Earlier this year Fresh Smart Market opened a new Asian grocery store in a former Rite Aid drugstore building in the Detroit suburb of Novi, Michigan.
Fresh Smart offers produce, meat, everyday essentials and other Asian specialty items—with a twist.
Because while customers can drive up to and park at the store they do not actually need enter the building to pick up their groceries.
That is because Fresh Smart is an AI-powered market that fulfills online orders and delivers groceries directly to a customer’s vehicle via a robotic cart.
The process to order and collect groceries is straightforward:
Customers first place orders online or via the Fresh Smart app.
They can even receive personalized shopping guidance from Marty, the store’s smart AI assistant that understands preferences.
After placing an order and specifying a pickup time, customers drive to the store, park in a designated space and scan a QR code.
Then the autonomous delivery robot exits from the store’s front door and brings the order to their car.
That the proprietors of Fresh Smart Market chose a former Rite Aid building to repurpose as an online grocer is no surprise.
Dozens of former Rite Aid properties have been converted into grocery stores, including for national chains like Trader Joe’s.
Other former Rite Aid drugstore properties—particularly in the Metro Detroit area—have also been repurposed as ethnic specialty grocers.
These include Balkan, Bangladeshi, Middle Eastern and Japanese specialty markets, among others.
Additional grocery stores with autonomous robot delivery are likely on the way.
Starship, launched in 2014 by a pair of Skype co-founders, has been using autonomous robots to make local delivery more cost-effective and efficient.
It notes that the Company’s autonomous robots are delivering groceries in over 270 global locations.
While urban areas may offer the best fit for hyperlocal robot delivery, Fresh Smart Market is demonstrating that the technology can even be used in the suburbs—particularly when paired with accessible and well located real estate.
Such as former Rite Aid properties.
After all many ex-drugstore buildings are located in densely populated “neighborhood” sites that are close to, and convenient for, customers.
Additionally, because Fresh Smart’s robot delivery operates from only the store’s front door to the parking lot, it is easier to manage than for longer routes.
Like, for example, to customer homes.
In fact several other grocery stores and restaurants in Michigan have previously tested home delivery by autonomous robot.
Refraction AI, a robotics company specializing in autonomous last mile delivery, was was founded in Ann Arbor, Michigan by University of Michigan researchers.
In 2020 it partnered with The Produce Station, an Ann Arbor specialty market, to test grocery delivery using its REV-1 (Refraction Electric Vehicle) robots.
An REV-1 uses AI, cameras, LiDAR sensor technology and radar to navigate autonomously.
It utilizes bike lanes or road edges and reaches speeds of up to 15 mph.
REV-1 deliveries were available in 2020 and 2021 to customers that lived within three miles of The Produce Station’s Ann Arbor store.
Several Ann Arbor restaurants also participated in REV-1 delivery tests during this same period.
Ultimately over 2,000 REV-1 food deliveries were made to Ann Arbor residents.
But some restaurants complained that REV-1 delivery was too slow, hours were limited or that there were not enough robots available to satisfy demand.
Plus REV-1 delivery was not entirely autonomous.
Refraction AI employees oversaw each delivery remotely and assumed control of the robot when necessary to navigate challenging situations like four way stops and left turns.
In any event, Refraction AI decamped from Ann Arbor to Austin, Texas in 2021 and took its REV1 delivery robots with it.
Now, however, Fresh Smart Market has brought back robot delivery to Michigan.
In connection with its repurpose and adaptive reuse of drugstore real estate.
Dining and Cooking