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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chris Albrecht

Starship’s Delivery Robots Roll Out to Four More College Campuses

It’s back-to-school season here in the U.S, and for an increasing number of students, that means getting back to robot food delivery on campus. Along those lines, Starship announced today that it is growing its roster of college campus clients with the addition of robot delivery at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), University of Kentucky (UK), University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach, FL campus.

Starship makes cooler-sized robots that autonomously scurry along sidewalks to bring food and other goods to people. Customers order through the Starship mobile app (depending on location can use credit/debit card or student meal plan), and can watch the robot on a map as it makes its journey. Once it arrives, customers unlock the cargo compartment using the Starship app.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, robot delivery service has already kicked off at UNR and Embry-Riddle. The University of Kentucky will get its robots next week and UIC’s program will start this fall. Starship provided the following breakdown of its added robot delivery:

  • UIC: 25 robots, with 11 merchants including Starbucks, Panda Express and Freshii
  • UK: 20 robots, starting with 7 merchants including Starbucks, Subway and Auntie Anne’s
  • UNR: 20 robots, with 14 merchants including Panera Bread, Habit Burger and Baja Fresh
  • Embry-Riddle: 20 robots, with 10 merchants including Starbucks, QDOBA, Flight Cafe and Legacy Walk Wings Food Truck

We’ve been chronicling the rise of Starship’s college delivery program since the company kicked it off at George Mason University back in January of 2019. Starship now serves nearly 20 different campuses in 15 states.

Starship is not the only robot delivery service hitting colleges however. Last year, Kiwibot, which makes its own cooler-sized rovers, partnered with Sodexo to bring robot food delivery to the University of Denver campus. While both companies use robots, there is a difference in the user experience for each service. Kiwibot integrates with the Sodexo food ordering app, while Starship requires users to download its own mobile app.

Starship weathered the pandemic last year despite forced closures of colleges and universities across the country. Having lived through that experience, I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more colleges adopt robot-powered delivery this school because of its contactless nature.

Make Beats at the Breakfast Table with Reese’s Puffs AR Cereal Box Drum Machine

After seeing Mark Ronson’s “Watch the Sound” series on music, my 10-year-old son is now very into drum machines and beats. And while he would love a vintage Roland TR 808 to kick off his burgeoning music career, I think instead I’ll get him a box of Reese’s Puffs cereal.

Not that I think a bowl of Reese’s Puffs is the breakfast of champions, but a new promotional box for the cereal out now features an augmented reality drum machine on the back. I received a press release about the new cereal box beatmaker this morning. Usually when I get these types of emails, I immediately toss them. But as I looked at the information, it actually seemed like a pretty cool use of technology, so I went out and bought a box this morning (with apologies to my wife, who does not yet know there is a giant box of sugar cereal jammed into our pantry).

Here’s how it works. On the back of the box is a diagram of the RP-FX drum pad. You scan a special QR code with your mobile phone and it takes you to a special Reese’s web app that accesses your phone’s camera. Place cereal puffs wherever you like on the drum pad spaces and then hover your camera phone over the box. Using AR, the app “reads” where you placed your puffs and generates a beat accordingly. Move the puffs around and the beat changes.

It’s definitely not high fidelity or Pro Tools quality production, but it actually works surprisingly well. Once you have your beat just as you like, you can use the app to record it, so you can share it with friends or use it as the basis of your next club banger.

You can hear the one I whipped up this morning here (or, you know, wait a few months and it’ll be all over the radio).

As noted earlier, I typically shy away from covering promotional stunts like this. But as a parent and a fan of both music and technology, this promotion is actually worth, well, promoting. Besides, using a cereal box to build your own beat sure beats digging for a cheap plastic toy at the bottom of one.

Tortoise Delivery Robots Rolling Into Dallas via Vroom Delivery

Tortoise‘s sidewalk delivery robots are making their way to Dallas, Texas, thanks to a new pilot program with Vroom Delivery and Urban Value Corner Store announced today. Launching in the coming months, the new service will use Tortoise’s teleoperated robots to deliver goods like milk and eggs, as well as snacks and alcohol.

Tortoise is different other players in the robot delivery space like Starship and Kiwibot. Tortoise’s robot is much bigger than those cooler-sized robots and able to carry 100 pounds of goods. Tortoise’s robots are also fully driven by remote human operators, as the company chose to forego the autonomous driving option in order to sidestep local regulatory issues around self-driving vehicles to get to market faster.

