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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chris Albrecht

Gatik Gets $9 Million (CAD) to Winterize its Autonomous Middle-Mile Delivery Tech

Gatik, which makes autonomous delivery vehicles for the middle-mile, announced today that it has received $997,706 million CAD (~$788,511 USD) from Ontario’s Autonomous Vehicle Innovation Network (AVIN) R&D Partnership Fun, along with $8 million CAD (~$6.32 million USD) in unspecified “industry contribution.” The new funding will go towards winterizing Gatik’s autonomous driving technology.

Gatik develops self-driving delivery trucks for the middle mile, which typically means between two points within a company’s network, e.g. between a warehouse and a store.

The Ontario government will help Gatik’s autonomous driving technology withstand inclement weather. Right now, a lot of self-driving pilots and tests happen in sunny climates such as Arizona, Texas and California. Bright, sunny weather makes it easier for self-driving vehicles to navigate because road conditions are dry and the surrounding environment is clearer for the vehicle’s systems to “see.”

But if self-driving technology is ever to reach mass market scale, it must be able to operate in all kinds of weather. Not only will autonomous vehicles need to “see” in rain and fog and snow, they will also have to safely drive on wet and icy roads. Another self-driving delivery startup that has “ruggedized” their vehicles for harsh conditions include Refraction, which operates out of Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Gatik already operates a small fleet of autonomous delivery trucks in Canada. Last November, Canadian grocery chain Loblaw started using a five Gatik trucks to run food between automated picking facilities and retail stores. Gatik, which is headquarted in Palo Alto, CA, has been expanding its Canadian presence. The company recently moved into a 12,000 sq. ft. research facility in Toronto and expects to double its workforce there over the coming year. As part of its funding arrangement, AVIN will help Gatik attract and retain engineering talent in Ontario.

Last month, the company debuted its first electric delivery vehicle, which has a range of 120 miles and takes only 1.5 hours to charge. The company will also be running two delivery routes for Walmart in Arkansas and Louisina. The Arkansas route will go completely driverless (i.e., no human backup) this year, and the Louisiana route will be the first to use Gatik’s electric trucks.

Operating only within the middle mile makes it easier for Gatik to bring its autonomous driving tech to market. By focusing on the middle mile, the delivery trucks only need to navigate between two fixed points. By avoiding consumer delivery (the so-called “last mile”), Gatik limits the number of variables its trucks will encounter on a given route.

This narrow, middle-mile approach combined with winterized driving capability could give Gatik a huge boost in getting to more markets quickly.

Walmart Ditches $35 Minimum for Express Delivery

Walmart announced today that it is dropping the $35 minimum order requirement for its Express delivery service. The move comes during a time of record-breaking online grocery shopping and increased competition among retailers to grab consumer dollars.

Walmart launched its two-hour Express delivery service last May, during the height of the first wave of the pandemic. The speedy delivery lets customers order groceries, staples, electronics and more, and costs an additional $10 on top of the existing delivery charge (Walmart+ subscribers pay just the $10 Express fee).

This is the second time Walmart has waived a $35 minimum order. In December, Walmart removed the $35 minimum for Walmart.com orders for its Walmart+ subscribers, though that didn’t apply to groceries until today.

We’re a year into the pandemic, and while there are vaccines being deployed, online grocery is expected to remain sticky with consumers. Brick Meets Click estimated that online grocery hit $9.3 billion in sales during the month of January, with nearly 70 million households placing an average of 2.8 orders across delivery, pickup and ship-to-home categories.

Walmart’s removal of the minimum order for Express delivery is most directly a shot at Amazon, which offers two-hour delivery for its Prime members. The two companies are locked in a pretty heated battle to win your grocery business. Walmart has been going after Amazon in the digital realm with the Walmart+ membership service that it launched last September, and Amazon has been expanding into the physical world with its line of real world Fresh grocery stores.

Though Walmart has vastly more retail locations than Amazon, Walmart+ has far fewer subscribers. One estimate has Walmart+ at roughly 8 million subscribers, while Amazon has an estimated 126 million Prime members in the U.S. Though to be fair, Walmart+ is only five months old, compared with the more than 15 years Prime has been around.

