The Stop and Shop grocery chain will begin offering a "store on wheels" service

Stop and Shop, a major grocery chain in the northeastern part of the country, will begin offering a self-serve grocery service in the Boston area, the company said on Wednesday.

Stop and Shop is not the first store to make such an announcement: Kroger and Walmart both work on grocery shopping services without a driver. But these are delivery services. The Stop and Shop service, on the other hand, puts a whole miniature grocery store on wheels. It's a partnership with Robomart, a start-up that we covered for the first time last June.

Typical delivery start-ups like Nuro and Udelv are considering a future where the customer chooses a few products and these specific items are sent in a driverless vehicle. Robomart's plan, on the other hand, involves sending the entire aisle of products into the customer's aisle. Once there, the customer inspects the goods and chooses the items to buy. Robomart says that he will use a mix of cameras and RFID tags to determine what products a customer has taken and bill them automatically.

When inventory is low, the vehicle will return to a nearby stop and store for replenishment. A vehicle may be able to have several customers stop before having to return to the store, which potentially makes it more efficient than a typical delivery service. Ali Ahmed, Robomart's CEO, said the companies had not yet chosen the exact launch location in the Boston area.

Customers will be able to inspect the merchandise prior to purchasing it, making it a particularly attractive model for selling fresh produce. Ahmed also claims that the Robomart model ultimately creates a better customer experience, stating that choosing the grocery store with the help of a mobile app is a more tedious and frustrating process than simply taking objects on a shelf.

At the same time, this model has serious drawbacks. A traditional grocery delivery service can offer any item carried by a normal size grocery store. On the other hand, Robomart customers will have to choose from a much smaller range of products that can be stored on the shelves of an autonomous vehicle. In the long term, a store can offer several Robomart vehicles (a food wagon, a dairy car, a meat wagon, etc.), but this could complicate both the logistics of restocking vehicles and the user interface.

Ahmed says that Robomart vehicles have self-driving capabilities but that they will initially be teleoperated by a distant "driver". They will initially be limited to a maximum speed of 25 miles at the time, the same speed limit as that observed by competitor Nuro.

Ahmed expects the low operating cost of Robomart to allow stores to offer a no-cost delivery service. However, he pointed out that trading partners such as Stop and Shop have the ultimate authority over prices, and that these details have not yet been defined for the Stop and Shop partnership. .