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Comment by dvh | Hacker News Reader

There's no way this is profitable. Local supermarket is similarly sized and there are maybe 30-50 employees visible in store, each payed $3/hour. This has hundreds or maybe thousands of robots, even if only 10 robots broke down every day it would be more expensive than paying people. Even if I completely ignore initial purchase costs, I just don't see a way that after 1-2 years this isn't massive money drain.

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You are almost certainly wrong. Ocado are profitable and are partnering with other retailers globally to use the technology.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocado_Group#History

Where do store employees get paid $3/hour? Minimum wage in UK (where that warehouse is) is $9-12/hour depending on age.

> There's no way this is profitable

No way? That's an overstatement. What if the real estate is a lot cheaper because it's well outside the city in an industrial zone?

And what if this operation is large and efficient enough to service a population x10 the size of a similarly sized supermarket with just a handful of technicians (and an army of delivery people...).

Their H12021 results suggest otherwise https://www.londonstockexchange.com/news-article/OCDO/half-y...

A million items a day? It all depends on margins and overhead etc, which we would have trouble estimating here. And even if its not "bricks-and-mortar profitable" it may be "wall-street profitable"

`(5038)/10=120.` What robot component do you think costs more than that?

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