Today’s minimum order waiving it just the latest move by Walmart to grab a bigger chunk of our grocery e-commerce . In January, the company announced that it was deploying automated fulfillment centers to dozens of its stores to speed up order processing. The retailer is also testing out smart lockers for home delivery, grocery delivery via autonomous cars, and even delivery by drone.

Walmart’s Express delivery is available at roughly 3,000 stores, which, the company says, reaches nearly 70 percent of the population.

Could DS Smith’s “Greentote” Solve Grocery’s Plastic Bag Problem?

My online grocery shopping and curbside pickup with Walmart is pretty delightful except for one thing: all the plastic bags. I’m not sure if it’s corporate policy or what, but it seems like Walmart’s pick-and-pack employees give just about every item its own bag. The result is a ton of waste (and just as much guilt).

Perhaps Walmart should look into the Greentote, a new type of reusable and recyclable cardboard packaging from DS Smith. The Greentote is basically an open ended box, but, as the press announcement last week described, it is also “reusable, moisture-resistant, modular, 100% recyclable container made from renewable resources.”

The Greentote comes in two sizes, and DS Smith said it can hold more than three times the number of groceries than plastic bags. Plus, Greentotes can interlock with one another to ensure food safety during travel.

The press release didn’t say how much Greentotes cost, or whether they are strictly B2B or have a consumer sales component, but they are presumably more expensive than plastic bags. Unlike plastic bags, however, Greentotes, which are fully recyclable, won’t pile up in your home or end up in waterways. Additionally, a store opting to reuse Greentotes would also need to establish a new workflow to reincorporate returned boxes, rather than just dumping single-use bags into the world.

While cost will undoubtedly be a huge determining factor in adoption of recyclable containers like Greentote, Walmart, at least, seems to be admitting that it has a plastic bag problem. In a corporate blog post last week, Walmart announced nine winners of its “Beyond the Bag” innovation challenge and that Walmart Mexico y Centroamerica and one of its Vermont locations will go bagless (h/t Grocery Dive).

Hopefully these pilot programs prove successful, and my curbside pickup will feel a little less guilt-ridden.

Dragontail Systems Partners with Valqari to Deploy Dropboxes for Drone Delivery

Restaurant tech company Dragontail Systems announced last Friday that it has partnered with Chicago-based drone logistics company Valqari to use that company’s automated drone delivery stations.

Valqari’s makes the Drone Delivery Station, which is kind of like an automat for drone-delivered food drop-offs. The Station has a series of locked cubbies, on top of which a drone carrying the food either lands or lowers a tethered package. Once dropped off, the Station’s elevator system lowers the food and places it into a secured cubby. A delivery driver (or even a customer) then receives a notification that the food has arrived and they can unlock the designated cubby to carry the order over the last mile to its final destination.

Smart Drone Delivery Mailbox by Valqari

This news comes a little more than a month after Tel Aviv-based Dragontail, which uses AI to track restaurant order management and fulfillment, announced that it had partnered with Pizza Hut in Israel to do drone delivery of pizzas. Dragontail did not specify where Valqari’s systems would be implemented. (UPDATE: Dragontail said that it will be deployed in the U.S.)

Dragontail’s plan is to do a hub-and-spoke model of drone delivery, meaning that instead of flying directly to people’s houses, the drones will fly from a restaurant to a designated drop-off area. This simplified, narrow approach will help minimize regulatory issues that come with flying drones. Because there will be limited flight paths to and from two fixed points, instead of drones flying deep into residential areas, there isn’t as much government approval needed.

Partnering with Valqari also gives Dragontail the means to safely drop off deliveries without needing a human driver to get near the drone. The locker can also keep food secured should a driver be late for food pickup.

While regulatory issues around drone delivery are being clarified (at least here in the U.S.), and a number of players like Flytrex and Deuce Drone are starting to make deliveries domestically, there is still a long way to go before it can become mainstream.

In the meantime, however, it’s easy to see how a halo of logistical services around drones like that of Valqari’s will rise up to make it easier for drone delivery to come to market.

Beyond Meat Going More Mainstream with McDonald’s, Yum Brands Deals

Beyond Meat announced global distribution deals yesterday with McDonald’s and Yum Brands (KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell) that will help push plant-based meat further into the mainstream.

