Kroger Delivery Expands to South Florida

Without having to open new stores, supermarket chain Kroger announced its expansion in South Florida through its Kroger Delivery service.

The company reported that it placed into service a new 60,000-square-foot spoke facility that will work with the Groveland, Florida, distribution center to serve consumers in Miami and surrounding areas.

“We are thrilled to connect more Floridians to the Kroger Delivery shopping experience, which brings thousands of digital coupons, valuable fuel points*, and the freshest products directly to customers’ doors,” said Bill Bennett, Kroger Vice President and Head of E-commerce. “Whether they are using the Kroger app or browsing our weekly ad at Kroger.com, customers can enjoy fresh, high-quality, affordable groceries delivered by best-in-class uniformed drivers.”

For the past five years, Kroger has been working with Ocado Group, a company focused on technology for grocery e-commerce, to establish a delivery network around the U.S. that combines artificial intelligence, advanced robotics, and automation.

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Kroger Delivery’s new service for South Florida will employ 90 associates who will be responsible for assembling orders and placing them in climate-controlled vehicles to travel to Miami, serving communities between Port St. Lucie in the north to Homestead in the South, on both the east and west sides of I-95, Kroger said. Once the orders come in through Kroger’s website, they are checked and placed on refrigerated delivery trucks that deliver directly to customers’ doors, ensuring cold and frozen products remain at the perfect temperature from the supplier to the customer’s refrigerator.

“We’ve been working closely with the Kroger team since they started looking to expand to South Florida and knew this was a geography that would offer significant growth potential,” said James Kohnstamm, EVP of Miami-Dade Beacon Council. “From a customer standpoint, we have over a million households and hundreds of new residents relocating to Miami weekly. From a workforce standpoint, we have a deep bench of talent with expertise in cold chain and logistics management and multiple startups dedicated to driving innovation in the trade and logistics space.”

Kroger currently operates customer fulfillment centers in Monroe, OH; Groveland, FL; Forest Park, GA (Atlanta); Pleasant Prairie, WI; Dallas, TX; Romulus, MI (Detroit) and Aurora, CO, with additional customer fulfillment centers slated for California, Frederick, MD, Phoenix, AZ, Cleveland, OH, Charlotte, NC, as well as South Florida and the Northeast.