Walmart to build more robot-filled warehouses
NEW YORK — Walmart Inc. is expanding an effort to use robotics to keep up with a surge in online grocery orders in its battle with Amazon.com Inc. in the fast-growing sector.
The company said Wednesday that it plans to build warehouses at its stores where self-driving robots will fetch groceries and have them ready for shoppers to pick up in an hour or less.
Walmart will build dozens of the small warehouses, ranging from 20,000 to 35,000 square feet, within or next to a store to lower grocery fulfillment times. The world’s largest retailer unveiled its first such facility about a year ago.
Walmart declined to say how many of the warehouses it will build, but construction has started at stores in Lewisville; Plano; American Fork, Utah; and Bentonville, Ark., where Walmart’s corporate offices are based.
A test site was opened more than a year ago at a store in Salem, N.H. The company declined to provide financial specifics, such as cost savings, on the project.
Walmart hopes the warehouses will speed curbside pickups, where orders are brought outside to shoppers’ cars. The option, along with deliveries, became increasingly popular after the pandemic pushed Americans to avoid physical stores.
Grocery sales are booming online. At the start of the pandemic last year, Walmart said delivery and pickup sales grew 300 percent.
As the country’s biggest seller of food, Walmart is trying to defend that business and maintain customers. Speedy grocery delivery also is core to Walmart+, its fledgling subscription offering that competes with Amazon’s popular Prime membership.
“What we want to do is fill as many orders as we can,” said Tom Ward, Walmart’s senior vice president of customer product. “The system allows us to pick orders and dispense them with great speed.”
The company said the robots won’t roam store aisles. Instead, they’ll stay inside warehouses built in separate areas, either within a store or next to it. Windows will be placed at some locations so shoppers can watch the robots work.
The wheeled robots carry crates of apple juice, cereal and other small goods to Walmart workers, who then bag them for shoppers. Rival Amazon uses similar technology in its warehouses, with robots bringing books, vitamins and other small items to workers to box and ship.
Walmart said the robots save time since employees don’t have to walk store aisles to find items. Workers will, however, have to go into the store to pick out fresh groceries, such as meat, fish and vegetables. They’ll also have to grab TVs and other large items that are too large for the robots to carry.