Walmart to Add Robot-staffed Warehouses to Dozens of Stores

Walmart Inc will add small robot-staffed warehouses to dozens of its stores to help fill orders for pickup and delivery, the company said on Wednesday, as Americans shift their spending online amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

The robots will work behind the scenes, picking frozen and refrigerated foods as well as smaller general merchandise items from inside the warehouses, or local fulfillment centers, that will carry “thousands of frequently purchased items.”

Store staff, meanwhile, will go to the sales floor to fetch fresh produce, meat, seafood and larger general merchandise items like large-screen TVs, then returning to the centers to finish assembling orders, the company said.

The world’s largest retailer, which operates nearly 5,000 stores nationwide, did not say how many stores will have the new centers but said it was “planning dozens of locations, with many more to come.”

Contactless services like curbside pickup and home delivery have boomed as virus wary shoppers have opted to stay home and make purchases online.

The trend has fueled record digital sales at major retailers such as Target Corp and Best Buy, and Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart has been no exception.

In Q1, at the start of the pandemic, pick-up and delivery services at Walmart surged 300%, while the number of new customers jumped four-fold, the company said.

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