Capable of dropping off groceries as far away as 90 miles from Clayton County, and will serve areas where it doesn’t have physical stores, especially food deserts where getting fresh produce and meat is a challenge.  As many as 400 workers are needed for the 350,000-square-foot building and its fleet of 200 vans.

Powered by grocery tech partner Ocado Group, the Forest Park CFC can fulfill thousands of orders per day. In these highly automated CFCs, more than 1,000 bots whizz around giant 3D grids, orchestrated by proprietary air-traffic control systems in the unlicensed spectrum. The grid, known as The Hive, contains totes with products and ready-to-deliver customer orders.

As customers' orders near their delivery times, the bots retrieve products from The Hive, which are presented at stations for items to be sorted for delivery, a process governed by algorithms that ensures items are intelligently sorted.

Once completed, orders are loaded into a temperature-controlled Kroger Delivery van, which can store up to 20 orders. Powerful machine learning algorithms dynamically optimize delivery routes, considering factors like road conditions and optimal fuel efficiency. Kroger Delivery enables coverage of up to 90 miles from the hub location in Forest Park.