Cold‑Fulfillment Leap: HelloFresh 5X’s Chilled SKUs with 3:36 Robot Mission Time

For supply chain leaders, the gap between ambient and chilled fulfillment has long been a margin killer. Locus Robotics’ work with HelloFresh demonstrates that flexible AMRs—when purpose‑fitted for cold environments—can compress mission times to under four minutes while expanding SKU variety five‑fold. The logistics implications ripple from reduced dwell time and food waste to higher throughput with a lighter physical footprint.

On June 23, 2026, Locus Robotics announced a cold‑storage hardware modification that enabled HelloFresh to quintuple the number of chilled SKUs it can fulfill – from 100 to 500 – across its growing brand portfolio. The deployment, which began in mid‑2025 with HelloFresh’s Factor brand, demonstrated that Locus Origin autonomous mobile robots (AMRs) could complete a pick‑and‑box‑drop mission in just 3 minutes and 36 seconds on average. That metric is a seismic shift in temperature‑controlled logistics, where third‑party logistics (3PL) benchmarks often measure order‑to‑ship times in 30‑, 60‑, or even multi‑hour windows. The speed gains are directly enabled by a hardware modification developed specifically for HelloFresh’s cold‑storage environment, underscoring Locus’s “flexibility‑first” design philosophy.

“

Locus Robotics’ work with HelloFresh demonstrates that flexible AMRs—when purpose‑fitted for cold environments—can compress mission times to under four minutes while expanding SKU variety five‑fold.

The initial pilot deployed 13 robots at Factor in July 2025. Its rapid success – attributable to high mission consistency, reliability, and the ability to validate much of the integration virtually before physical go‑live – prompted HelloFresh to scale the fleet to 39 robots within three months. Now, with the 5× SKU capacity unlocked, HelloFresh expects to extend Locus robots to its EveryPlate brand later in 2026, broadening the automation’s impact across the portfolio. For a meal‑kit operator that competes on freshness and variety, the expansion translates directly into richer menu options and new revenue channels. The 3:36‑minute cycle time is not only operationally impressive: it shrinks the dwell time of perishable goods in the warehouse, which can reduce food waste and improve inventory turns.

Industry context further illuminates the significance. Cold‑chain fulfillment has long been a pain point for e‑grocers and meal‑kit companies. Fixed automation requires heavy capital and rigid infrastructure, while manual picking in chilled environments leads to ergonomic challenges, higher error rates, and slower throughput. Locus’s AMRs offer a middle way: they can be introduced incrementally, reconfigured for different workflows, and, as shown here, adapted with purpose‑built hardware for temperature‑sensitive items. The integration with HelloFresh’s existing warehouse management system was described as “extremely smooth,” with final on‑floor validation taking just a few days after virtual testing. That ease of deployment is a key selling point for supply chain leaders who fear multi‑month implementation cycles.