Another benefit of having human operators could be when it comes to robotic beer and alcohol delivery. Tortoise’s hefty robots are actually perfect for carrying beverages like cases of beer typically purchased at a convenience store. As Tortoise Co-Founder and President Dmitry Shevelenko explained to me by phone this morning, while details and regulations still need to be worked out, there is a scenario in which the human operator of the Tortoise robot could assist in providing ID verification on age restricted purchases.

Contactless delivery from robots like Tortoise could find increased interest as the COVID-19 Delta variants keep the pandemic top of mind here in the U.S. Though online grocery shopping, which requires curbside pickup or delivery, has come down from its record highs during the summer of last year, it is still much higher than pre-pandemic levels. Experts from Brick Meets Click anticipate that many consumers will stick with their new grocery e-commerce habits.

This deal with Vroom and Urban Value marks another publicly announced delivery deal this year for Tortoise. In March of this year, Albertsons said it would use Tortoise robots for grocery delivery at two Northern California Safeway locations.

According to the press announcement, Urban Value will launch its first Tortoise delivery location from its downtown Dallas location. Customers can use Vroom’s e-commerce platform to place their order for robot delivery from Urban Value. Vroom said that it is making Tortoise deliveries available to other convenience stores across the country.

Let’s Unpack the Possible DoorDash + Gorillas Deal

Last week the Financial Times reported that third-party delivery giant DoorDash was in talks to buy a stake in German speedy grocery delivery startup Gorillas. While there weren’t a ton of details, such as how big any such stake would be, a follow-up story from Axios said the deal could give DoorDash the option to acquire a controlling interest in Gorillas eventually.

This could actually be a good deal for DoorDash for a number of reasons.

The sudden rise of speedy grocery delivery has been one of the big food tech stories of 2021. These fast delivery services operate a network of smaller dark stores that carry a small inventory and deliver goods to a limited radius in as short a time span as 10 minutes.

Europe in particular has been a hotbed of activity in the speedy delivery space, with startups such as Getir, Glovo and Gorillas each raising hundreds of millions of dollars a piece to expand their operations. Here in the U.S., speedy delivery is currently centered in New York City where Fridge No More, 1520, JOKR and Buyk operate, though we are seeing services like Food Rocket in San Francisco.

In terms of fundraising, Gopuff has left players on both sides of the pond in the dust, having raised $2.5 billion in just this past six months and $3.4 billion in total. Gopuff is a little different from other players in that it does not promise super fast delivery, opting instead for the comparatively sluggish half-hour delivery times (though the service delivers around the clock). But it’s enough of a comp to be included among the new wave of startups shaking up grocery delivery.

Gopuff’s now-sizable warchest has probably spurred DoorDash to get moving on speedy delivery. DoorDash has been steadily moving beyond just restaurant delivery and into the convenience store and grocery categories, and last year DoorDash launched DashMart, the company’s own chain of delivery-only c-stores. But Gopuff is aggressively expanding its operations across the U.S. and now operates 450 delivery facilities in 850 U.S. cities. Additionally, Gopuff is starting to encroach on DoorDash’s core restaurant turf with the addition of Gopuff ghost kitchens that offer hot meals like pizza, pasta and more for delivery. In other words, DoorDash can probably feel Gopuff nipping at its heels.

This brings us back to Gorillas. The Financial Times speculated that DoorDash investing in Gorillas was a play for European expansion. But there seems to be plenty of value right here in the U.S. Though it’s based in Germany, Gorillas expanded into the U.S. with its launch in New York City in May of this year. Since then, it’s been the first speedy delivery service to set up operations on both coasts as it hires out teams in San Francisco and Los Angeles. (It’s also moving into Chicago.)

An investment and potential controlling stake in Gorillas does a few things for DoorDash. First, there is probably some FOMO for DoorDash. While speedy grocery delivery services are new, they have the potential to upend the way we shop for groceries, as they turns the act of grocery shopping into something more like a utility — always there when you need it. Ten-minute delivery could become the new standard, and DoorDash doesn’t want to miss out.

But this is what makes the reported two-step investment structure of the Gorillas investment interesting. DoorDash, which is flush with its own IPO cash, can pony up some money right now and learn from Gorillas as it scales up both here and abroad. Speedy delivery startups have yet to prove if they can economically scale, and right now, they need to be in areas that are densely populated to make money. There’s still a good chance that Gorillas and the like could become the next Kozmo.com. If speedy delivery catches on, then DoorDash can swoop in, gobble up the rest of Gorillas and re-brand the entire operation as DoorDash. If Gorillas flames out, well, that’s a bummer, but DoorDash still has all of its other delivery businesses.

