quality.

Using the USDA’s produce guidelines (or a customized set of specifications), AgShift says its software can objectively give fruit its proper rating, and provide precise reasons why it made that choice. According to Jha, this level of consistency throughout food supply chain will deliver higher-quality produce to consumers.

It will also reduce food waste on multiple fronts. AgShift analyzes color distribution better than the human eye. So if, for example, it sees some strawberries that are 90 percent dark red at a shipping point, it can tell suppliers that it is more ripe. Then the suppliers can divert those riper berries to closer destinations, rather than running the risk of them getting spoiled on a cross-country trip.

AgShift can also reduce food waste by removing human judgment from the equation. Right now, vendors and buyers might dispute the rating of a food shipment. This can lead to canceled orders and food getting thrown out. With a computer generated rating, lower quality food can be assessed earlier in the supply chain and re-sold at a lower price or re-purposed, rather than discarded.

Industry watchers may note that AgShift sounds a lot like the Eden technology Walmart recently rolled out at its grocery stores to prevent food waste. Walmart is obviously a giant and a master of the supply chain, but Eden appears to be Walmart-specific. AgShift’s agnostic platform will give it a broad range of potential customers.

AgShift’s platform is already in trial use by a number of companies, the first of which to be publicly announced is RJO Produce Marketing. According to the press release, RJO provides “quality assurance inspections, in-depth market analysis and category management services for key perishable commodities.”

While the two million raised by AgShift is a rounding error for a company like Walmart, it’s just the start for this startup. The Sunnyvale-based company was founded two years ago and currently has 12 people working in their California and India offices. Jha said the money will be used to fund R&D and expedite the product.

Jha’s mission with AgShift is a global one. As she points out, we spend a lot of time talking about growing more food for a growing population — but a good first step is reducing the amount of food we waste right now.

Do Blue Apron’s In-Store Plans Mean Death for Mail Delivery Meals?

Blue Apron will start selling meal kits in stores, in a move that isn’t just a reflection of the company’s continued troubles, but could be a bellwether for the overall health of the meal-kit-by-mail sector.

Blue Apron helped kick off the whole meal kit delivery boom, promising a variety of fresh ingredients delivered right to your door. But since launching in 2012, the company has faced increased external competition and internal troubles.

After Blue Apron, the meal kit delivery space quickly filled up with other mail order players like HelloFresh, Plated and SunBasket–all vying for your dinner table. Then companies sprouted up and started to specialize, offering things like only proteins, or kids meals or meal services tied to specific appliances.

But as we wrote last year, mail order meal kits all faced the same basic issues:

“The other challenge that the entire meal kit industry faces is the stickiness of their basic product. Meal kits are often easy for consumers to try – companies make it simple to sign up and offer quick delivery and attractive new customer promotions. But they are a huge departure from the way we have been taught to shop for and purchase our food – and while they might be more convenient in some ways, they are inconvenient in others.”

It was convenient to get a box of ingredients delivered to your door, but you still had to do all the work of cooking whatever was sent. And you had to cook whatever you received before it went bad, whether you wanted it or not.

All of these external pressures have taken a toll on Blue Apron. According to The Wall Street Journal, the company reported 750,000 subscribers last month, which is down from a high of 1 million last year. Blue Apron’s stock price has tumbled since it went public last summer, laid off six percent of its staff in October and replaced its CEO in December.

Blue Apron was light on details about the forthcoming in-store meals to the Journal and didn’t provide pricing, saying only that they hoped to have their kits in stores by the end of this year. But by then will it be too late?

You can see why they’d want in on the in-store action. According to recent Nielsen research, “in the year ended 2017, in-store meal kits generated $154.6 million in sales, posting growth of more than 26% year-over-year. For context, total brick-and-mortar sales for center store edibles (grocery, dairy, frozen foods) dipped 0.1% last year to $374 billion.”

