DRAY Robotics
Sources
Every figure on drayrobotics.com, with its source. Estimates are marked as DRAY estimates and show the arithmetic.
Retailers
01 · Labour
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
An hour of retail work costs a German employer €31.18. | Eurostat, Labour Cost Survey 2024 (lc_ncost_r2): retail trade, firms with 10+ employees; queried 28 Sep 2026Cost per hour worked in 2024; €50,864 per full-time employee per year. | ec.europa.eu (opens in a new tab) |
The statutory minimum wage rises 17.6% between 2024 and 2027. | Federal Ministry of Labour (BMAS), minimum wage adjustments; the 2026 and 2027 rates follow the Mindestlohnkommission decision of 27 Jun 2025Arithmetic: €12.41 (2024) → €14.60 (from 1 Jan 2027): 14.60 ÷ 12.41 − 1 = 17.6%. | bmas.de (opens in a new tab) |
About 122,000 retail positions were vacant on average in 2024. | HDE (German Retail Federation), press release, 23 Jul 2025, citing KOFA dataHDE counts retail positions that were vacant on average during 2024. | einzelhandel.de (opens in a new tab) |
Keeping one person on duty around the clock in a small store takes about 5.3 full-time staff, roughly €185,000–195,000 a year.DRAY estimate | DRAY estimate, from the 2027 minimum wage (BMAS)Arithmetic: 8,760 hours a year ÷ about 1,650 productive hours per full-time employee ≈ 5.3. Each of them is paid for about 1,950–2,086 hours a year, leave and sick pay included: 5.3 × 1,950–2,086 h × €14.60 × 1.21 employer on-costs ≈ €183,000–195,000.A floor at the 2027 minimum wage of €14.60, before collective-agreement pay rates and night supplements. | bmas.de (opens in a new tab) |
02 · Format
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
Żabka runs about 13,000 stores | Żabka Group, investor presentation, Aug 2026: 13,063 stores in Poland and Romania at 30 Jun 2026 | zabkagroup.com (opens in a new tab) |
of 70–120 m² | Żabka Polska, premises requirements, accessed 28 Sep 2026Units of 70–120 m² in total, with a sales floor above 50 m². | zabka.pl (opens in a new tab) |
18 million Poles live within 500 m of one | Żabka Group, Annual Report 2025, Mar 2026The report says about 18 million consumers. | zabkagroup.azureedge.net (opens in a new tab) |
a regular store pays back in 11–12 months | Żabka Group, Annual Results Presentation 2024, 25 Mar 2025Żabka's own measure: 11 months for stores opened in 2021, 12 months for 2022 and 2023. | zabkagroup.com (opens in a new tab) |
Its checkout-free Nano company still employed 68 full-time staff, head office included, for about 50 locations | Supermarktblog, 26 May 2026, citing the 2024 accounts of Żabka Nano sp. z o.o.68 full-time staff on average in 2024; the accounts do not split head office from store work. 51 Nano locations in Poland at the end of May 2026. | supermarktblog.com (opens in a new tab) |
and pay back in 3–4 years | Żabka Group, Annual Report 2025, Mar 2026, p. 19 | zabkagroup.azureedge.net (opens in a new tab) |
03 · Hours
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
Hessen (up to 120 m²), Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg (up to 150 m²) let automated stores open on Sundays without staff. | Hessen, Hessisches Ladenöffnungsgesetz (HLöG), version of 10 Jul 2024, in force 16 Jul 2024 Bavaria, Bayerisches Ladenschlussgesetz (BayLadSchlG) of 25 Jul 2025, Art. 2(2) and 9(5), in force 1 Aug 2025 Baden-Württemberg, Gesetzblatt 2026 Nr. 23 (27 Feb 2026): opening-hours law amended 10 Feb 2026, in force 28 Feb 2026Limits are sales area. Hessen: stores should close on five major holidays. Bavaria: municipalities may limit Sunday hours, but not below 8 consecutive hours. Baden-Württemberg: 6 weeks’ notice; store employees may not restock on Sundays, and only same-day fresh baked goods may be restocked, by the owner or contractors. | rv.hessenrecht.hessen.de (opens in a new tab)gesetze-bayern.de (opens in a new tab)gesetze-bayern.de (opens in a new tab)landesrecht-bw.de (opens in a new tab) |
