Technological advances such as cashless stores and apps that help fill more restaurant seats with hungry diners aren't the only latest trends. Some of the latest innovations we've seen at Foodable are introducing technological advances, like robots, to the grocery store space. Grocery chain Stop and Shop, is partnering with mobile market startup Robomart to bring a new method of grocery delivery to Boston this Spring. Instead of having customers order their groceries and deliver them to the door, customers will be able to order a remote-operated Robomart vehicle to their door via an app and pick out their own produce from a pre-stocked vehicle. Another way technology is becoming more prevalent in the grocery store space is shown by Giant Food Stores.

I didn't believe it when I first saw it, but it soon made sense. Saudi Arabia has just granted citizenship to its first robot – the first time any country has recognised a robot in such a way. Her name is Sophia and this social robot is using her platform as the highest-profile robot in the world to advocate for women in her home nation. Why did this suddenly all make sense to me? Because artificial intelligence (AI) innovations are racing ahead at a pace few could ever have predicted – and the development of intelligent machines like Sophia is a natural evolution of this.

A Quartz report said Amazon could be destroying more jobs than it generates, thanks to the addition of more robot employees. To say that Amazon is a major employer in the world would be stating the obvious -- the Jeff Bezos-owned company employs more than a million people. In fact, in the last year alone, the company added about a quarter of a million employees to its workforce. Perhaps, the best indicator of Amazon's significance as a bulk employer is the fact that 238 American cities are competing with each other to become home to Amazon's second headquarters, which is expected to generate 50,000 more jobs. That rosy picture aside, Quartz discovered, in 2017 there were a whopping 170,000 fewer retail jobs in Amazon-linked industries including grocery stores, clothing stores and bookstores, compared to the previous year.