Retailers like Amazon and Walmart are already in the meal kit game. Amazon, with its logistical superpowers, provides same day meal kit delivery, and owns Whole Foods, which can serve as another sales channel. Additionally, at its model Amazon Go store here in Seattle, meal kits were displayed prominently, and Amazon is set to add more Go stores, all of which are aimed at making shopping convenient and frictionless.

Walmart partnered with meal kit services at the end of last year and earlier this month announced their own line of Walmart meal kits available for purchase in store. Even Weight Watchers is rolling out a line branded in-store meal kits.

Shifting to in-store provides a number of efficiencies for both the businesses and consumers. First, setting up and running external centers to prepare, process and ship meals to individual houses around the country is expensive. Partnering with a grocer reduces the shipping complexities, and if you’re a grocer, you can prepare meals at your own store.

Being able to prep food in stores can also translate into less work for the consumer. Having chopped vegetables in a kit reduces their shelf life, but also decreases the amount of work home cooks need to do. The less work consumers need to do increases the attractiveness of a meal kit. And they can pick up that meal kit as an impulse to suit their mood during their existing schedule of going to the grocery store (or have it delivered same day).

Not everyone sees it this way, however. Forrester analyst, Sucharita Kodali, told AdWeek that Walmart is three years too late entering the meal kit market, and thinks the meal kit industry isn’t that attractive as a segment. “Everyone in that grocery industry is terrified, and the investment banks and VCs are all goading these poor retailers to do things they’d never do otherwise,” Kodali said to AdWeek.

Meal kits aren’t entirely dead. Venture Capitalists invested $273.9 million in the space last year. And startups like Suvie and Tovala are using unique hardware/meal kit combos to make preparing meal kits easier.

But that may not mean much to Blue Apron. We’ll have to wait and see what’s in store for their in-store plans.

Walmart’s New Patent Filings Look to Farming, Drones, and “Bee Robots”

Not to be outdone by Amazon, Walmart has rolled out a series of updates to its grocery business recently, including a partnership between its Sam’s Club wing and Instacart, the acquisition of Parcel, and the recent announcement of its Eden technology, which could help save the giant retailer $2 billion in food waste costs over the next half-decade.

But as a new research brief from CB Insights points out, all these endeavors could benefit from Walmart’s getting involved in the other end of its grocery store supply chain—that is, farming the crops that eventually wind up on its store shelves.

To that end, the retailer giant recently applied for a series of six patents aimed at farm automation.

These include an application that uses machine vision for identifying pests and monitoring crop damage, drones that shoot targeted sprays of pesticides instead of the usual cloud, and the “robot bee” patent, which would carry pollen from plant to plant. There’s also potential for drones to act as the next generation of  “scarecrows or shiny devices” to scare away hungry birds, according to the patent.

While all this is fairly abstract at the moment, the patent filings do suggest that Walmart wants to be more involved with the source of its supply chain in order to save time and money, and even give consumers more transparency. 

But how deep into the farming business could—and should—a major retailer go? After all, it’s one thing to file a patent; it’s another to actually execute on the processes and technologies outlined in those documents, particularly when they’re outside a company’s core business. Multiple retailers, including Amazon, have been testing drones from some time now, but most of those efforts are around how to deliver food, not grow it. As this piece noted last year, “the agricultural use of drones sounds good in theory—feed the world, save the planet—but is difficult in practice.”

But that may be to Walmart’s advantage as it looks to differentiate itself from Amazon and others in the ensuing fight for grocery store supremacy. I don’t imagine Walmart will operate full-fledged farms anytime soon. But if the above patents prove successful, it may give the massive retailer a new part of the grocery store supply chain to dominate.

What do you think? Should Walmart consider a serious play in the farming space? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Walmart Issued Patent for Robot Shopping Cart

Yesterday, U.S. Patent No. 9,908,760 B2 was awarded to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. for “Shopping facility assistance systems, devices and methods to drive movable item containers.” Translation, robot shopping carts could be making their way to Walmart.

The patent was filed two years ago for what looks like a Roomba underneath a shopping cart, which drives it around. It covers a ton of possible technological implementations around how it works and communicates, as well as broad set of use cases. Whatever it finally looks like, shopping carts are going high-tech and Walmart is set to expand its robotic workforce.

