Scoop: We Have the Inside Story on Local Vending Machines and Autonomous Micro-Fulfillment Centers on Wheels (Specialized Rivians)

Amazon has a secretive prototype of a Rivian that can dispense products like a vending machine. We have ex-Amazon and logistics expert Brittain Ladd that shares details and more.

Today on the Retailgentic podcast (with an extra-special cross-pod episode over to the Jason and Scot Show), we welcome Ex-Amazon supply-chain logistics expert Brittain Ladd.

Amazon’s Secret Weapon to Beat Walmart at Grocery

This weekend several sharp-eyed readers noticed that over on LinkedIn, Brittain Ladd dropped a hint that people knew I would find intriguing. We were fortunate enough to get time with Brittain today and learn all the interesting details for you. It starts with a…

Amazon’s Grocery Problem

Before we dig in, if you are new to the grocery category, Amazon has been working over 20 years to crack the code on the grocery. They’ve tried Amazon Fresh(2007), Amazon, they’ve acquired Whole Foods (2017), they tried Amazon Go (2018), Go Grocery (2020), Fresh 2.0 (aka Fresh Fresh haha - 2024). It matters so much because when you look at all the hundreds of millions of Prime subscribers, they still largely are not grocery shopping with Amazon. Amazon sits at a 2.5% share vs. Walmart at 25% and other large grocery chains, leveraging their thousands of stores to get groceries to consumers.

Amazon is so big now they need to conquer trillion dollar markets. Grocery is squarely in their crosshairs and Brittain paints a compelling picture of how they will get there by 2030 and surpass Walmart’s grocery sales by 2035. Sound impossible, wait until you hear about how it will work and the user experience before you pass judgement.

Local Vending Machine (LVM)

Think of an LVM as a smaller fulfillment center, but instead of fulfilling anything and being mostly manual, it’s refrigerated, focuses on grocery and is largely automated. Now imagine the LVM can also receive and replenish groceries.

Brittain confirmed Amazon is on V2 of their LVM model and they are building one in Pennsylvania.

Mobile Hail-able Grocery Micro Fulfillment Centers

Now imagine an autonomous category-specific Rivian goes to the LVM and picks up a fresh cartridge of either snacks, daily essentials, baby items and OTC medicines (the top categories for ‘quick commerce’). These vans then forward-deploy based on predictive analytics to neighborhoods/areas that are likely to need these items.

When a consumer hails a vehicle, the internal robotics prepares the items from the refrigerated cartridge and prepares it for curbside delivery.

Brittain confirmed he has seen Amazon’s prototype vehicle and shares more details on the podcast.

Humanoid Curb-side Delivery Robot

In early June, the verge had a report that Amazon is building their own humanoid robot programs (and Brittain confims they are testing others) that they are training on simulation data and physical rooms to take a product from the Rivian van and get it to your door.

Putting it All Together…

When you put this all together, lets say you want groceries. You place an order, or hail a mobile store. It arrives very rapidly (unlike Instacart, nobody has to shop and the products are already forward deployed in a refrigerated van). The micro-fullfilment center inside the van puts together your order and the humanoid robot delivers it to your door. This could easily happen in < 30mins and as far as Amazon’s concern the cost per delivery because there is no human driver and no human fulfillment touches trends down to the energy cost to deliver and refrigerate.

Here’s how that is executed on the back-end:

1. Through Amazon’s traditional infrastructure, a network of thousands of LVMs are stocked with product

2. The LVMs have the top 2-4k grocery SKUs prepped and ready to go.

3. Empty Rivians are filled with fresh cartridges

4. The Rivians are forward deployed to within 10 miles of the consumer

5. The order comes in and robotics internal to the Rivian ‘pick’ the products ordered while the Rivian heads to the destination.

6. The robot hops off, pulls the product out of a side door (probably in a refrigerated tote) and delivers it to the front-door.

What makes this possible in 2025-2030 that hasn’t existed before is AI. AI powers the robots, it also super-charges the predictive algorithms used to figure out where and when demand is going to show up.

Where to Listen/Watch

Want to learn more? In this 35 minute podcast we go over all of this in detail and Brittain shares with us how this vision was conceived, where we exactly we are today and where he thinks it takes us by 2035.

Audio Version:

• The Apple podcast is here.

• For other podcast listeners, the link is here

• Or you can listen to it right here in this post (via the Spotify micro player)→
  

Video Version:

enjoy!