Beyond and McDonald’s had previously revealed that they were working together on the appropriately named “McPlant” sandwich back in November. The McPlant debuted in 2019 in Canada and is currently being tested in select markets around the world. The two companies will extend their collaboration beyond plant-based burgers, as the McPlant is actually a “platform” for a variety of different products. Beyond will work with Mickey D’s to create plant-based options for chicken, pork and egg.

Likewise, Beyond’s deal with Yum Brands builds on an existing collaboration between the two companies. KFC introduced the plant-based Beyond Fried Chicken in Atlanta in 2019, and has since expanded that pilot to other U.S. cities. Last year, Pizza Hut launched the Beyond Italian Sausage Pizza and Great Beyond Pizza nationwide.

Beyond has been on a bit of roll with high-profile partnerships this year. Last month Beyond partnered with PepsiCo to form the PLANeT Partnership joint venture that will develop plant-based snacks.

All of these deals are obviously huge news for Beyond Meat, specifically, as it looks to grow its plant-based empire. It also alters the competitive landscape with its plant-based burger rival, Impossible Foods. Throughout 2020, Beyond and Impossible made back-and-forth news announcements around expanding retail, launching direct to consumer channels, and restaurant partnerships. For its part, Impossible, which launched its burgers at restaurants, has deals with Burger King, White Castle and Starbucks here in the U.S.

But Beyond’s expanded partnerships with giants like McDonald’s, KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut is perhaps even bigger news for plant-based meat in general. Though sales of plant-based meat are on the rise and steadily gaining traction, being on the menus of these huge, global QSR chains will help give the entire sector a massive boost both in terms of sales and recogntion.

Cecilia.ai Mixes Chatbot Capabilities with Its Robot Bartender

The robot bartenders we’ve covered so far at The Spoon are either just autonomous, articulating arms (Glacierfire), or high-volume vending machines (Rotender). Cecilia.ai, the latest entrant in the autonomous cocktail-making space, went live today and “she” is serving drinks a twist.

In addition to automated drink-pouring, Cecilia.ai features chatbot functionality to have a “conversation” with a customer. Cecilia looks like something out of a Vegas. The machine sports a big screen with a CGI female bartender. Walk up to Cecilia and start talking to order your drink. The Cecilia.ai website provides a sample conversation that goes something like this:

CUSTOMER: Hi there.

CECILIA: Hello there, what can I get you to drink?

CUSTOMER: Any recommendations?

CECILIA: My favorite is the Rusty Ale, but it’s a bit strong.

CUSTOMER: Do you have something sweeter?

CECILIA: Sure! Try the Green n’ Tonic.

And… scene.

According to website, Cecilia can make 120 drinks per hour (with reduced chit-chat), offers conversational script customization to fit a location, hundreds of available mixes and hold 70 liters (it doesn’t specify booze or mixer ratios). Voice control means ordering is contactless, and the large screen can be used for advertising purposes.

We’ve reached out to the company to find out more details like pricing and availability, and will update this when we hear back.

There are actually a number of robot bartenders coming to market right now. In addition to the aforementioned Glacierfire bar and Rotender robot, MSC Cruises is installing a robot bartender on one on of its ships, Macco’s robot is serving beer in Spain, and Makr Shakr continues to sell its robot bartender solution.

One reason for all this automated mixology is probably, like so many other things, the pandemic. Having hundreds of strangers yell out their orders into the faces of human bartenders isn’t such a great idea any more, thanks to COVID. A robot bartender eliminates that vector of human-to-human transmission. But another reason is that robot bartenders are machines that can crank out drinks around the clock without taking a break, and they do so without spilling or overpouring (which may suck for customers but is good for a bar’s bottom line).

From what we can gather, Cecilia isn’t aimed at high-volume nightclubs and bars, but instead is more for hotels, airports, VIP lounges, etc. This makes sense since a crowded bar blasting music in the background would make it difficult for Cecilia to hear a patron order a Patron with only their voice.

The only question that remains is whether sage wisdom and funny anecdotes are programmed into her chatbot capabilities.

Will Foodtech’s Funding Streak Continue in 2021? (Looks Like it!)

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Thirty-one billion dollars was invested in agrifoodtech startups in 2020, according to the AgFunder 2021 Agrifoodtech Investing Report, released this week.

Technically, $26 billion was invested, but AgFunder expects that there are some deals from 2020 that we just don’t know about yet. But let’s stick with that bigger, $31 billion number. Bigger is better, and for the purposes of this newsletter, I want to set the bar high because 2021 could be another record-breaking year for investment in food tech.

