Little Lockers Go Live in the Big Apple
Enter Walmart's DC6020, Crumbl fumbles, eGrocery sales steady
Well, we’re ending the week with a bit of news for everyone: new hardware on city streets and in warehouses, a look at a fast-growing / delivery-optimized brand, and the latest data on digital sales for supermarkets.
Modern Delivery will be off Monday, returning Wednesday.
Today:
Knock Knock, It’s LockerNYC
Walmart Deploying AV Forklifts
Chart Time | eGrocery Sales Steady
Crumbl’s Per Unit Sales Crumble
POLICY | LockerNYC Launches in New York City
Nine months after first announcing the initiative, New York City has turned its LockerNYC pilot live, bringing publicly accessible delivery lockers to five locations in Brooklyn and Queens, with two more in BK & Manhattan coming soon. Maintained by GoLocker, the project aims to combat porch piracy for NYC residents that lack lobby staff or secure vestibules, while offering delivery services an open and brand-agnostic alternative to competitors like Amazon Lockers and UPS Access Point.
The Big Picture: Approximately 90,000 deliveries go missing each day in NYC, representing about 6% of the 1.5M packages dropped off on in the Big Apple daily. While that’s a headache for customers and merchants alike, each subsequent redelivery also means more congestion and pollution. New York City is currently throwing a lot of new delivery solutions at at the wall: goods movement via boat, commercial cargo bikes, microhubs, off-hour deliveries, you name it. While we love seeing cities innovate, deliverers have struggled to understand which city departments run which initiatives, and who they need to get permission from to participate. While the pending launch of the Department of Sustainable Delivery might clear things up, some sources say they fear it’ll just create another hoop to jump through.
AUTONOMY | Enter Walmart’s Futuristic DC6020
DC2060… never has a combo of letters and numbers sounded so futuristic since perhaps George Lucas teased his vision of tomorrow in 1971’s THX 1138… In truth, Distribution Center 6020 is where Walmart tests many of its high-tech gizmos, including autonomous forklifts. After a 16 month pilot, the mega-retailer is now taking the concept to new locations nationwide. The AV forklifts are powered by Austin-based Fox Robotics, which Walmart is also investing growth capital into.
The Big Picture: Walmart’s been a real innovator in autonomous systems. These FoxBots work alongside automated storage and retrieval systems inside the same warehouse. On the other side of the logistics chain, the Bentonville Big Boxer also plies the skies with a fleet of drones and has burnt robo-rubber thanks to partnerships with Cruise, Gatik and Kodiak. (In fact Kodiak and Walmart just announced a new advisory council, alongside UPS and Werner.) The real question is… can Walmart share the learnings one AV system makes with any of its other deployments? Now that would be a big robotic leg up.
CHART TIME | Online Grocery Sales Steady
The latest data from Brick Meets Click shows March eGrocery sales flat YoY, sitting steady at $8 billion, ticking up a tad from $7.9B the month prior. Mass retailers like Walmart and Target continue to slowly bite into traditional grocers’ share.
FINANCE | Crumbl’s Top Line Sales Grow As Profitability Falters
Burgeoning dessert shop Crumbl (née Crumbl Cookies) topped $1 billion in sales last year, as it hit 973 locations at EOY, up 41% YoY, before blowing past the 1,000 mark in February. Unfortunately, average unit volume fell 37%, while per store profit dropped a whopping 58% to just a hair under $123k.
The Big Picture: Crumbl is no mere cookie shop, it’s been heralded as a high tech wizard of sweets. With a strong digital presence and social media friendly recipes, it’s rocketed up the App Store rankings, at times sitting at #6 in the “food and drink” category, despite having far fewer locations than some other culinary contenders. (Today it appears to be sitting at #15, right below Instacart and BK, and above Domino’s.) But while the company has done an amazing job turning 920 calorie cookies into delivery and pickup essentials, it can’t fight gravity. Opening that many franchises, that quickly, means that new stores end up cannibalizing sales from existing locations. That’s just the way the cookie crumbles…
A Few Good Links
Why chefs suspicious of delivery have warmed to Wonder. Taco Bell tests new bevvies. Takeaways from FTC probe into grocery supply chain. Target continues new store splurge. Food waste fighting app Too Good To Go pushes into Quebec. LatAm q-commerce darling Rappi readies for IPO. Olo opts into Spreedly for mobile wallets. Toast teases new AI features for resto management. Cargo demand looks weak as freight airlines furlough brand new Boeings (maybe they just don’t think they’re airworthy?) Kaiser Permanente launches food as medicine center. Sen. Manchin joins Republicans to kill NLRB’s joint employer rule, Biden likely to veto. Marco’s Pizza retools marketing team. Top takeaways from Jassy’s annual letter to AZ shareholders, including a shout out to drone delivery. Pita Pit refreshes brand in bid for authenticity (maybe start by not being HQed in Coeur D’alene, Idaho? Real mediterranean hot spot up there…) Class 8 electric truck makes first trip across U.S.-Mexico border. 7-Eleven parent co. mulls IPO of superstore division. Uber adds safety features.
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