As Ocado fails to deliver, Kroger's CEO has a new shopping list drawn up for the retailer's e-commerce future

Late last month online grocery platform provider Ocado was dealt another in a long line of body blows when its flagship US customer, Kroger, announced that it was would be shutting down three of the automated Customer Fulfilment Centers (CFCs) that the two firms had opened. This came on top of an earlier decision to halt further rollout of a planned national network of 20 CFCs until Kroger could see a “clear path” to a return coming in from the one that it had already opened.

For Ocado, it was bad news; for Kroger, it was a chance, according to the firm, to generate approximately $400 million in incremental e-commerce operating profit in 2026 - and as we’ve seen with Walmart and others, being able to turn a profit in grocery e-commerce operations is a pretty big deal!

But with an increasingly large Ocado-shaped hole in what had been the ...