Will Popular Grocery Company Add Robot Employee To New York State Stores?

Artificial Intelligence is becoming more and more pervasive. It's popping up in every facet of our lives. Sometimes it feels like we are quickly approaching a bleak future ruled by robots, like in a dystopian movie. I'm not a tin foil hat kind of girl, but A.I. is getting pretty freaky.

A popular grocery retailer could be adding a new A.I. worker to some of its stores in New York. This robot employee has already been spotted roaming up and down aisles in stores in New Jersey.

Meet The Simbe Tally Robot

Don't be surprised if you bump into this guy in the aisles of some popular New York grocery stores. I mean he looks pretty harmless, right?

Simbe Robotics, Inc. is the company behind Tally, which is designed to provide grocery stores with real-time insights into inventory and operations. Brad Bogolea, co-founder and CEO of Simbe, spoke to Progressive Grocer about the partnership his company has with grocery company Wakefern, which operates stores in New York State,

With our business intelligence solution, Wakefern has real-time visibility into shelf health at a frequency and fidelity that cannot be found anywhere else on the market. This consistent access to deep, precise insights has empowered Wakefern and its members' store teams to further improve the exceptional shopping experience their customers expect by keeping shelves fully stocked. We look forward to continuing to enhance the experience for store teams and shoppers alike.

Credit: Simbe Robotics via Youtube

The Tally robot scans shelves to find out-of-stock, misplaced, or mispriced items.

Which Grocery Stores In New York Will Have The Tally Robot?

Wakefern Food Corporation, which owns popular grocery store brands Price Rite, ShopRite, The Fresh Grocer, and others, operates in New York State. The company is our neighbor, headquartered in Keasbey, NJ.

Wakefern is the largest retailer-owned cooperative in the United States, comprising 50 member companies who independently own and operate 362 retail supermarkets under the ShopRite, Price Rite Marketplace, The Fresh Grocer, Dearborn Market, Gourmet Garage, and Fairway Market banners in New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Rhode Island markets.

According to Specialty Foods, after a test run of 20 stores, Wakefern plans to add Tally to even more stores. Charles J. McWeeney, VP of technology, innovation, and strategy at Wakefern, said,

Tally has proven to be the ideal shelf-intelligence solution for our members as it’s been able to roll right into our technology ecosystem, sending real-time shelf condition data directly to retail associates’ handheld devices. With timely, consistent, and accurate product data from Tally, our in-store mobile application presents a prioritized aisle-by-aisle inventory worklist to the store associates, ensuring they invest their time in the most meaningful and valuable services for our customers.

ShopRite operates 280 locations in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland. The grocery brand employs more than 50,000 people. We have approximately 57 ShopRite locations, according to New York State. It's not clear which ShopRite stores will add Tally to its employee roster, but with almost 20 percent of its stores in New York, it's inevitable that we get a Tally robot soon. So much for those summer grocery store inventory jobs for teens in New York!

More: New Jersey Shoprite Robot Tally

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