At the unstaffed chain teo, Sunday brought 25–30% of weekly sales. | Supermarktblog, 21 Feb 2024, quoting tegutA company figure given by tegut in 2023/24; it varies by site. | supermarktblog.com (opens in a new tab) |
04 · Delivery
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
REWE now picks one-hour orders inside regular supermarkets | REWE, press release, 15 Sep 2026Delivery within one hour by Uber Eats, Wolt and Lieferando; 5,000–9,000 products per store; picked by REWE store staff. | mediacenter.rewe.de (opens in a new tab) |
one store per roughly 3 km, and expects one to two extra pickers per store | Supermarktblog, 15 Sep 2026, quoting REWE's e-commerce director Clemens BauerEach store delivers within about 3 km; five to ten stores per city at launch. | supermarktblog.com (opens in a new tab) |
Flink says it is EBITDA-profitable on about 160 hubs of 3,000 products each | Prosus, 3 Mar 2026About 160 hubs across Germany and the Netherlands. Profitability at EBITDA level is the company’s statement. | prosus.com (opens in a new tab) |
Picnic's €150m Oberhausen centre | LOGISTIK HEUTE, Jun 2025 DNHK, 30 Jun 2025 RetailDetail, 20 Jul 2026, on Picnic’s 2025 resultsOpened in June 2025 for up to 33,000 orders a day. In 2025 Picnic reported a group net loss of €272m, mainly from spending on German distribution centres. | logistik-heute.de (opens in a new tab)dnhk.org (opens in a new tab)retaildetail.eu (opens in a new tab) |
Kroger's closed Ocado sites | Ocado Group, half-year results 2026, 16 Jul 2026Kroger shut three Ocado-equipped fulfilment centres in January 2026 and dropped a planned fourth. | cdn.prod.website-files.com (opens in a new tab) |
05 · Your stores
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
Across Europe, 8.6% of items were missing when a shopper looked for them (2002–03) | ECR Retail Loss, Managing shelf out-of-stocks (2020), citing the Gruen & Corsten meta-study of 50+ studiesData from 2002–2003. The global average was 8.3%. | ecrloss.com (opens in a new tab) |
about 70% of the causes sat inside the store | ECR Retail Loss, as above, causes of out-of-stocks in EuropeArithmetic: Store stocking 38% + store forecasting 22% + store ordering 11% = 71% (2002–2003 data). | ecrloss.com (opens in a new tab) |
Two-thirds of inventory records are wrong | DeHoratius & Raman, Management Science 54(4), 2008 Rekik, Oliva, Syntetos & Glock, Journal of Business Logistics, 202665% of nearly 370,000 records across 37 stores of one retailer (2008); 64.7% at a UK grocer with 11 stores and about 24,000 SKUs (2026). | pubsonline.informs.org (opens in a new tab)onlinelibrary.wiley.com (opens in a new tab) |
at one UK grocer, a store-wide audit was followed by about 11% more sales over two months | Rekik, Oliva, Syntetos & Glock, Journal of Business Logistics, 2026; preprint arXiv 2506.05357, 2025A field quasi-experiment on one matched pair of stores: about 11% more sales over the two months after the audit, all on items whose records overstated stock. | onlinelibrary.wiley.com (opens in a new tab)arxiv.org (opens in a new tab) |
Investors
The market
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
36,565 food stores in Germany, 7,900 of them under 400 m². | EHI Retail Institute, press release, 2 Sep 2025 (2024 store counts)15,976 discounters, 10,700 supermarkets, 1,300 large supermarkets and 7,900 small stores; hypermarkets are the remaining 689 (by subtraction). | ehi.org (opens in a new tab) |
