The first peek inside Amazon’s new 300,000-square-foot Same Day delivery site near the Broncos training facility in Dove Valley is flat-out bewildering.

Looking into the drive-unit bay in the heart of the facility is like watching what seems to be a giant game of dominoes or chess, played with 10-foot-high yellow stackables instead of chessmen.

Missing by inches

Each tall, robotic stackable has compartments for hundreds of gadgets and goods and each unit is running around on the floor, backing out of a place or sliding back in, while dodging a half dozen other units maneuvering in the same space. The units, taller than Utah Jazz forwards, are missing each other by just inches as they weave in and out.

It looks like chess on a giant scale, except nobody seems to be moving the chessmen.

“Those are called drive units. We’ve got just over 500 of them in this building,” said Mike Hillier, who is site lead (manager) for Amazon’s Same-Day Site, which opened in November. It has now brought on around 800 employees, allowing it to scale up to its full operational capacity.

Just in time for Prime Day(s) 2026.

“This is a cutting-edge facility,” Hillier said. “This is the only site in Denver where you could get a last-minute birthday gift, plus groceries for dinner tonight and your prescription, all in one order and have it delivered same day by my team.”

Eight hundred sounds like a lot of employees, until it’s put in scale with the number of packages the facility now handles in a week: more than 200,000. 

In the block-long building off Broncos Parkway east of Centennial Airport, there are more than 40,000 unique types of product stacked away.

Delivery within hours

That includes over 6,000 grocery items, including perishables like milk, eggs, veggies and ice cream. Like the endless assortment of other products, they are set and programmed at the site to deliver within hours.

Even faster than that, actually. For members of Amazon Prime, a $25 order of groceries gets a delivery home within five hours with no delivery fee. For orders needed even quicker, say for a prescription medicine, this facility can cut the time to three hours or to a single hour for an added fee. Non-Prime members get deliveries for $12.99.

Amazon says it delivers groceries in some 2,300 cities and towns nationwide. Denver already has some Amazon distribution facilities, but this is the first in the area with same-day operations, including groceries — one of a dozen facilities around the country created to provide that service.

There are some parameters limiting the lightning-fast delivery, Hillier noted.

“We have ZIP codes that we’re able to service in one hour, ZIP codes we’re able to service from three hours and then our five-hour traditional or conventional delivery window is the largest,” he said.

Around half the staff working at the Same-Day Site were hired within the last three months, Hillier noted. That schedule was set to work up to this week, when Amazon holds its annual Prime Day promotion of discounts (it runs through Friday).

“It’s a Super Bowl for us this week,” Hillier said. “Customer orders are going to go up, energy goes up, number of associates in the building goes up. It’s a mix between shipping super high volumes and a party.”

Robot units

The super-scooting robot units sorting the tall product stacks are the heart of the operation, Hillier notes. But groceries take more of a hands-on touch, with items being sorted and packaged by hand. The facility also has a vast high-bay area for larger items; say a camping tent. (Amazon carries a number of brands, but makes its own, as well.)

Practically everything, from a watch or a battery to a box of Oreos, gets a human hand on the package at some step of the way. A lineup of human sorters intercepts products delivered by conveyor from the automated bay, scanning them through a bar code reader and slapping on a delivery label.

For groceries in particular, the end of the process runs a little like Uber or Lyft.

Rather than being dropped into the trucks with the Amazon smile on the side that are a daily sight in every neighborhood now, groceries are dealt out to a fleet of contract drivers in their own vehicles, who wear identifying vests. They then deliver shipments of grocery sacks to lists of homes assigned to them.

Is AI making all this possible?

“I’m not sure what’s going on under the hood,” Hillier quipped, standing outside that fence that keeps the fast-moving robotic stacks away from any human that might step in the way.

Complex algorithms

“It uses complex algorithms. If there’s a very high-volume item, it’s not going to put it dug in behind other pods; it’s going to leave it where it’s more accessible. It thinks through those sorts of things.”

Along with safety measures, there are plenty of security measures going on as well. Entering the building, workers pass through a gate scanner like the newest subway systems. Visitors are tagged, booted with special shoes and decked in bright yellow vests. Bright-colored lines mark floor passages that are safe.

But the security gets tighter still in an area near the back of the giant building. There, Amazon has sorting technology that it considers proprietary. Visitors are prohibited from entering and workers pass through revolving-bar gates to enter or exit.

Pharmaceuticals

Amazon’s pharmacy service, LaPoint added, delivers medications directly to the door and accepts most insurance plans. On pharmaceuticals, there is free delivery and no Prime membership is required.

According to La Point, Amazon’s Colorado operations account for $20 billion in infrastructure and employee compensation investments since 2010 and have created around 20,000 jobs.

Hillier adds that the company is still hiring for some positions at the new facility, starting from around $20 per hour.