HelloFresh’s Factor brand went from 100 to 500 chilled SKUs in a single facility without building new infrastructure. Instead, it added Locus Robotics units in stages rather than investing in a fixed automated warehouse. The robot fleet scales with demand, sidestepping the big upfront capital investment that fixed automation requires.
How it works: Factor began piloting Locus Origin robots in July 2025 and expanded the fleet as the model proved out. The deployment, by the numbers:
Fleet: 13 robots to 39 within three months
Footprint: Roughly 12,000 square feet of chilled space
Avg pick cycle: 3 minutes 36 seconds, according to Locus
Cold adaptation: Heated motors and modified charging to stop battery degradation at low temperatures
Brad Mesloh, Associate Director of Strategic Design at HelloFresh, said the rollout was “extremely smooth, with much of the testing completed virtually before go-live. Final validation took only a few days.” That is a much shorter commissioning window than a traditional conveyor or fixed goods-to-person system requires.
The Kroger contrast: HelloFresh increased SKU capacity fivefold within its existing footprint using 39 robots.
Kroger took the opposite approach with Ocado’s fixed automated customer fulfillment centers. The strategy ended with three site closures, a $350 million exit fee, roughly $2.6 billion in total charges, and a canceled Charlotte facility before the company pivoted back to store-based picking.
Fixed ASRS systems like AutoStore can deliver higher throughput in very high-volume, lower-variety DC. The comparison depends on the operating environment.
The AMR approach worked for Factor because its mix of high SKU variety, moderate volumes, and chilled operations favored flexible routing over maximum throughput.
What's next: The deployment is set to expand to EveryPlate, HelloFresh's budget meal-kit brand, according to Locus. The cold-chain AMR market is valued at $585.7 million in 2026 and is projected to reach roughly $2 billion by 2036, according to FactMR.
