Braggingly Happy Associated
Food Stores

Nestled between Great Salt Lake and the Wasatch Mountain Range in Farr West, Utah is the Associated Food Stores (AFS) distribution facility. As a community-led cooperative, AFS opened their Farr West DC in the early 2000’s to support and empower independent and family-run grocery businesses in the Intermountain West region. Today, the DC services over 500 local stores out of this 1.2-million-square-foot facility.

In the late 2010’s, AFS began to outgrow their Farr West facility, running at maximum storage capacity for several years, leading the company to lease a secondary storage facility. As the co-op looked to their future, they determined a warehouse modernization initiative would be imperative to address their growing operations and distribution challenges. After quickly outpacing an older form of warehouse automation, AFS turned to Symbotic to further condense storage, increase facility throughput, perfect order accuracy, and create even deeper efficiencies than what historical automation could provide – all within their existing facility in Farr West, UT.

"…what it really means is improved stability, improved reliability of service, and that [our customers] can count on that supply being there well into the future, which really takes a burden off their plate, and… that they can have those groceries on their shelves to meet the needs of their customers.

Travis Boman

CFO & Executive Vice President, AFS

The resulting success of AFS’s decision to implement Symbotic’s end-to-end warehouse automation into their distribution chain reduced the amount of leased real estate needed, and created an undisrupted high level of service to their 500 customers.

Read more about the success story of the Associated Food Stores Farr West automation project by downloading the case study.