Corvus Robotics expands drone inventory system deployment at Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits

Autonomous inventory management system provider Corvus Robotics announced a strategic technology partnership and expanded deployment of its Corvus One platform with Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits.

The expanded deployment will see Corvus’ inventory drones across Southern Glazer’s distribution network.

Supply chain transformation via inventory drones

Corvus One operates continuously within active warehouse environments, autonomously flying aisles to scan and validate reserve storage locations without disrupting case-picking operations. Corvus said that the result is hands-free, high-frequency inventory audits that sync directly with Southern Glazer’s WMS, freeing the team to focus on higher-value tasks.

Over the past 18 months, Southern Glazer’s has deployed more than 40 Corvus One autonomous drones across nine distribution centers nationwide, with continued expansion planned. Corvus Robotics said that the rollout supports Southern Glazer’s broader supply chain transformation initiative and reinforces its commitment to operational excellence across its network.

“Across our network, inventory accuracy directly impacts how effectively we serve our customers,” said Karli Sage, vice president, supply chain management, technology & engineering, Southern Glazer’s Wine & Spirits. “By increasing the frequency and precision of our reserve inventory validation, we are identifying issues earlier, improving fill rates and enabling our teams to focus on proactive problem-solving instead of reactive counting. The speed at which we have scaled this technology across nine sites reflects the value it is delivering to our operations.”

At Southern Glazer’s, the system has completed approximately 5,000 flights and identified over 35,000 verified discrepancies across deployed facilities.

Corvus One in operation

Corvus Robotics said that the system’s visual record of each scan provides searchable, time-stamped footage of pallet positions and license plate labels, enabling rapid root-cause analysis and coaching. Verified discrepancies can include misplaced pallets, missing LPNs, or incorrect placements that, in beverage distribution, can represent significant dollar value per pallet.

“Southern Glazer’s operates at a scale where small improvements in accuracy have meaningful downstream impact,” said Jackie Wu, CEO of Corvus Robotics. “Their team has embraced autonomous inventory as core infrastructure within their supply chain transformation initiative. Scaling to nine facilities with more than 40 drones demonstrates strong operational buy-in and sets a new benchmark for how beverage distributors can modernize inventory control without slowing the floor.”

As part of the expanded Southern Glazer‘s deployment, Corvus Robotics highlighted the following benefits:

• Operational throughput: Improved inventory accuracy has contributed to a 100-basis point improvement in cases per hour, enabling faster and more efficient fulfillment of customer orders.
• Sixfold inventory validation increase: Shifting from a quarterly count cadence to biweekly turns across facilities, Southern Glazer’s has realized higher-frequency visibility that allows teams to identify and resolve discrepancies before they impact picking and outbound shipping.
• More efficient use of labor: Approximately 60 to 70 labor hours per week per site have been reallocated from manual cycle counting to higher-value operational priorities. Inventory teams focus on resolving verified discrepancies rather than performing broad manual counts, using the Corvus interface to review high-resolution images, label scans and historical video logs tied to specific storage locations.

Corvus Robotics said that the collaboration includes regular cross-site operational reviews, enabling Southern Glazer’s facilities to share best practices and continuously refine how autonomous inventory is integrated into daily workflows.

As additional facilities come online, the companies said that they will continue collaborating to standardize deployment models and performance benchmarks across the network.