A smaller side story to watch with all this is whether any DoorDash investment in Gorillas would also translate into Gorillas getting Chowbotics food robots. DoorDash acquired Chowbotics earlier this year and is reportedly using the robots to create ready-to-eat salads and microwaveable meals for its DashMart stores. As I wrote last week, food robots could be a killer app for speedy grocery delivery because they create customized meals in a very small footprint.

Should DoorDash invest in Gorillas and wind up with a controlling stake, such a union would set up a bit of an existential question for DoorDash. For good and ill, DoorDash was built on the backs of contract labor. Part of the pitch from Gorillas and other speedy delivery services is that their delivery drivers are employees that receive a salary and benefits. Speedy grocers have explained to me over the past few months that having their own drivers means they can ensure faster delivery. Speedy delivery services know how many people to staff, when they are out on deliveries, when they will return, etc. DoorDash, on the other hand, has to send out delivery jobs to a network of contractors each time to find a delivery person. If speedy delivery is a game of minutes, then every second counts.

The Financial Times said that the deal is being finalized and could close at the end of this month. If the deal goes through, DoorDash could quickly become an 800 lbs gorilla in the speedy delivery space.

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More Headlines

John Deere Acquires Bear Flag Robotics for $250M – The autonomous tractor tech startup had only raised roughly $12 million.

DoorDash Users Can Now Add C-Store Items to Their Restaurant Orders – DoubleDash is currently available for 7-Eleven, Walgreens, Wawa, QuickChek, and The Ice Cream Shop. It is also available for orders placed at DoorDash’s DashMart.

JOKR and Too Good To Go Team Up to Help Eliminate Food Waste with Mystery Boxes – The so-called “Surprise” bags each feature $15 worth of groceries for $5.

Q&A: Tools for the Data-Driven Restaurant, According to Sevenrooms Founder Allison Page – Before her appearance at our upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit, Page gave us some high-level thoughts around the future of the data-driven restaurant. Grab a ticket to the show here.

Javits Center Opens Up Cashierless Cafe Powered by Amazon Tech

There’s a new cashierless checkout cafe opening at the Javits Center convention center in New York this weekend, and it’s going to be powered by Amazon’s Just Walk out technology.

According to press materials sent to The Spoon, the new Fresh and Fast cafe lets users swipe their credit card to gain entry, upon which they can grab the pre-packaged items they want and leave. There’s no need to checkout and the bill is automatically charged to their card.

More important than the actual opening of the cashierless store is the fact that Amazon is powering it. Amazon kicked off the whole cashierless store movement with the launch of its Amazon Go stores back in 2018. Since then, a number of startups such as Grabango, Trigo, Zippin and AiFi have sprung up to offer their own cashierless checkout services. This year in particular has seen a lot of activity in the cashierless checkout space with funding pouring in from investors and new cashierless stores opening.

But as all these companies duke it out with each other to win contracts to retrofit retailers’ stores, the looming threat in the background is Amazon licensing out its own cashierless solution. The opening of Fresh and Fast at Javits follows Hudson News opening up an Amazon-powered cashierless store at the Dallas Love Field Airport in March of this year. Much like IBM was to the business PC back in the 80s, could Amazon do the same with its cashierless checkout tech today? Will “you don’t get fired for buying IBM,” become “you don’t get fired for licensing Amazon’s cashierless checkout?”

The analogy is a little different because with its massive online business, Amazon takes revenue away from brick-and-mortar retailers. So real world store brands may not want to give Amazon more money by licensing its technology. But at the same time, Amazon’s technology has proven itself in public longer than its competitors. The sheer size and staying power of Amazon could actually be an incentive for retailers to pick Amazon’s cashierless checkout technology over younger startups. Retailers know Amazon’s technology works and that the company isn’t going to disappear overnight.

For those in NYC that want to check out Fresh and Fast, it’s located on the north concourse of the Javits Center.

JOKR and Too Good To Go Team Up to Help Eliminate Food Waste with Mystery Boxes

When it comes to fighting food waste, every little bit helps. So while the new partnership between speedy delivery grocery service JOKR and food rescue app Too Good To Go may only impact a small geographic area, it will perhaps inspire others to make a big impact.

