May 2021, The Kroger Co., a grocery chain operator, has entered the Florida market for the first time. But it didn’t open stores there and does not plan to.

May 2021, The Kroger Co., a grocery chain operator, has entered the Florida market for the first time. But it didn’t open stores there and has no plans to do that

Instead, Kroger launched in the state under its Kroger Delivery banner as an online, delivery-only retailer. Kroger Delivery operates from a 375,000-square-foot automated customer fulfillment center (CFC) “hub” in Groveland, Florida. There are also smaller “spoke” locations in Tampa Bay and Jacksonville. A Miami-area site is in the works, a spokesperson says.

In the grocery business and other retail segments, online merchants are working to bring inventory closer to consumers to speed up order fulfillment, reduce costs and possibly reduce the environmental impact of delivering products to consumers. Kroger’s robotic CFCs represent one of several models competing in a sort of arms race to make deliveries of online orders a convenient, reliable option for consumers and a profitable business model for retailers.

Another emerging model is micro-fulfillment, a strategy that places small-scale warehouse facilities in densely populated urban locations closer to the consumer to improve delivery times. Retailers often refer to such operations as “dark stores” because they operate out of sight of customers and are arranged for efficiency rather than visual appeal. In other cases, the goal is to avoid shipping items to homes by connecting consumers to items available in local stores.