If you’re a Safeway customer in Northern California, your grocery delivery person might soon seem a bit clunky.
That’s because it’s a remote-controlled, zero-emission delivery cart.
Albertsons Companies, which owns the Safeway chain of supermarkets, is joining forces with Tortoise to have what is essentially a robot bring food and household items to homes within a 3-mile radius of a Safeway. Tests are running at stores in the California towns of Tracy and Windsor.
A remote control operator in the store uses a camera and speakers to navigate the battery-powered robot to your house. The cart, which can hold as much as 120 pounds, carries orders for two households and travels an average speed of 3 mph. When it arrives at your home, you get a text to say it’s there and the operator unlocks the container with your order.
During the pilot program, a human will escort the delivery cart.
Online grocery was already a growing segment before the COVID-19 pandemic, but its pace of growth has accelerated since lockdowns and concerns about catching the virus began last year. It’s expected to be 21.5% of total U.S. grocery sales by 2025, about $250 billion of the $1.16 trillion in grocery sales, according to a study by Mercatus, a grocery retail e-commerce company, and the research firm Incisiv. That’s up from 10.2% in 2020 and only 3.4% in 2019.
Some types of food and drink are ineligible for the Tortoise robot delivery, like those that include alcohol or items with awkward dimensions, like extra-large deli trays.
Safeway’s minimum order for delivery is $35.
The Boise, Idaho-based supermarket giant, whose banners include the eponymous Albertsons, has been working on this for six months, Rupp explains. It’s an effort to reduce click-to-deliver rates; speed and convenience are key. The company is looking to offer same-day delivery across the board, which it currently doesn’t do.
Albertsons came under fire in January when it laid off delivery personnel and replaced them with gig workers through third-party providers such as DoorDash.
The company declined to say how much a remote-controlled delivery cart costs.
Albertsons went public in June 2020. Its other chains include Vons, Jewel-Osco, Shaw’s, Acme, and Star Market.
Tortoise, headquartered in Mountain View, California, was founded in 2019 by Dmitry Shevelenko, a former director of business development at Uber, and David Graham.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the early-rate deadline, May 3.