Before we get too far, I need to lay out a bunch of caveats. There is still a loooooong way to go in 2021 and lord knows what could happen. The pandemic accelerated a lot of technology adoption by grocers and restaurants last year. As grocery e-commerce rocketed to its own record-breaking highs, retailers looked to add automation while at the same time minimizing human-to-human contact. Restaurants that were forced to close down dining rooms pivoted hard towards systems that made takeout and delivery better and more efficient. This sudden pivot to pandemic-friendly tech drove interest in startups, which in turn, attracted the attention of investors.

With vaccines being deployed, the pandemic will start to recede, one can hope, by the end of this year. If that holds true, the question then becomes how consumers will react to new freedoms, and will those freedoms result in a retrenchment away from tech and thus from further big investments in food tech?

Alright, with those caveats out of the way, here’s why I’m bullish on 2021 being another boffo year for food tech. I did a quick search of the companies just we at The Spoon have covered getting funding from the beginning of the year. By my (back of the envelope) math, roughly $3.2 billion has been raised so far in less than two full months of 2021.

Granted, of that $3.2 billion, $2 billion of it was just for one company, Chinese online grocer app Xingsheng Youxuan. But even without that number there was still $1.2 billion raised by 30 different companies (around the world) in January and February of this year. And that’s just the companies that we covered here at The Spoon, which does not include hardcore ag tech, supply chain companies, and other downstream areas of the food system.

Now, $1.2 billion is an impressive number. But if we look at AgFunder’s numbers, at $31 billion, that’s an average of ~$2.6 billion per month (the lower $26 billion figure averages out to ~$2.2 billion per month). If you think AgFunder’s scope is too broad for our purposes here, Pitchbook reported that during the first three quarters of 2020, $8.37 billion was invested in food tech. That comes out to an average of $930 million a month. Measured against that figure, $1.2 billion over months this year (~$611 million per month) is trailing 2020. But it’s still early. January has the tail end of the holiday season where nothing gets done, and is the start of the year, so things are just getting warmed up.

Even if the beginning of 2021 is a bit slow (comparatively), there are signs that point to continued investment in food tech. Online grocery remains sticky with consumers, big grocers like Walmart are investing in more automation to meet that demand, and restaurants are spending money on enhanced drive-thru operations and advanced menus.

The point is that $1.2 billion is still a strong start to the year, and it looks like foodtech will continue to find its groove with investors throughout 2021.

More Headlines

Traeger Launches Apple Watch App to Monitor and Control Your Grilling – Slow cook those briskets directly from your wrist.

Survey: 91 Percent of US Restaurants Will Invest in Kitchen Automation in 2021 – Why the rush to digitize the back of house? “In order to take advantage of opportunities like multiple revenue streams and creative dining experiences, the back of house needs to be buttoned up,” notes the report.

Sweetgreen to Go Carbon Neutral by 2027 – The company says it will achieve this through its decisions around ingredient sourcing, building design, and energy usage, among other things.

Driscoll’s is Using Consumer Physics Technology to Bring Sweeter Berries to Market – Near-infrared technology takes over much of the manual work of finding the sugar content in berries.

Traeger Launches Apple Watch App to Monitor and Control Your Grilling

Traeger Grills announced this week the launch of its first Apple Watch app, which allows users to both monitor and control the cooking on its WiFire compatible connected grills.

In the press announcement, Traeger said its Apple Watch app is the first of its kind in the industry. That may or may not be true, but regardless of its place in history, it’s easy to see the utility this type of app could bring to the grilling experience. Smoking a brisket or ribs takes long hours, and the freedom of controlling the grill from your wrist anywhere you are (even when you’re out, away from your home) would definitely come in handy.

Features of the new Traeger Apple Watch app include:

  • Real-time grill temperature monitoring and control even if you’re away from your house
  • Probe temperature setting and monitoring
  • A timer to notify cooks when to sauce, check or pull the food
  • Pellet-level monitoring, to know when to re-load the hopper
  • “Super Smoke Mode,” which lets users blast their food with 100 percent hardwood smoke between 165 and 225 degrees

The WiFire grills were already pretty convenient for rookie grillers like myself. With the connected phone app, I was able to make pretty great ribs and briskets without ever having done so before. This is totally a first-world problem, but moving that monitoring from the iPhone to the Apple Watch means that I don’t need to carry my phone around to check on my grilling.