4,496 dm and Rossmann drugstores | dm-drogerie markt, 21 Oct 2025: 2,154 stores in Germany, financial year 2024/25 Rossmann, 8 Jan 2026: 2,342 stores in GermanyArithmetic: 2,154 + 2,342 = 4,496. | newsroom.dm.de (opens in a new tab)unternehmen.rossmann.de (opens in a new tab) |
16,601 pharmacies | ABDA (Federal Union of German Associations of Pharmacists), 13 Jan 2026: pharmacies at the end of 2025 | abda.de (opens in a new tab) |
14,018 petrol stations | bft (Federal Association of Independent Petrol Stations), roadside petrol stations in 2025, excluding motorway service stationsbft counts stations; it does not say how many have a shop. | bft.de (opens in a new tab) |
At €3,000 per robot per monthDRAY estimate | DRAY working assumption, set against robot subscription prices: Simbe’s US$2,000–4,000 per store per month, a figure Simbe gave The Spoon in 2020 (22 Oct 2020), MiR leasing from €575 a month over 48 months, and 1X’s US$499 a month for its NEO home humanoid (both accessed 28 Sep 2026) | thespoon.tech (opens in a new tab)mobile-industrial-robots.com (opens in a new tab)1x.tech (opens in a new tab) |
a bottom-up German market of about €3.7bn a yearDRAY estimate | DRAY estimate, from the store counts aboveArithmetic: Robots per site: small store 1, discounter or supermarket 2, large supermarket 3, hypermarket 4, drugstore, pharmacy or petrol-station shop 1. 7,900 + 2 × (15,976 + 10,700) + 3 × 1,300 + 4 × 689 + 4,496 + 16,601 + 14,018 = 103,023 robots × €36,000 a year ≈ €3.7bn. | Arithmetic only |
4.8% of what German retail spends on labourDRAY estimate | Eurostat, Labour Cost Survey 2024: €77.9bn total labour cost, retail trade, firms with 10+ employeesArithmetic: €3.71bn ÷ €77.86bn = 4.8%. | ec.europa.eu (opens in a new tab) |
Europe: roughly €17bn.DRAY estimate | DRAY estimate, scaled by grocery workforce from Eurostat business statistics (sbs_ovw_act, food retail NACE G47.11)Arithmetic: About 5.0 million people work in EU27 food retail (2023) and 1.06 million in Germany (2024): €3.71bn × 5.0 ÷ 1.06 ≈ €17.5bn.The roughest figure on this page. | ec.europa.eu (opens in a new tab) |
The unit economics
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
At €3,000 a month one robot costs the same as 0.7 of a full-time retail worker, or 96 staff hours a month.DRAY estimate | DRAY estimate, from Eurostat Labour Cost Survey 2024, retail tradeArithmetic: €3,000 ÷ €4,239 labour cost per full-time employee per month = 0.71. €3,000 ÷ €31.18 per hour = 96 hours a month (2024 labour costs). | ec.europa.eu (opens in a new tab) |
Hardware runs €25–50k per robot at today's component pricesDRAY estimate | DRAY estimate, from list prices accessed 28 Sep 2026: Fairino FR5 arm €4,900 excl. VAT, Unitree L2 LiDAR US$419, Hello Robot Stretch 4 US$29,950Arithmetic: Arm €5–14k, mobile base €8–20k (not verified), LiDAR and cameras €0.4–3k, compute about €2.6k, plus tooling and integration. A complete Stretch 4, about €26k and certified for research use only, anchors the low end. | fairino.be (opens in a new tab)shop.unitree.com (opens in a new tab)hello-robot.com (opens in a new tab) |
about 49% gross margin and hardware payback in about 17 monthsDRAY estimate | DRAY estimate, 48-month write-off, the standard MiR lease termArithmetic: A €40,000 robot over 48 months costs €833 a month; with about €700 a month for service and software, €1,533 a month. (€3,000 − €1,533) ÷ €3,000 = 49%. €40,000 ÷ (€3,000 − €700) = 17 months. | mobile-industrial-robots.com (opens in a new tab) |