JOKR, which launched in New York City this past May, operates a network of small, dark grocery stores that promise to deliver your food in just 15 minutes. The Too Good To Go app is an online marketplace that connects consumers with surplus food from restaurants, bakeries, cafes and grocery stores to prevent it from being thrown out.

Together, the two companies have teamed up to create “surprise JOKR bags.” These mystery bags feature food, groceries and pantry items that were about to go to waste at JOKR’s store hubs. According to press materials sent to The Spoon, the JOKR bags have a retail value of $15 but will sell for just $5. Surprise JOKR bags are available through the Too Good To Go app, and can be picked up (not delivered) at participating JOKR hubs. Since the partnership went live on July 14, JOKR and Too Good To Go have already saved more than 100 bags of food.

Though the partnership is limited right now, it’s another example of how speedy grocery delivery services are looking to differentiate themselves from one another. New York City in particular is getting packed with speedy grocery delivery as JOKR, Gorillas, Fridge No More, 1520 and soon Buyk all operate there.

If 15-minute grocery delivery becomes a commodity, these services will need to figure out a way to stand apart without just engaging in a race to the lowest prices (the overall economics of speedy delivery still need to be borne out). Some speedy grocers like Food Rocket and 1520 are adding ready-to-eat meals and ghost kitchens to their services in order to stand out. JOKR being able to tout food waste reduction with a little bit of fun (surprise!) and a cheap price could help hook its service with potential customers.

Right now the JOKR and Too Good Too Go surprise bags are only available in Williamsburg and Long Island City in New York, with plans to expand to other NYC locations soon.

John Deere Acquires Bear Flag Robotics for $250M

John Deere announced today that it is acquiring autonomous tractor driving technology startup Bear Flag Robotics for $250 million. According to the press announcement, “The deal accelerates the development and delivery of automation and autonomy on the farm and supports John Deere’s long-term strategy to create smarter machines with advanced technology to support individual customer needs.”

Bear Flag’s technology turns tractors into self-driving vehicles, allowing them to autonomously complete tasks such as spraying, mowing, discing and rippling. The fact that Bear Flag sold for that much is pretty impressive, considering the company had only raised a total $12.5 million.

But the big price tag is a reflection of the growing importance of automation in agriculture, which is in the midst of severe labor shortages that are getting worse. In addition to being short staffed, farm work is hard work that can involve heavy lifting in extreme heat for long hours, or managing fields in inclement weather. Automation like that from Bear Flag Robotics can run in adverse conditions without needing to take a break or run the risk of getting injured. Additionally, automation and robots can bring about more data and precision to agricultural processes, reducing the amount of herbicides and pesticides used, as well as optimizing fertilizer and water usage.

As is always the case in a market sector when a big acquisition happens, industry watchers will start to guess who the next acquisition target will be. There are actually a number of ag tech robotics startups that could be, well, ripe for picking. Augean Robotics and Future Acres both make autonomous vehicle platforms for farms that are meant to haul crops and gear around. Farmwise makes an autonomous weeding robot. And Small Robot Company makes a trio of autonomous robots to map and zap weeds.

It’s also worth noting that this is not John Deere’s first trip to the farm robot rodeo. In 2017 the company bought Blue River Technology, which made the LettuceBot robot for $305 million.

If you want to learn more about agricultural automation, check out the video from the “Crops and Robots: How Automation is Changing Agriculture” panel we held at our ArticulATE food robotics conference in May that featured Aubrey Donnellan, Founder and COO of Bear Flag Robotics (Spoon Plus subscription required).

Yelp Now Lets Restaurants List Vaccine Requirements (and Ward Off Backlash)

There is probably nothing more 2021 than Yelp announcing today a new feature that allows businesses to list their vaccine status and requirements. It is also very 2021 that in the same announcement, Yelp felt the need to reaffirm internal processes to help mitigate any online backlash listing these requirements might incur.

In a corporate blog post, Yelp wrote:

To help consumers understand how a business is currently operating as pandemic guidelines continue to evolve, today, Yelp is announcing two new, free attributes – “Proof of vaccination required” and “All staff fully vaccinated.” Users will be able to filter by these attributes when searching for local businesses on Yelp and will easily see “Proof of vaccination required” indicated on restaurant, food and nightlife businesses in search results.

These vaccine attributes adds to Yelp’s existing COVID-related labels allowing businesses to list their mask requirements.