Last year the retailer started rolling out shelf-scanning robots to roam the aisles and look for depleted inventory on shelves. The company is a big believer in robots, and says it wants to use them for tasks that are “repeatable, predictable, and manual.”

Being issued a patent doesn’t mean you’ll run into one on your next trip to the store for LaCroix, but the patent filing calls out a number of scenarios that give you a sense of what Walmart might have in store, including:

    Customer assistance – a “tagalong” feature would allow robot shopping carts to lead or follow shoppers around the store
    Interactive controls – shoppers could speak or enter via touch screen items they are looking for and the shopping cart would guide them
    Worker assistance – items for re-stocking could be sent to specific locations in-store
    Remote shopping – via an interactive screen, shoppers at home could virtually accompany an in-store shopper
    Property detection – the store would know where all their shopping carts are and when they are abandoned
    Surveillance – video cameras could be attached to the carts to serve “various security purposes”

Not to mention all the data Walmart would get from connecting their shopping carts and monitoring their every move as people made their way around the store. It’s not a leap to imagine people connecting their Walmart accounts and “logging in” to their shopping carts where they are served up bespoke advertisements.

Given all that, it’s patently obvious that it’s not so much a question of “if” Walmart will roll these out, but when and how.

BuzzFeed and Walmart Launch Tasty Line of Cookware

BuzzFeed, maker of the wildly popular Tasty cooking video series, announced today that it is teaming up with Walmart to debut an exclusive line of Tasty cookware. The move is a delicious bit of vertical integration that extends revenue for BuzzFeed beyond ads, and lets Walmart capitalize on the enormous popularity of the ubiquitous overhead recipe show.

The Tasty cookware include more than 90 products, and is already available on Walmart’s website. According to the press release:

The Tasty cookware line features bright colors that pop in the kitchen, and includes all the tools necessary to prepare Tasty’s more than 2,700 recipes to date. The line features Non-stick Forged Aluminum Cookware in sets and open Stock, available in 4 colors. This includes 11pc Cookware Set at $99; Non-stick Metal Bakeware with silicone handle inserts, Silicone head utensils, soft grip gadgets and glass mixing bowls. The Tasty Kitchen line will be used in Tasty videos and was designed and developed with the Tasty fan in mind, as BuzzFeed research shows that 2 out of 3 Tasty fans have made a Tasty recipe.

Tasty cookware is the next logical step in the evolution of BuzzFeed and Walmart’s relationship. Amidst missing revenue targets in November of last year, BuzzFeed CEO, Jonah Peretti sent a memo to his company about the need to move beyond ads, saying “As our strategy evolves, we need to evolve our organization, too — particularly our Business team, which was built to support direct sold advertising but will need to bring in different, more diverse expertise to support these new lines of business.”

One of those new lines of business was the Tasty branded One Top, a countertop induction burner that syncs with Tasty videos in the new media publisher’s first foray into guided cooking. Then in December of last year, BuzzFeed and Walmart teamed up to sell equipment and groceries necessary for making Tasty recipes. So it makes sense for BuzzFeed to capture more of that revenue by hawking its own line of cookware in its videos. It also gives them another set of hardware beyond the One Top to extend their guided cooking app over time.

And it looks like this is just the beginning for the two companies. Today’s press release calls the Tasty cookware line the “cornerstone of a broader strategic partnership” and that we can look forward to collaboration across a “wide range of consumer products.”

While it will be interesting to watch how these two companies create further culinary synergy, it’s easy to see opportunities for more immediate vertical integration. Recipe videos like Tasty’s are a discovery and commerce platform. In addition to selling the hardware, incorporating instant shoppable recipes like those generated by Whisk (also a Walmart partner), means food inspiration can easily turn into a same day reality (and revenue).

The other benefit for Walmart is that the Tasty relationship is exclusive. This puts up a defensive wall around Tasty’s massive audience against Amazon and Target in the heated battle for food supremacy.