It depends. I worked in a small convenience store in the late 80s. The bread delivery (loaf bread, donuts, hostess twinkies, and so on) would directly fill the

It depends. I worked in a small convenience store in the late 80s. The bread delivery (loaf bread, donuts, hostess twinkies, and so on) would directly fill the specialized display stands for these items. Part of the job was to remove items past the sell date. Ditto for items like nuts, ice, and such. Other items were ordered from a wholesale distributer. Those were delivered by truck to the loading dock in cardboard boxes. We moved those into the store, unpacked the boxes, and filled the shelves. Beer and such was put into the walk-in by the driver, and we stocked the coolers as needed. It will be a long time before the local ice distributer goes automatic (for economic reasons it makes sense to make and distribute ice very locally). But wholesale distributers? I can see a truck with a lift gate and some kind of robot to automatically unload the truck. We always had to be there to receive anyway, except it was a human with a dolly moving the boxes into the bay.