Even though it may not feel like it for most of the country, spring is around the corner, which means that grilling season is not that far off. And backyard barbecues are definitely getting high-tech upgrades. Smart oven maker, June was recently acquired by Weber and its connected cooking OS has been integrated into a new line of Weber gas grills.

Even though our BBQ parties will probably still need to be socially distant this summer, with connected tech, being away from your grill won’t be a problem.



AgFunder: Record-breaking $31B Invested in Agrifood Tech in 2020

Ag tech VC firm, AgFunder, released its annual report on agrifood tech funding today. Companies in this sector raised $26 billion in 2020, a 15.5 percent increase over 2019. If that wasn’t enough, AgFunder actually expects that already record-breaking figure to bump up to $30.5 billion as more deals done in 2020 are revealed.

The AgFunder 2021 Agrifoodtech Investing Report breaks the agrifood tech sector into “upstream” companies, which are closer to the farm, and “downstream” companies, which are closer to the consumer. AgFunder said that for the first time on record, upstream companies outraised downstream companies in 2020. Those upstream companies pulled in $15.8 billion across 1,950 deals, while downstream companies raising $14.3 billion across 1,142 deals.

AgFunder also found that alt-protein/novel ingredient/functional food companies raised $2.3 billion across 26 deals, and that e-grocery was the most funded downstream category, raising $5.1 billion across 119 deals. AgFunder noted that the agrifood tech sector is maturing, with startups at both growth and late stage raising larger deals than ever before.

“This is no longer seen as a niche, experimental and risky sector, highlighted by the increase in the median size of growth stage and late stages deals,” Louisa Burwood-Taylor, head of media & research at AgFunder, said in today’s press announcement. “Investors piled in despite Covid; the first wave of innovators in each category are now mature and able to raise huge rounds with many household names such as Impossible Foods; and the second wave of innovators is now raising much larger rounds than the first wave did at the same stage.”

What’s interesting about that statement is that AgFunder positions this growth in agrifoodtech as being in spite of the pandemic. While the pandemic has inflicted enormous economic difficulties around the world, it also seems like there was increased investment because of the pandemic. Downstream technologies in particular benefited as restaurants and grocers all accelerated adoption of systems that reduced human-to-human interaction and helped meet the rising demand for e-commerce to get our food.

AgFunder’s report reinforces earlier data showing the increased investment in food tech in 2020. Pitchbook said that a little more than $12 billion was invested in food tech companies last year. There is probably some definitional and scope differences between the two reports, but the broader point stands. Food tech companies raised a ton of money last year, and with the pandemic still very much a part of our lives, the breakneck pace of investment will continue in 2021.

Driscoll’s is Using Consumer Physics Technology to Bring Sweeter Berries to Market

Driscoll’s announced last week that it will be using Consumer Physics‘ SCiO technology to improve the sweetness of the berries it sells.

Before we get into the technology, it’s good to understand how Driscoll’s works. As Brie Reiter Smith, Driscoll’s Director of Quality Systems Design, explained to me by phone this week, Driscoll’s has roughly 1,000 berry growers in its network. The quality of the berries it receives though, can very greatly — even from growers in the same region.

A decade or so ago, this disparity wasn’t a huge deal, but as Reiter Smith explained, that has changed. “Over the years, the breeding programs and supply chains have improved,” Reiter Smith said. “Consumers are more aware of how flavorful fruit can be.”

In other words, consumers know what they want, and they want sweeter berries. To incentivize growers to produce sweeter berries, Driscoll’s began analyzing berry sugar content, which is measured on the Brix scale. Traditionally, Driscoll’s had done this Brix measurement by hand by selecting sample berries, crushing them and using a refractomer to analyze the juice. But this process is time consuming and destructive. On the scale that Driscoll’s operates, that’s a lot of product that goes to testing instead of store shelves to be sold.

This is where Consumer Physics and its SCiO comes in. We covered the company before, back in 2017, when its handheld near infrared spectrometry scanner was being used by Cargill to measure dry matter in cattle forage, and then again in 2019 when it was used to measure moisture in cacao beans.

