Kroger Enters FL Market Delivering Groceries To St. Pete Shoppers

ST. PETERSBURG, FL — St. Petersburg residents will be the first Florida shoppers to get a taste of Kroger, one of the biggest grocery store chains in the nation.

Florida transplants already know the popular jingle ad, "Let's go Krogering." If you are just now hearing about Kroger, the chain has arrived in Tampa Bay with an automated customer fulfillment center to deliver orders. The company uses more than 1,000 robots to start and complete a customer's order, a Kroger news release said.

The way an order is prepared, when customers' order nears their delivery times, the bots retrieve products from the hive, which are presented at stations for items to be sorted for delivery, a process governed by algorithms that ensures items are intelligently sorted.

For example, fragile items are placed on top, bags are evenly weighted, and each order is optimized to fit into the fewest number of bags, reducing plastic use.

Completed orders are then loaded into a temperature-controlled Kroger Delivery van, which can store a maximum of 20 orders. Machine learning algorithms optimize delivery routes, considering factors like road conditions and optimal fuel efficiency, a Kroger news release said.

A Kroger employee then drives the groceries to your house.

"We're proud to help bring Kroger to Florida with Ocado's state-of-the-art technology," Luke Jensen, CEO of Ocado Solutions, said. "Kroger and Ocado's unique partnership is opening up new possibilities online for U.S. grocery customers and we can't wait for households across Florida to experience amazing levels of service and freshness online with Kroger Delivery."

Kroger started delivering to the St. Petersburg area in June. For more information about Kroger's delivery service, or to see if they serve your area, visit Kroger.com.

Video below demonstrates Kroger's automated centers in operation for Kroger Delivery (Provided by Kroger Delivery):