Walmart announced that it’s scaling its local fulfillment efforts. The industry term of art is MFCs or micro-fulfillment centers.

It fits into two broad trends:

1. Getting inventory closer to the consumer.

2. The continuing consumer uptake of local pickup and delivery efforts.

The alternative for Walmart is continuing to pick from retail shelves. which is much less efficient. This is one of the things where Amazon's efforts have been mixed in Whole Foods.

Human pickers seriously disrupt other retail shoppers in the store. And while Amazon has tested a Whole Foods dark store in Brooklyn, it's not clear they are prepared to invest in their store infrastructure to upgrade them all to use this type of concept.

This is one area where traditional players may have an advantage over Amazon in the grocery category if they make the right investments.