Since then, Consumer Physics has developed the larger SCiO Cup, which, in the case of Driscoll’s, allows an entire clamshell of strawberries to be scanned at one time. Berries are scanned using the near infrared spectrometry, a cloud-based system that analyzes the findings and provides the Brix measurement via mobile app. This automated bulk approach is faster because berries don’t need to be hand selected and crushed. Since the berries aren’t destroyed, they can be returned to be sold.

We’re seeing more of this type of high-tech, automated scanning enter the food supply chain. AgShift and Intello Labs both use computer vision and AI to assess the quality of food and establish fair market prices. AgShift’s bulk scanner, Hydra, was actually being used by Driscoll’s back in 2019.

Driscoll’s has a reward system for growers that produce higher-value berries. With the results of the Brix analysis, farmers can adjust their berry growing and harvesting to achieve that higher sugar content. That, in turn, means sweeter berries at your local store.

According to last week’s press announcement, Driscoll’s will start integrating SCiO measurement this month in the U.S. Mexico and Canada. By the end of the year, the company will rely exclusively on SCiO for Brix measurement in the roughly 2 million quality inspections it conducts annually in North America.

CellMEAT Raised $4.5M in Pre-Series A Round of Funding for its Cultured Meat Tech

South Korean cultured meat startup CellMEAT raised a $4.5 million Pre-Series A round of funding at the end of last month (hat tip to Green Queen). The round was led by Korea-based NAU IB Capital, with participation from BNK Venture Capital, DT & Investment, Ryu Kyung PSG Asset Management, JNU Holdings, Yonsei Technology Holdings, and U.S.-based Knollwood Investment Advisory, as well as existing investors Strong Ventures, Primer Sazze Partners, and Primer.

Founded in 2019, CellMEAT’s cultured meat technology involves an original cell culturing medium that acts as an alternative to the controversial fetal bovine serum. The company said that this round of funding will go towards continued research and development to bring production costs down and accelerate scaling to mass production. CellMEAT has R&D center in the cities of Gwangju at the Cheonnam National University and Seoul at Ewha Womans University’s Mokdong Hospital.

We are only two months in to 2021, and already investment in cultured meat startups is downright frothy. CellulaREvolution raised $1.37 million, BlueNalu raised $60 million, New Age Meats added another $2 million to its coffers, Vow Foods raised $6 million, Mirai Foods raised $2.4 million, and Future Meat raised $26.75 million.

There are still a number of hurdles before cultured meat can go mainstream, however. Chief among them, the price to create cultured meat needs to come way down. Mosa Meats, which just closed an $85 million Series B round this week, famously made a $325,000 cultured meat burger back in 2013. The price for Mosa’s meats has dropped 80x since then, thanks in large part to the elimination of fetal bovine serum in its process.

Thankfully, as you can see, there are a number of startups, including CellMEAT that are working on that issue.

Instacart and Walgreens Launching Same Day Delivery Nationwide

Drug store chain Walgreens announced today that it is partnering with Instacart to roll out same-day delivery service across the U.S.

According to the announcement, tens of thousands of Walgreen’s items are now available for delivery via Instacart across Illinois, with the program set to expand nationwide to roughly 8,000 stores over the coming weeks. Instacart will deliver groceries, over-the-counter medications, health and wellness products, household essentials, convenience products and more in as little as one hour.

After the partnership launch in Illinois, Instacart delivery will expand to markets such as Southeast Florida, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington D.C., New York City and more. The delivery partnership will be across all 50 states throughout the spring.

This isn’t the first delivery partnership for Walgreens. Last year the drug store company partnered with DoorDash for delivery in select U.S. cities and expanded its partnership with Postmates nationwide. Both of those announcements came during or shortly after the first major wave of the COVID-19 pandemic here in the U.S. Around that time, with people in various states of lockdown and social distance across the country, grocery e-commerce skyrocketed.

Buying food online has remained sticky with consumers in the U.S. throughout the different waves of the pandemic. The most recent market survey from Brick Meets Click showed that in January 2021, 70 million U.S. households placed an average of 2.8 grocery orders online for pickup, delivery and ship-to-home orders.

Consumers have now spent just about a year under the thumb of the pandemic and new habits have definitely formed around how we get our food and other goods. Delivery is no longer a nice to have, it’s table stakes for any household good-related retailer.