If there is one company that has spent the last two decades forcing the retail industry to rethink what grocery ecommerce could become, it is Ocado.
And after sitting down again with Tim Steiner at the World Retail Congress 2026 in Berlin, one thing became very clear:
The next phase of grocery ecommerce is not really about whether automation matters anymore.
That debate is basically over.
The real question now is when retailers will be forced to adopt it at scale.
Because according to Tim, the economics, consumer expectations, and operational realities are all starting to converge in a way that makes large-scale automation increasingly difficult to avoid.
And honestly, this may have been one of the most detailed and nuanced conversations I have had yet on where grocery fulfillment is actually heading globally.
Grocery Ecommerce Still Looks Completely Different Around The World
One of the first things Tim emphasized was how dramatically grocery ecommerce still varies market to market.
Different labor costs.
Different real estate economics.
Different customer behaviors.
Different regulatory environments.
Different store footprints.
All of those variables shape how fulfillment evolves in each region.
And the contrast between markets is pretty staggering.
In the UK, ecommerce grocery is still overwhelmingly delivery-based, with most consumers using scheduled delivery windows.
In France, meanwhile, the market is almost the exact opposite.
Pickup dominates.
And in the United States, the market continues to sit somewhere in between, with roughly half of ecommerce grocery fulfilled through pickup and half through delivery.
But according to Tim, those fulfillment models are not just customer preference stories.
They are deeply tied to economics.
And that is where the automation conversation becomes much more interesting.
The Economics Of Fulfillment Are Starting To Shift
One of the most fascinating parts of the conversation centered on how dramatically the US grocery ecommerce market has evolved over the last eight years.
According to Tim, while global ecommerce grocery roughly doubled during that period, the US market grew nearly eightfold.
That growth fundamentally changes the automation equation.
Years ago, most individual stores simply did not generate enough ecommerce volume to justify meaningful automation investment.
A store doing one or two million dollars in ecommerce sales annually could not realistically support sophisticated fulfillment infrastructure.
But now?
Some stores are doing $25 million, $30 million, even $35 million in ecommerce volume.
And increasingly, retailers are running into physical limitations.
Storage bottlenecks.
Staging constraints.
Labor inefficiencies.
Parking lot congestion.
Delivery complexity.
In many cases, stores are simply running out of room to operate ecommerce fulfillment efficiently.
“This thing just doesn’t stop growing.”
That line probably summarizes the current state of grocery ecommerce better than anything else.
Automation Failed Before… But The Conditions Have Changed
One of the smartest parts of Tim’s perspective was his honesty about the industry’s earlier automation failures.
Micro-fulfillment hype exploded several years ago.
Retailers experimented aggressively.
And in many cases, the economics simply did not work.
The systems consumed too much space.
Required too much capital.
Delivered too little operational improvement.
“What the retailers discovered was actually it was costing them more than doing it manually.”
That honesty matters because it explains why some retailers became skeptical after the first wave of automation experimentation.
But according to Tim, the market conditions today are fundamentally different than they were pre-pandemic.
Back then, ecommerce volumes were too low.
Today, many retailers are approaching or exceeding operational capacity.
And that changes the urgency dramatically.
The driver is no longer just labor savings.
It is fulfillment survival.
Why Speed Changes Everything
One of the more important operational insights from the conversation centered on delivery windows and labor efficiency.
Traditional grocery ecommerce picking works because retailers batch orders together.
Associates pick multiple customer orders simultaneously, allowing retailers to operate with reasonable labor productivity.
That model supports the standard two-hour or four-hour delivery windows most consumers are familiar with today.
But ultra-fast delivery changes the equation completely.
Once retailers move into sub-one-hour fulfillment, batching largely disappears.
Now employees are running individual orders.
Labor productivity collapses.
Costs rise dramatically.
And according to Tim, this is where automation becomes significantly more valuable.
Because robotics can fulfill orders in minutes without introducing the same labor inefficiencies that human picking creates under compressed timelines.
In other words:
The faster consumer expectations become, the more automation starts making financial sense.
Capacity Might Matter More Than Cost Savings
One of the biggest takeaways from the discussion was that retailers are not necessarily turning toward automation primarily to reduce costs.
At least not initially.
Right now, capacity may actually be the bigger issue.
Stores are maxing out.
Demand continues rising.
And retailers cannot afford degraded customer experiences.
Because once fulfillment windows start slipping from same day to several days out, customers notice immediately.
“You’re losing business to your competitor.”
That pressure creates a very different investment environment than the one retailers faced several years ago.
The conversation shifts from:
“Can automation improve margins?”
To:
“Can we continue scaling ecommerce without it?”
And that is a much more existential question.
Grocery Automation Is Much Harder Than It Looks
One thing Tim repeatedly emphasized throughout the conversation was the sheer complexity involved in grocery automation.
Because according to him, one of the industry’s biggest misconceptions is assuming that “automation is automation.”
It is not.
Grocery fulfillment introduces enormous operational complexity:
Perishables.
Inventory flow.
Temperature zones.
Peak periods.
Order variability.
Store integration.
SKU management.
And small differences in execution create massive differences in performance outcomes.
The reason Ocado believes it has an advantage, according to Tim, is not just the robotics itself.
It is the fact that the company actually operates a large-scale automated grocery business every single day.
That operational feedback loop matters.
Because the difference between an average automated grocery system and a great one is enormous.
The Bigger Takeaway
What made this conversation so compelling was that it avoided the typical “future of grocery” buzzword trap.
This was not abstract futurism.
It was a very grounded discussion about operational physics.
Consumer demand continues increasing.
Fulfillment complexity continues increasing.
Speed expectations continue increasing.
And eventually, the industry reaches a point where manual systems simply stop scaling efficiently.
That does not mean every retailer deploys automation tomorrow.
But it does suggest the long-term direction is becoming increasingly clear.
The Bottom Line
Grocery ecommerce is entering a new phase.
The early experimentation era is fading.
The operational scaling era is beginning.
And according to Tim Steiner, the retailers that successfully solve fulfillment capacity, speed, and automation economics over the next decade will likely define the future structure of grocery retail itself.
Because at a certain point, ecommerce growth stops being optional.
And once that happens, the ability to fulfill efficiently becomes one of the most important competitive advantages in the entire industry.
To catch more conversations from the World Retail Congress 2026 in Berlin, follow Omni Talk Retail on LinkedIn or listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Thank you to Vusion for supporting Omni Talk Retail’s live coverage throughout the event, and thank you to our listeners for following along all week.
Be careful out there,
Chris Walton and the Omni Talk team
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Omni Talk® is the retail blog for retailers, written by retailers. Chris Walton founded Omni Talk® in 2017 and have quickly turned it into one of the fastest growing blogs in retail.