While the vaccine rollout this past spring helped people in the U.S. regain some sense of normalcy, the Delta variant surge has rekindled health and safety concerns and resurfaced questions around the safety of eating inside at restaurants. As such, allowing businesses to detail their vaccine requirements on Yelp seems like a really helpful idea because it sets expectations and eliminates any confusion when selecting a restaurant.

However, in these times, detailing information about vaccine protocols is not an anodyne statement. As such, in that same corporate blog post, Yelp reaffirmed the measures it is taking to minimize online backlash against a restaurant as it relates to promoting their COVID protocols, writing:

For businesses that activate “Proof of vaccination required” and “All staff fully vaccinated” on their Yelp page, we are putting protective measures in place to proactively safeguard them from reviews that primarily criticize the COVID health and safety measures they enforce.

Yelp implemented similar content monitoring features when it launched business attributes highlighting Black, Latinx, Asian and LGBTQ-owned businesses.

Yelp said that since January of this year, it has removed nearly 4,500 reviews for violating content policies as it relates to businesses’ COVID precautions.

Plant-based Cheesemaker Miyoko’s Creamery Raises $52M Series C

Miyoko’s Creamery, which makes plant-based cheese and butter, announced today that it has raised $52 million in Series C funding. PowerPlant Partners led the round, putting in $40 million, with participation from Cult Capital, Obvious Ventures, Stray Dog and CPT Capital.

Miyoko’s makes a range of vegan dairy products including cultured butter, mozzarella, cheese slices, artisanal cheese wheels and cheese spreads made from fermented plant-milks. The company’s products are currently available in 30,000 stores across the U.S., Canada, South Africa, Hong Kong and Singapore. With its new funding, Miyoko’s said it will advance both its distribution and product innovation to get “higher nutrient density, performance and flavor.”

According to the Good Food Institute (GFI), the plant-based butter category grew 36 percent from 2019 to 2020 and the category is now worth $275 million in the U.S. GFI data also shows the market for plant-based cheese is even greater with sales of those products growing 42 percent from 2019 to 2020 to make that category worth $270 million.

And where there are growing sales, there are also startups creating products to sell. Miyoko’s is among a rising co-hort of companies offering new and improved plant-based cheeses. Nobell Foods just came out of stealth mode a couple weeks back and announced it has raised $75 million. Stockeld Dreamery launched its first feta-like plant-based cheese in Sweden in May. And Grounded Foods‘ vegan cheese sauce and spread is available for purchase as well.

In its funding announcement today, Miyoko’s said that this year it will launch a liquid pizza mozzarella that pours out like sauce and bakes up into stretchy cheese. The company is also working on a reformulation of its Medium Cheddar and Pepper Jack cheeses.

Spoon founder Mike Wolf sat down with Miyoko’s Creamery Founder, Miyoko Schinner a few months back to talk about her fascinating backstory, which includes run-ins with both the Japanese mafia and a legal battle with the state of California.

Danone Expands Brightseed Partnership to Uncover Hidden Healthy Compounds in Plants

Danone and Brightseed announced an expanded partnership today that will have the food and beverage giant using Brightseed’s Forager artificial intelligence platform to uncover more phytonutrients from additional plant-based ingredients.

Brightseed’s technology studies plants on a molecular level to identify and catalog previously unknown compounds that could have health benefits. For example, earlier this year Brightseed announced that it had discovered in pre-clinical trials that the bioactive compounds N-trans caffeoyltyramine (NTC) and N-trans-feruloyltyramine (NTF) found in black pepper can help with the clearance of fat accumulated in the liver. After these initial findings through Brightseed’s AI, the company will move forwards to confirm the results through clinical trials to determine efficacy as well as other factors such as dosage and administering the compounds.

Danone first teamed up with Brightseed in June of last year to study potential new benefits of soy. (Danone owns the Silk brand.) According to today’s press announcement sent to The Spoon, Brightseed’s Forager discovered 10 times more bioactives than previously known and 7 new health areas. As these findings are confirmed by more clinical data, brands like Danone benefit because they can tout additional health benefits around their products, but consumers benefit because there are then more plant-based tools to fight different ailments.

