A small robot with a clip-like hand and enough smarts to know which drinks are popular is part of an effort to make convenience stores even more convenient. On a recent day in Tokyo, the robot named TX SCARA slid back and forth behind the refrigerated shelves in the back of a FamilyMart store. The hand on the end of its mechanical arm grasped a bottle or can from the stacks to the side, then the robot slithered to the right spot and placed the drink on the shelf -- in a place chosen after its artificial intelligence and tiny cameras matched the kind of beverage to what's running short. TX SCARA is filling a needed role in Japan's "conbini," as the ubiquitous tiny stores selling snacks, drinks and knick-knacks are called. Most such stores are open 24-seven, filled with 3,000 kinds of products, but have relatively few workers.

Aldi Australia has launched a first-of-its-kind robotic pizza vending machine dubbed a'Pizzabot' at its Corner Store in North Sydney - with flavours Pepperoni and Italiana currently available from $8.99. The snazzy new robotic technology - which can cook 450 pizzas a day - is serving up restaurant-grade gourmet pizza in just two minutes. The machine also has a glass front, giving pizza-lovers a front row seat to the theatre of their pizza being cooked and packaged by the robotic machine. The mechanism was created in collaboration with Bondi start-up Placer Robotics. Pizzabot is the first pizza vending machine to be designed and manufactured in Australia, and will debut exclusively at Aldi Corner Store in North Sydney.

The startup assault on the humble neighborhood store continues to intensify. First came Bodega, the terribly named, and mostly misguidedstartup with its mission to bring the non-perishable necessities available at the corner store to the masses and "disrupt" the corner store. Now there's Robomart, which wants to bring the groceries, baked goods and prepared foods of the supermarket aisle to your doorstep with a white-labeled service for wholesalers and big box retailers. The culmination of a ten-year vision from founder Ali Ahmed, Robomart is an autonomous grocery store department on wheels. Robomart is the serial entrepreneur's latest startup.

On Wednesday a story about two ex-Google employees receiving an obscene amount of money for a bad idea hit social media and was met with a level of outrage you could feel through the screen. If you're online in any way whatsoever, you likely know I'm talking about Bodega. The excellent article, Two Ex-Googlers Want To Make Bodegas And Mom-And-Pop Corner Stores Obsolete, hit several raw nerves with a wide range of people. This fury is so crystallized because "Bodega" -- an overfunded, probably doomed, glorified vending machine startup positioned as a bodega killer -- stands for everything Silicon Valley represents to us. Whereas in reality, the very concept of a bodega stands for the absolute opposite of Silicon Valley.