I have said it many times here, we are well into the shift from traditional, large format supermarkets for grocery shopping to ordering online for pickup. I have even speculated how those same large footprint suburban supermarkets would shift from their current model to a hybrid online fulfillment/retail setup.
That said even I didn't think this level of shift would happen this quickly. It was announced today that Loblaws (known local as Superstore) will be converting 12,000 sq ft on space in a GTA location to an automated picking system for online orders. The facility will open in 2020 and service multiple stores near the pick facility. Items not in the automated pick system will still be manually picked from in store by humans and combined with the automated pick at the order verification stage. The combined order will be a single pick up for the customers.
It seems crystal clear the long term goal here is to get a pick happening in a suburban location, either a supermarket, hybrid or full fulfillment centre, and then picked up close to customers address or even delivered directly to them. The purchase of Shopper's by Weston (Loblaws) was all about that last mile real estate. In downtown there are two Shoppers locations and a third is over in the village. In the not to distant future those locations will have the breadth of selection of a suburban Superstore with a fraction of the footprint and minimal loss due to theft.
Sure older generations still want to spend lots of time walking the store and hand picking their order themselves but that is a dying trend much like bookstores, music stores and movie rentals.
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