CARLISLE, Pa. — In its move to serve more customers in Philadelphia, the GIANT Co. this month opened a new fulfillment center in the City of Brotherly Love. The supermarket retailer is poised to open three more stores in the city in the coming weeks.

The 124,000-square-foot GIANT Direct E-commerce Fulfillment Center also enables the company — for the first time in its 98-year history — to serve more customers in southern New Jersey.

“Starting with the introduction of our GIANT Heirloom Market format, in 2019, followed by the opening of our Philadelphia flagship Riverwalk GIANT in March and three more new stores across the city still to come this year, The GIANT Co. has been laser-focused on how we can best serve Philadelphia families,” GIANT president Nicholas Bertram said at a ribbon-cutting event. “Today is the culmination of more than two years of collaboration between our team, Ahold Delhaize USA Supply Chain, and our partners at Swisslog and AutoStore, resulting in a state-of-the-art facility that will propel our GIANT Direct offering across greater Philadelphia and for the first time, southern New Jersey. Our new GIANT Direct EFC represents the future of grocery and the future of the GIANT Co., as we are one step closer to realizing our full omnichannel aspirations.”

“The GIANT Co.’s presence in and commitment to Philadelphia benefits our city’s residents by offering quality groceries, good jobs and community support,” said Mayor Jim Kenney. “I’ve been pleased with and proud of GIANT’s work in Philly over the last few years, and look forward to seeing the new facility in Eastwick serve its community and surrounding areas.”

“The opening of this facility is an exciting step forward as we continue to collaborate to evolve the supply chain network for the future,” said Chris Lewis, president of Ahold Delhaize USA supply chain. “Solutions like micro-fulfilment centers will be an important part of the self-distributed network, positioned to serve customers whenever, wherever, however they want to shop.”

GIANT is the first Ahold Delhaize USA company to implement this new EFC technology, which streamlines order fulfillment by using the latest in robotics, machine learning and vertical integration. GIANT worked with the Ahold Delhaize USA company Peapod Digital Labs, as well as Swisslog and AutoStore on the project.

Within the GIANT Direct EFC, two space-saving 3D grids contain totes filled with fresh and nonperishable groceries. When a customer places a GIANT Direct order, team members work alongside a team of robots that quickly gather the items for bagging. After bagging, GIANT team members place orders into temperature-controlled totes and onto trucks for delivery to customers.

The GIANT Direct EFC offers a product selection that mirrors a traditional GIANT store’s offerings. The facility will stock more than 22,000 products, enabling GIANT to meet increasing customer demand with greater capacity, faster order fulfillment and room to grow home grocery delivery. The center is expected to fulfill up to 15,000 home delivery orders per week.

GIANT Direct delivery service was set to begin last week to customers in the New Jersey cities of Camden, Cherry Hill, Gibbsboro, Haddonfield, Marlton, Medford, Mount Laurel and Voorhees. An expansion of the service is in the works, the company said.