Delivery

Refrigerated lockers where you can collect your fruit and vegetables. This is one of the new concepts developed by the Polish parcel delivery company InPost. They've launched similar pilots in Krakow and Warsaw. With this, the company hopes to gain a further foothold in the online shopping world. These…

Walmart will use fully autonomous box trucks to make deliveries in Arkansas starting in 2021. The big-box retailer has been working with a startup called Gatik on a delivery pilot for 18 months. Next year, the two companies plan on taking their partnership to the next level by removing the safety driver from their autonomous box trucks.

Gatik, which is based in Palo Alto and Toronto, outfitted several multitemperature box trucks with sensors and software to enable autonomous driving. Since last year, those trucks have been operating on a two-mile route between a “dark store” (a store that stocks items for fulfillment but isn’t open to the public) and a nearby Neighborhood Market in Bentonville, Arkansas. Since then, the vehicles have...

Ford’s long-running Miami self-driving car tests might just prove vital during the pandemic. The automaker, Argo AI and The Education Fund are running an eight-week pilot program that uses autonomous Fusion Hybrid cars to deliver fresh produce to Mia...

Co-op is expanding its use of autonomous home delivery by rolling out the service to shoppers in Northampton. The retailer says it has ambitions to use as many as 300 robots by the end of 2021 as it looks for more towns and cities in which to operate autonomous deliveries. The autonomous service will serve around 5,000 Northampton households with contactless deliveries. Initially deliveries will be made from the Co-op food store in Wootton Fields serving communities in Wootton and Hardingstone, with the robots typically travelling up to three miles from the store.
Source: retailanalysis.igd.com 

Drones have already shown that they can reliably deliver vital shipments of blood across Rwanda, drop off prescriptions to senior citizens in Florida, and help quarantining families stay safe with contactless deliveries. Now they’re going to be buzzi...

Einride recently revealed its revamped autonomous delivery truck, which is more aerodynamic than the previous version. To give a glimpse of the Pod in action, the Einride team put the AV through its paces on the Top Gear track in Surrey, England.It’s...

Amazon is working on a fix for a problem that challenged food retailers earlier in the pandemic — long virtual lines for grocery delivery spots for online shoppers.

According to an interview that Stephanie Landry, Amazon’s VP of grocery, gave to Recode, “Amazon has now come up with a solution if there are large spikes in demand this fall and winter, whether because of a jump in COVID-19 cases, a surge in other illnesses (like the flu), or bad weather.”

Amazon’s fleet of delivery trucks is finally getting a little greener. This morning, the e-commerce titan revealed its first custom electric delivery vehicle: A big, surprisingly cutesy van built in partnership with electric transport startup Rivian....

The food delivery space just became a bit more interesting.

Lyft has launched an offering that enables members of its Lyft Pink discount program to receive free unlimited Grubhub food deliveries. More specifically, Lyft Pink members — who pay $19.99 per month for 15% percent off rides — will be enrolled in the Grubhub+ membership program, which normally costs $9.99 per month.

Shipt is hiring an additional 100,000 shoppers this holiday season amid unrelenting demand for grocery delivery from the American consumer.

The new hiring push will bring the company's personal shopper base to over 300,000 (rival Instacart has amassed an army of 750,000 shoppers this year.)

In particular, Shipt is looking for shoppers in Detroit, Grand Rapids, Mich., Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston and Chicago. 

Chicago-based Grubhub will provide all of the ride-sharing company's Pink members a free membership in Grubhub +.

Online grocery pickup isn’t going away.

An empty London industrial unit has been transformed into a sophisticated indoor farming space dedicated to growing fresh herbs which can be delivered to the city’s restaurants within hours of harvesting all year round. The new Vertical Farm facility is being operated by Harvest London, a company…

Del Monte Fresh Produce has launched its first e-commerce website with same-day delivery in the Dallas market — another signal that direct-to-consumer (DTC) commerce is picking up steam during the pandemic.

As of Tuesday, consumers can visit www.myfreshdelmonte.com to place orders for delivery. With more than 200 available SKUs from both Fresh Del Monte and Mann Packing Co. products, Dallas-based shoppers will be able to fill their virtual carts with fruits and veggies.

To promote the launch, Fresh Del Monte will add an order of lemons and send a lemonade recipe with each delivery placed through its new DTC website through the end of October. The promotion is limited one per customer while supplies last. 

Yellowbird Foodshed was delivering products to 60 households a week prior to Covid-19.

Drones - you see them flying around more and more often. In the US, Amazon has received permission to test making deliveries with these flying machines. So, in a few years, we might never have to leave our houses. Our deliveries will simply be left on the porch or posted through a window.

Walmart just kicked off its own drone delivery pilot, a collaboration with drone delivery company Flytrex.

The pilot launched today in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and is limited to select grocery and household essential items from the retailer’s local stores.

“We know that it will be some time before we see millions of packages delivered via drone,” reads a press release from Tom Ward, senior vice president of customer product at Walmart. “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.”

Dangling from a Wire

Flytrex’s drones can cruise at 32 mph at 230 feet and can release their payload, stored inside a delivery box below the rotors, via a wire release mechanism. According to the company’s website, orders are lowered using the wire from eighty feet, ensuring a “quiet and secure delivery.”

