Labour, peak, margin, space.
Grocery has all four at once, and online orders make each of them worse. The unit takes the picking out of the aisles and into the back of the store.
Four pressures. One basket.
Labour
Picking an online order by hand is a member of staff doing the customer's shopping for them, at your cost.
Peak
Everyone orders for the same evening and the same weekend. The store has to be staffed for both.
Margin
Grocery margins are thin before delivery is added. The pick is the cost you control.
Space
The stockroom was sized for the shop, not for a second business running through it.
A basket is three temperatures.
Temperature. Ambient, chilled and frozen are stored side by side and picked in one run. Each goes into its own bag, so frozen never sits against bread.
Shelf life. Every item is logged with its batch and expiry date.
Loose produce, fresh bakery, glass and bulky packs stay on the shelf and are added by hand.
Behind the store, or instead of one.
- 01
Store-attached
The unit sits in the back of a store you already run. It shares the store's stock and deliveries, and the aisles go back to shoppers.
- 02
Dark store
A site with no shoppers, close to the customers. The unit takes the range that repeats and the floor is for riders.
Three people ask. Three sets of questions.
Operations
Who restocks it?
Your team, from the same deliveries as the shelves. The replenishment portal ranks totes by how empty they are, the unit brings the chosen tote to the station, and a camera checks each item lands in the right lane.
What can't it pick?
Bulky multipacks, glass bottles, loose produce and fresh bakery. They stay on a shelf and are added to the bag by hand.
Finance
What does it cost?
It depends on the bays, the temperature zones and the volumes, so we give a range and then a modelled case for your site.
Do we have to buy all of it at once?
No. The unit is built in bays, so a site can start with what it needs and add more as volume grows.
IT
How does it connect to our systems?
Through Totssy Connect, which exchanges orders and stock with e-commerce, order management and ERP systems over a REST API.
Four months in a q-commerce dark store.
Ambient groceries, one picking arm and automated bagging. How long an order took, and how often it ran without help.
Read the case study