Turn your stores into a platform for online growth
Ocado’s Store Based Automation helps you grow online grocery profitably from your existing stores, serving more collection and delivery orders while keeping aisles clear for shoppers
Shoppers want flexible collection, local delivery and faster options. As online demand grows, picking more orders in busy aisles can slow teams down and disrupt shoppers, and orders waiting for collection take up space, limiting how many a store can handle.
Store Based Automation (SBA) lets stores handle more local demand, including shorter lead time orders, without crowding aisles or slowing shoppers down. It creates a dedicated area for online order fulfilment within or beside the store, so retailers can unlock more capacity from the network they already have.
Reimagine the role of the store
Most stores were designed to serve shoppers walking the aisles, not to meet the added demands of fulfilling online orders at scale. As online volumes grow, that design gap becomes a genuine constraint. Extra pickers compete with shoppers for the same aisles, picking slows, and completed orders take up space needed for stock and replenishment. Relying on additional labour can extend this model only so far, and most retailers are already approaching that limit. Approached differently, though, these same stores can become a platform to fuel online growth.
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Transform existing store space into online capacity
SBA moves suitable high-volume picking into a dedicated automated area. Its ultra-dense Grid stores products for efficient retrieval, while associates can continue to pick items from the wider store range when manual handling makes more sense.
Ocado’s software uses real-time availability and demand information to guide which products are held in the Grid and which are picked from the store. That mix can change as buying patterns, promotions and the assortment evolve, helping each location make better use of its space.
How Store Based Automation works
Automate the order picking
Retrieval bots bring totes to picking stations for associates, or straight to On-Grid Robotic Pick for fully automated picking. Manual picking can remain part of the operation for products and tasks that may need a different flow.
Bring the complete order together
Software coordinates inventory, replenishment, picking and order handling. Items from the Grid can be combined with manually picked products, then consolidated, sequenced and buffered for the shopper's collection or delivery window.
Store the right products in a compact Grid
A modular Grid in or beside the store holds selected products in totes across different temperature zones. Ocado plans the layout, temperature zones and product mix around the building and the local online offer.
Hand over orders efficiently
The site design determines how orders move to collection points or delivery operators. Dedicated outload can separate handover from the shopping aisles and make collection clearer for shoppers, associates and couriers.
Plan your next stage of online growth
Tell us how demand is changing across your stores, which orders are hardest to serve and where picking or collection creates pressure today. We’ll assess peak volumes, product range, service windows, available space and labour needs to identify where SBA could add capacity for growth and complement a wider network fulfilment strategy.