The news comes after Amazon was designated an “air carrier” by the Federal Aviation Administration in August, meaning it can start trialing drone package deliveries.

Amazon is also developing its own proprietary drones that transform from a helicopter configuration to an airplane one. They can carry five pound packages to costumers within a 15 mile radius.

Since mid-August, green folding crates have replaced the blue crates in the freshmarts of Colruyt Group's food stores (Colruyt Lowest Prices, OKay, Bio-Planet and Spar Colruyt Group). Four folding crates take up as much room as one old crate saving the group transport and space. The transition from blue…

As the pandemic continues to disrupt our everyday lives, DoorDash has been working to expand the products and services it offers to local businesses so that customers can access more of their favorite stores and everyday family needs on-demand.

"We announced our entry into convenience earlier this year with partners such as Casey’s, 7-Eleven, Circle K, Wawa, CVS Pharmacy and Walgreens, and we’re continuing to add more types of stores onto the platform that provide a new level of convenience to customers," said Mike Goldblatt, head of grocery and convenience partnerships at DoorDash.

"Today, we are excited to announce that DoorDash has partnered with grocery stores across the country, launching grocery delivery through the DoorDash app for the first time," said Goldblatt. "Customers in the Bay Area, Los Angeles, Orange County, Sacramento, San Diego and the Central Coast can order from Smart & Final. Meijer and Fresh Thyme are available to customers in Chicago, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Detroit and Indianapolis. In the coming weeks, we will be adding selection across the country with grocers such as Hy-Vee, Gristedes / D’agostino and more — providing more than 75 million Americans access to a grocery store on DoorDash."

The burgeoning online delivery channel is leaving a considerable impact on packaging styles and materials, marketers say.

Safety is a priority, said Cindy Blish, brand and communications manager with Shelton, Conn.-based Inline Plastics Corp.

“Consumers demand that their online delivery of food is not tampered with, which is why tamper evident packaging has such a great fit for the delivery market,” she said. 

“Tamper-evident packaging” will continue to evolve to meet the burgeoning needs of the market, including developing new styles which not only provide safe and protected transportation of the products, but also provide enough style to be attractively served straight from the container, Blish said.

That’s a key point, said Jeff Brandenburg, president and primary consultant for the Greenfield, Mass.-based JSB Group LLC and QFresh Lab in Salinas, Calif.

“We get back to how do you protect it,” he said. 

There are a number of key questions that come to the fore, where packaging for online delivery models are concerned, Brandenburg said.

“Is that online delivery going to be refrigerated? How do you maintain temperatures? If you have fresh and stable side by side, how do you manage that from a shipping standpoint? Is it Amazon Fresh, USPS, FedEx?” he said. 

US: Whole Foods launches free virtual home economics classesAs part of its new brand design rollout for its 365 by Whole Foods Market private label, Austin, Texas-based Whole Foods is launching Home Ec 365, a digital curriculum that updates the fundamentals of home economics while putting a modern twist…

Walmart is partnering with grocery delivery platform Instacart in yet another bid to rival Amazon and its growing offline network of Whole Foods stores and same- and one-day Prime delivery. The partnership, first reported on Tuesday by CNBC, means Walmart customers in four pilot markets spanning California and Oklahoma can now choose Walmart’s grocery options when putting together an Instacart order.

Instacart already works with major grocery chains like Albertsons, Aldi, Costco, Kroger, and Target, as well as smaller chain stores like Wegmans and pharmacies like CVS. The platform also has an existing partnership with Walmart-owned Sam’s Club that will remain intact. The addition of Walmart — Amazon’s primary rival that has been working...

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Waymo and Fiat Chrysler Automotive are extending their four-year-old partnership to include commercial vans. On Wednesday, the companies announced a plan to jointly develop an autonomous delivery van based on FCA’s Ram ProMaster.

Waymo, the self-driving division of Google parent Alphabet, announced back in 2016 that FCA would be its first OEM (original equipment manufacturer) partner. Since then, the two companies have worked together to retrofit a fleet of hundreds of Chrysler Pacifica minivans with Waymo’s self-driving hardware and software. Now, the companies will work together on a new project — an autonomous delivery van — in the service of Waymo’s nascent delivery service, Waymo Via.

Moreover, FCA has chosen Waymo as its...

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Amazon unveiled its six-wheel delivery robot, Scout, in January 2019, but has only been slowly expanding its field tests. After launching in a single neighborhood in Snohomish County, Washington and then adding a larger site in Irvine, California last August, Scout is now undergoing trials in Atlanta, Georgia and Franklin, Tennessee, Amazon announced today.

Truck Route Planner to optimize travel patterns for Metro Vancouver truck operators.

TransLink and the Government of British Columbia are releasing the Truck Route Planner, an online tool to help commercial vehicle operators plan their trips. This tool is the first of its kind in Canada to plan truck routes with a holistic picture of the region’s commercial vehicle network.

US: GrubMarket now major supplier of California cherriesGrubMarket, which delivers mainly local and organic groceries to businesses and consumers, has completed the acquisitions of Growers Produce Inc. and Cali Fresh Produce Inc., 2 produce wholesale companies with established customer bases across both…

Uber will acquire food delivery service Postmates in a $2.65 billion all-stock deal intended to give the ride-hail company a much-need jolt after its offer to buy Grubhub fell apart amid antitrust scrutiny.