Online retail giant has nearly doubled its fulfillment capacity since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. From a report: In the past two years, Amazon.com has added workers at an unprecedented clip to keep up with a pandemic-induced surge in demand. As it has done so, an even bigger expansion drew less attention: The company is close to doubling the size of its fulfillment network. Amazon blanketed the country with more than 450 new facilities used to store, sort and ship items, according to logistics consultant MWPVL International, doubling down on a logistics empire that aims to deliver items in one day or less, and increasingly to do so without the help of third-party shippers.

Many of the new buildings are concentrated near big cities, putting more items for sale on the website closer to large population centers. The facilities also include more than two dozen smaller outposts stocked mostly with bestselling items, allowing the company to prepare for supply disruptions while also expanding fast-shipping capabilities, according to MWPVL. During the pandemic, Amazon put on hold its promise to deliver many items to customers in one day. Nevertheless, the company continued to build out a network capable of such a feat. The work prepared Amazon for an unusual holiday shopping season in which a national labor shortage and global supply-chain challenges have constrained the ability of many companies to obtain and deliver certain products in as timely a manner as they did in the past.

Amazon has encouraged customers to shop early this year due to the supply-chain issues, and company executives have said they are “ready to deliver” and have been preparing for the holidays since the start of the year. As of mid-November, more than 98% of parcels that arrived at Amazon’s delivery centers, which typically are in close proximity to packages’ final destinations, were being delivered the next day, according to estimates from research firm ShipMatrix. At the same time, some items like household products and sporting goods were showing delivery windows of a few days, ShipMatrix said, emphasizing Amazon’s message to shop early. Brian Olsavsky, Amazon’s chief financial officer, said the company’s inventory increased in preparation for the busy period. For the first time in a while, he said, the company is not capacity-constrained.

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Source: Slashdot – Amazon Builds Out Network To Speed Delivery, Handle Holiday Crunch

Seeking to leverage a boom in food-delivery apps, Reef and competitors build restaurant kitchens in warehouses or trailers, which are meant to be cheaper and nimbler than traditional storefronts. From a report: Business models vary, but Reef generally acts as a franchisee, preparing and selling food with its own workers and paying a restaurant brand a percentage of each order. The concept has become particularly popular during the pandemic, as food delivery became clutch for many consumers and restaurants looked for cheaper places to prepare food they were delivering, not serving. Investors have poured more than $3.5 billion into ghost-kitchen startups in the past three years, according to data tracker PitchBook Data, a large slug of funding for a fledgling sector. Much of that funding has come from tech-focused investors who want the rapid growth often seen in software companies — and delivery apps, such as DoorDash.

Reef’s operational strains illustrate the challenges of meeting investors’ high expectations in the food business, a sector typically defined by low profit margins and modest growth and one that depends on executing daily in the nondigital economy with workers, supplies and logistics. Reef, backed by investors including SoftBank Group, has said it plans to add thousands of mobile kitchens in parking lots around the world. The company says it currently has about 350. Big brands have begun to warm to the concept. Chick-fil-A and Yum Brands’ KFC have been experimenting with their own versions of ghost kitchens, seeing them as a potential area for growth. Wendy’s has joined with Reef in a deal that calls for Reef to open and operate up to 700 locations in North America, and the U.K. Reef’s rivals include CloudKitchens, founded by Travis Kalanick, who co-founded Uber Technologies.

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Source: Slashdot – Ghost Kitchens Are Proving To Be a Messy Business

A group of Democrats wants to stop the Grinch from stealing Christmas. Except this time around the spoilsport they’re targeting is not a furry green creature, but a robot. From a report: Lawmakers including Senators Richard Blumenthal and Chuck Schumer introduced a bill to crack down on “cyber Grinches” using bots to quickly snap up entire inventories of popular holiday toys and resell them at higher prices. Their actions could make some of the items almost impossible to buy, the politicians say, exacerbating shortages sparked by supply chain woes.

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Source: Slashdot – ‘Cyber Grinches’ Snatching Toys Should Be Stopped, Lawmakers Say