ShopBots speed up online grocery shopping in the US

Online grocery shopping continues to grow strongly in the United States, but order fulfilment remains a huge cost burden for retailers.

The service is also available for in‑store shopping: by scanning the QR codes in the Whole Foods store, customers can order from thousands of items that cannot be taken directly from the shelves, and they can usually pick them up at the collection point within about 10 minutes

This article is available for reading in Trade magazin 2026/04

Fulfil sets out to change this by replacing the manual work of store employees with its autonomous micro-fulfilment system. The solution is already in operation at a Whole Foods store: in an automated warehouse built in the back area small robots called “ShopBots” assemble orders – the system handles more than 12,000 products.