A crucial element of store design is cold storage. This remains true with Online Grocery or microfulfillment strategies; however, retailers tend to focus on ordering technology and other software integrations, rather than how cold storage ties into the strategy.
With the emerging dominance of eCommerce and the increasing popularity of online grocery pickup (OGP), advances in cold storage are now more vital than ever.
Products from KPS Global® support many key stages within the eCommerce grocery supply chain and can be customized to fit your specific project needs. No matter how you fulfill your online grocery orders (drive-up, in-store, co-located or offsite), we offer a solution.
TRADITIONAL COLD STORAGE
KPS Global is the largest provider of custom walk-in coolers and freezers in the industry. With years of experience manufacturing cold storage solutions, coupled with an in-house design and engineering team, KPS Global can build online grocery pickup solutions to custom specifications.
Regarding traditional cold storage, grocers have discovered success with dedicated OGP walk-in cases, high-speed roll-up doors with entry sensors, and other technologies and strategies that save money while increasing food safety.
Sometimes a grocer’s microfulfillment solution will call for the transformation of a current retail space into a microfulfillment center or dark store. Smart cold storage analysis can make the best use of existing walk-ins in tandem with any new investment in updated cold storage tech.
In some cases, grocers find they need to expand and improve onsite cold storage to meet the increasing demand from online orders.
MANUAL PICK
KPS Global’s newest innovation, the Accessible Cold Environments (ACE)™ unit, serves as a manual pick solution that will help improve labor efficiencies and pick times.
This groundbreaking innovation is the first open front refrigerated solution to hold product temperature below 40°F all the way to the floor without using glass or solid doors to keep heat out of the space.
This walk-in with no doors refrigerates products with a patent-pending triple air curtain that maintains two separate temperature zones between the unit’s large interior shelf and pallet area. Its vertical lift system allows full pallet loads of product to be moved into the refrigerated environment, making loading and unloading product quick and easy.
The ACE unit is a great option for backroom environments or online grocery pickup programs where additional storage of bulk refrigerated products is needed.
Grocers are searching for the most efficient methods to store frozen and refrigerated products so orders can be fulfilled quickly, safely and less expensively, while ensuring complete shopper satisfaction. By placing cold storage space in proximity to a convenient pickup area for manual pick, grocers better serve their growing base of OGP consumers.
AUTOMATION AND ROBOTICS
Maintaining various temperature zones within a robotics configuration poses a challenge, as many of today’s robotics solutions cannot operate in frozen environments. KPS Global has innovated ways in which robots can work in frozen temperatures as well as other temperature zones. This is a game-changing technology that increases SKU offerings, allowing automation to increase basket sizes through reduced labor and increased speed.
As OGP programs continue to grow exponentially, grocers are leveraging technology that drives ROI – particularly regarding automation and microfulfillment. A robotic fulfillment solution allows grocers to offer more SKUs by minimizing manual picking and maximizing efficiency. However, there are plenty of new concerns for grocers when they modernize.