A minimum-wage picker will cost about €22 per hour worked in 2027.DRAY estimate | DRAY estimate, from the 2027 minimum wage (BMAS) and Destatis labour-cost structureArithmetic: €14.60 ÷ 0.77 (non-wage costs about 23% of labour cost) ≈ €19.0 per paid hour; pay for days not worked is about 13% of gross pay, so per hour worked ≈ €19.0 ÷ 0.87 ≈ €21.8. Cross-check: €14.60 × 1.21 employer contributions ÷ 0.81 productive time ≈ €21.8.Before night or Sunday premiums and before collective-agreement wages above the minimum. | bmas.de (opens in a new tab)destatis.de (opens in a new tab) |
Why now
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
Robot subscriptions grew 31% in 2024 while robot sales grew 9%. | IFR (International Federation of Robotics), World Robotics press release, 7 Oct 2025Two measures: the robot-as-a-service fleet grew 31%; unit sales of professional service robots grew 9%, to almost 200,000. | ifr.org (opens in a new tab) |
Simbe, which sells its shelf scanner as a subscription, has 3,000+ units under contract | Simbe Robotics, press release, 21 Sep 2026Simbe reports more than 3,000 units under contract across 75+ retail banners and sells its Tally robot through a robot-as-a-service subscription; it does not say that every unit is on subscription. | simberobotics.com (opens in a new tab) |
Store-based delivery is back at REWE | REWE, press release, 15 Sep 2026 | mediacenter.rewe.de (opens in a new tab) |
three German states have opened Sundays to automated stores | HLöG Hessen, BayLadSchlG, Gesetzblatt Baden-Württemberg 2026 Nr. 23, see Retailers, 03 · Hours | Retailers, 03 · Hours |
What the round buys
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
Seed round: €2–3M for 18 months A team of about 15 across Germany and Ukraine.DRAY estimate | DRAY plan and estimate, pay from the DOU salary survey (Ukraine, June 2026) and Levels.fyi (Germany, Sep 2026); ECB rate 1.1378 USD/EUR on 28 Sep 2026Arithmetic: 6 people in Germany at €80,000 × 1.2 employer cost, 9 in Ukraine at DOU median pay plus 15% overhead: €1.46M over 18 months. 8 robots × €40,000 = €0.32M; other costs €25,000 a month = €0.45M. Total €2.23M, or €2.56M with a 15% buffer. | github.com (opens in a new tab)levels.fyi (opens in a new tab) |
EU Machinery Regulation compliance (mandatory from 20 Jan 2027) | European Commission, Machinery: Regulation (EU) 2023/1230, accessed 28 Sep 2026Replaces Directive 2006/42/EC and covers machinery with AI-powered safety functions. | single-market-economy.ec.europa.eu (opens in a new tab) |
Results
The evaluation results in the Results section. All were measured in simulation; physical integration is the next step.
| On the site | Source | Link |
|---|---|---|
Restock on shelves with unseen product textures: 36 / 36 (18 held-out real products, 2 shelves each) | DRAY internal evaluation, Sep 2026 | Internal, not published |
Restock and relocate on known shelves: 18 / 18 | DRAY internal evaluation, Sep 2026 | Internal, not published |
Three-stop replenishment trip: 3 / 3 stops | DRAY internal evaluation, Sep 2026 | Internal, not published |
Navigation among simulated shoppers: 20 / 20 arrivals · 0 collisions | DRAY internal evaluation, Sep 2026The ROS 2 / Nav2 navigation stack, not the learned policy. One validation run of 20 routes with simulated shoppers: 20 arrived, 0 collisions, minimum clearance 0.31 m. The run’s overall gate did not pass because simulated shoppers on one route stayed parked longer than the 10 s cap; the robot arrived on that route too. The navigation clip replays one of the 20 routes (15 shoppers) from the recorded poses. | Internal, not published |
SmolVLA-based policy trained on 38,000+ simulated episodes. | DRAY internal evaluation, Sep 2026 | Internal, not published |
Last updated 28 September 2026.