Background: Coles is one half of Australia's supermarket duopoly, alongside Woolworths. Between them, they control more than 65% of the Australian grocery market. And for Coles, online orders are the fastest-growing part of the business, with sales jumping 26% to $5.6 billion last financial year.

What happened: Now, Coles is reportedly eyeing some new staff... robots from tech company Ocado. But unlike the robots already working in Coles' distribution centres, these would be deployed inside local supermarkets, picking and packing online orders from a closed-off section of the store. So part of your local Coles could soon double as a mini warehouse.

What else: No deal has been signed yet, but Coles is under pressure to keep up in the online grocery delivery space. Get this: Woolworths does nearly double Coles' online sales, while Amazon is now promising overnight delivery. So the grocery wars are moving behind the supermarket shelves ... thanks to something called "micro-fulfilment."

What's the key learning?

💡 Micro-fulfilment is basically a shrunken-down version of a robot warehouse. Instead of building one enormous fulfilment centre out on the city fringe, retailers can squeeze a smaller automated warehouse inside or next to a normal supermarket.  

💡 Smaller, automated warehouses can make online grocery delivery faster and more efficient. Because these mini warehouses sit inside a closed-off section of the supermarket, robots can pick and pack orders quickly without navigating shoppers, trolleys, or the occasional milk aisle standoff.  

💡 Coles needs this strategy to work because it's still playing catch-up online. Coles did $5.6 billion in online sales last financial year, while Woolworths did $10.6 billion, nearly double. That gap puts more pressure on Coles to get micro-fulfilment right as grocery competition for faster online delivery heats up.