What’s interesting about companies in the AI space like Brightseed, Spoonshot, and Journey Foods is how they are shortening the discovery period for food companies looking to create new products. Before machine learning and artificial intelligence, food manufacturers had to first hypothesize about how particular ingredients might work together, or the health benefits of an ingredient. After that guess, they would run physical tests in a lab to see if they were remotely close in their hypothesis. If they were wrong, they’d have to start all over again from scratch. AI helps shrink that time by doing a lot of that guesswork up front quickly in a computer before any lab time is needed.

The whole space is very new, but Danone expanding on its partnership with Brightseed is a vote of confidence for the technology and should lead to more brands jumping into the use of AI and computational biology.

Hosted Kitchens Raises €1.25M Seed Round for its Ghost Kitchen Network

Hosted Kitchens, an Ireland-based network of ghost kitchens, announced today that it has raised a €1.25 million (~$1.48M USD) Seed round of funding. In a message sent to The Spoon, Hosted Kitchens CEO Sean Murray said the round was funded by Irish private investors.

As its name suggests, Hosted Kitchens builds out multi-kitchen properties and software for other restaurants to rent to fulfill online orders. The company places its facilities in high-volume locations. Its software can process orders from multiple third-party delivery services such as Just Eat and Deliveroo.

Hosted Kitchens’ fundraise comes as the ghost kitchen space has been evolving over the past year as what a ghost kitchen is and where it’s located continues to change. For instance, third-party delivery service DoorDash expanded its own ghost kitchen program in California last week. We’re also seeing the new wave of speedy grocery delivery services like Gopuff and Food Rocket launch their own ghost kitchen programs, blurring the line between food retail and restaurant. We’ve also seen QSRs get into the ghost kitchen game with Burger King launching its own ghost kitchen in the UK. And ghost kitchens are starting to pop-up in new settings, such as C3’s move to bring ghost kitchens into residential buildings.

For it’s part, Hosted Kitchens says it will use its new funding to continue rolling out to new locations in Ireland and expand into the U.K. The company will also continue to hire out, growing its team from 4 to 20 over the next year.

Mashgin’s Cashierless Checkout Tech now in Use at Nearly 500 Locations

Mashgin, which makes a cashierless checkout kiosk, announced today that its technology is now in use in nearly 500 locations worldwide and that it has processed roughly $100 million in sales transactions.

Unlike other players in the cashierless checkout space that are relying on in-store camera installations or smart shopping carts, Mashgin’s solution uses a countertop device that can sit anywhere in a store. Shoppers place items on the device where cameras and computer vision identify all of the products and tally up the bill. Up until now, Mashgin accepted credit cards for payment, but the company also announced today an integration with Glory to enable contactless acceptance of cash payments as well.

I spoke with Jack Hogan, Vice President of Partnerships at Mashgin by video chat this week. He said the sweet spot for Mashgin’s technology is in places like sports stadiums and convenience stores — locations where people are grabbing 1 – 10 items and want to get in and out of the store quickly.

In addition to identifying consumer packaged goods, Mashgin’s technology also identifies plated foods in settings like cafeterias. Users place there tray of food on the Mashgin device and the cameras can identify everything on the plate and charge accordingly.

How does Mashgin touchless self-checkout change the checkout experience at Delek?

Cashierless checkout has been one of the big news stories of 2021, as the pandemic accelerated retailer’s plans for more contactless shopping experiences. Throughout the year we’ve seen a number of cashierless checkout store launches with startups around the world including Zippin, AiFi, Imagr, and Trigo.

Hogan said that even though the pandemic has pushed retailers into more human-free checkout solutions, that’s not the biggest concern from partners. “The number one thing people have said is speed,” Hogan said, “Get in and out as soon as possible.” With cashierless checkout, retailers are able to kill two birds with one stone, providing line-free speed with a contactless experience. Mashgin said that deployments of its checkout kiosks grew more than 100 percent in 2021 and can now be found in convenience stores, airports and sporting arenas such as Mile High Stadium and Madison Square Garden.

Though the cashierless checkout space is crowded, Mashgin’s most direct competitor at this point is Caper. In addition to making smart shopping carts, Caper debuted its own computer vision-powered countertop kiosk last year. The small footprint of devices like Caper’s and Mashgin’s could prove attractive to c-stores and other locations where consumers aren’t buying a lot of stuff and want to get in and out of the store quickly. A countertop device doesn’t require retrofitting a store with cameras or buying new shopping carts, and can be set up with easily at a checkout stand.

It’s not hard to imagine that as part of the growth of cashierless checkout over the coming years, we’ll be seeing more players offer a similar type of kiosk as well.