• 
• United States
• Ecommerce

73 Autopickers pick 70,000 items per day for leading sports nutrition retailer The Feed

The Feed, the largest online marketplace for endurance athletes, fully automated its Colorado fulfillment center, with 73 Brightpick Autopicker robots picking 70,000 items per day.

Challenges

The Feed is the largest online marketplace for endurance athletes, offering over 300 high-quality nutrition brands.

Operating from a manual warehouse, the company faced several critical challenges:

• Limited capacity: Despite operating three shifts per day, manual pickers struggled to keep up with the company’s rapid growth. Increasing order volumes led to fulfillment bottlenecks, causing delivery delays and limiting growth.
• Operational complexity: Managing 6,000 SKUs and fulfilling large orders (averaging 10 picks per order) for delivery within 24 hours created significant operational complexity. The inconsistency of manual labor often led to inefficiencies and missed deadlines.
• Picking errors: Manual picking was prone to errors, which hurt customer satisfaction and drove up quality control and return costs.
• Rising costs: Labor shortages and high wage inflation squeezed margins and increased operating costs.

“Our returning customer volume alone was at the maximum we could do, so we couldn’t even handle orders for new customers, forcing us to slow our growth until we could move to a new automated fulfillment center.”

Matt Johnson, CEO of The Feed

Solution

To overcome these operational challenges, The Feed deployed 48 Autopicker robots in early 2024. In 2025, they doubled the installation size and added 25 more robots.

Brightpick Autopicker is a multi-purpose AI robot that automates a wide range of warehouse workflows. Powered by advanced 3D vision and AI, Autopicker can reliably pick a wide range of items right out of the box.

In addition to AI-powered robotic picking, the installation includes four Goods-to-Person stations for heavy or complex items. Robots automatically transport those items to the stations, where operators complete the picks. Each station can support up to 500 order lines per hour.

The Feed’s setup also features Fast Lane, a form of assisted picking for fast-moving SKUs. Operators pick items directly from cases or pallets and place them into the order totes carried by the Autopickers.

Beyond picking orders, Brightpick robots autonomously buffer completed orders within the system. The Feed runs a 24/7 operation, including a fully autonomous, lights-out night shift where robots independently pick and buffer orders overnight.

“Our goal is to fulfill every order within minutes of it coming in. We finally have the technology that enables us to do that while sustaining strong growth.”

Matt Johnson, CEO of The Feed

The Feed purchased the Brightpick solution through robots-as-a-service (RaaS) pricing, which resulted in minimal upfront investment and immediate ROI and cost savings.

Brightpick completed the initial installation and software integration in just three months, including one month for on-site setup. This rapid deployment was possible because Brightpick Autopickers use standard shelving and totes and don’t require any special fire safety measures, floor flatness, or safety fencing.

Results

After installing 73 Autopickers, The Feed boosted its throughput to 70,000 picks per day while reducing labor to just 4-6 people per shift.

“We were able to go from 50-100 people to completely automated with the Brightpick solution. The payback period from Brightpick was immediate; we were cash flow positive within 60 days.”

Matt Johnson, CEO of The Feed

The Feed realized multiple benefits from Brightpick:

• Significant labor savings: 80% reduction in labor for picking and replenishment, from 42 people per shift to just eight (four people for the G2P stations, two for Fast Lane, and two for decanting).
• Higher throughput: Throughput rose to 3,000 picks per hour and 70,000 picks per day, enabling The Feed to ship more orders from the same warehouse footprint.
• Increased picking accuracy: Brightpick Autopickers virtually eliminated picking errors, resulting in higher customer satisfaction and fewer returns.
• Scalability and flexibility: The Feed can now easily scale operations by simply adding more robots and shelving – without increasing labor costs.

“Brightpick was the perfect combination: it delivered density, speed, and allowed us to drive picking costs down through full automation.”

Matt Johnson, CEO of The Feed

Click here to watch a podcast with Matt Johnson, CEO of The Feed, to learn more about their growth and operational strategy.

About Brightpick
Brightpick is a leader in AI-powered robotic solutions for warehouses. The company’s multi-purpose AI robots enable warehouses of any size to fully automate order picking, buffering, consolidation, dispatch, and stock replenishment. The award-winning Brightpick solution takes just weeks to deploy and allows companies to keep their warehouse labor to a minimum. Headquartered near Cincinnati, Ohio, Brightpick has more than 250 employees and hundreds of AI robots deployed with customers across the U.S. and Europe.