Portable Pantry for online orders (video)

It’s a great idea that provides a simple and practical solution for transporting food from the delivery truck directly to the employees’ offices.

By Yannis Skoufis

BrightDrop is a subsidiary of GM that operates in the electronics business. It recently launched Trace Grocery, a mobile cart that doubles as a temperature-controlled grocery store that offers online orders.

Although it uses the BrightDrop Trace as a base, which was originally intended for last-mile transport, the Trace Grocery is a portable food container in which up to 160 kg of food and other products can be moved. The most important thing is that there is support for a constant speed of 5 km / h, which is very important since there is an automatic braking function.

In terms of capacity, Trace Grocery has nine food storage areas and each one has an autonomous and automatically controlled temperature so that eg in the case of ice creams to keep them frozen or for sandwiches and fruits just to be cold. It is also waterproof so it can be transported off premises, while the portable food container form is used for transport and distribution by truck.

GM has conducted the first tests in Kentucky and the first samples were encouraging to move forward with the first cooperation and delivery at the end of the year.

“The pandemic has led to a huge increase in online grocery shopping, and fulfilling these orders profitably has become a major challenge for retailers of all sizes. At Trace Grocery, we saw an opportunity to help companies address these challengessaid BrightDrop President and CEO Travis Katz.