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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Delivery & Commerce

Pipedream Launches First Underground Delivery Network in Atlanta

Forget drone delivery. The cool kids are taking it underground.

That’s at least the vision of Pipedream, a startup building a system to enable delivery through underground pipes. The company, which is based in Austin Texas, has announced the launch of its first underground delivery network in partnership with Peachtree Corners, a smart city development in the broader Metro Atlanta region.

The new system in Peachtree Corners stretches nearly a mile, linking the development’s shopping center to Curiosity Lab’s 25,000-square-foot innovation hub. The Curiosity Hub is part office park, part event center, and now the employees who work there can order food and select (read smaller) items from local restaurants and stores and have them delivered via Pipedream’s underground delivery robots via the tube network.

With the announcement, Pipeline has released a video showcasing its first deployed delivery network, and it’s pretty cool to watch. As you can see below, the system basically looks like a small underground train network where robots pull the payloads through the pipes to their end destination.

First Ever Underground Delivery

Spoon readers will remember that we’ve covered Pipeline in the past, most recently after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was spotted checking out a demo of Pipeline. At the time, Pipeline CEO mentioned that the company was targeting master-planned communities and was showing off an early system in the Atlanta area. Now, just six months later, their system has been launched in the Atlanta suburbs.

With the launch of the system, this looks to be what may be a first in terms of an actual automation-powered pipe delivery network, and now that it’s launched, it will be interesting to see if other master-planned communities embrace the idea. For its part, Pipeline is also working with brands to build out pilots for its underground delivery where it makes sense, such as with Wendy’s as a way to deliver food to drive-up customers.

Is IdeaLab’s Bill Gross Building a Food Prep and Delivery Robot?

Every now and then, an interesting patent appears in patent searches that make you wonder exactly what someone’s up to. Now, don’t get me wrong. Patents are issued all the time, and most of the time, a real product or business isn’t created. But when it comes to someone like IdeaLab‘s Bill Gross – an inventor known for creating dozens of products and companies – you have to wonder what he’s got up his sleeve.

First, let’s look at the patent. Granted B1 status yesterday, the patent, US 11738466 B1, is titled “Robot For Preparing And Delivering Food Items” The patent description goes on to describe just that:

The automated food preparation and delivery robot comprises a communications system configured to receive a food order and address from a customer, a navigation system configured to automatically drive the vehicle to the address, and an automated food preparation system configured to prepare food in accordance with the food order while en route to the customer address.

The automated food preparation system is configured to determine a drive time to travel to the customer address, and determine a preparation time to prepare the food in accordance with the food order. If the drive time is greater than the preparation time, the robot waits and then begins preparing the food after a delay substantially equal to the drive time minus the preparation time. In this manner, preparation of the food coincides with arrival at the customer address.

We’ve seen lots of crazy ideas that tie together mobility and cooking, but this is the first one that I’ve seen that is a fully autonomous robotic vehicle and food prep all in one:

The invention in the preferred embodiment is an automated food preparation and delivery robot configured to prepare food orders while en route to a customer address, without the aid of a person on the vehicle. The automated food preparation and delivery robot comprises: a vehicle, a communications system configured to receive a food order and address from a customer, a navigation system configured to automatically drive the vehicle to the address; and an automated food preparation system configured to prepare the food in accordance with the food order while en route to the customer address and dispense the food upon arrival.

Here’s a figure from the patent that outlines the sequence of processing a food order:

Definitely ambitious and kinda crazy, especially considering past venture-funded ideas that combines food, automation and mobility haven’t exactly been successful at this point.

On the other hand, this is Bill Gross, a well-known inventor and successful entrepreneur. And since Gross, who runs one of the longest-running Silicon Valley technology incubators around, is listed as the sole inventor on the patent, my guess is this is an idea he’s at least somewhat invested in.

Still, it’s yet to be seen whether or not he’s planning on productizing the concept. Like I said, most patented ideas remain just that, ideas. But given Gross’s history of both founding successful companies and a deep interest in robotics – he was a co-founder of Evolution Robotics, a maker of cleaning robots acquired in 2012 by iRobot – it’s worth keeping an eye on.

I’ve reached out to Gross for comment, and I’ll let you know what I hear.

Is Jeff Bezos Eyeing The Buildout of an Underground Delivery Network?

Today, Wendy’s announced they will trial an underground delivery system later this year in partnership with Pipedream Labs. According to the announcement, the system will deliver orders to customers via a carside pick-up portal using “autonomous robots” that traverse an underground pipe system.

Spoon readers might remember Pipedream Labs as the company with big plans to build an underground delivery network of pipes around cities to shuttle food or other items all the way to the home. The company is working with Wendy’s and other restaurants in the near term – you gotta pay the bills after all – but still has hopes to build the bigger vision of a citywide underground delivery network.

In fact, in a recent Twitter thread, Pipedream CTO Canon Reeves said the company is now courting master-planned community builders with a system that would deliver into the home.

According to Reeves, the Home Portal system would look something like this:

Pipedream Labs Home Portal. Photo: Canon Reeves

And the delivery robots look like this:

Pipedream Delivery Robot. Image Credit: Canon Reeves

Building these systems into new master-planned communities makes lots of sense for a couple of reasons, the first of which is retrofitting existing homes for underground to in-home delivery would be extremely hard and very expensive. Master-planned communities present greenfield build opportunities for concepts like this, where customers can be presented with the option as a feature in a new home, and the cost of the home system can be rolled into a mortgage. Home builders can also build out the delivery infrastructure as they lay down other infrastructure, either going underground or along the community right-of-way areas (as they did in Atlanta in a public right-of-way).

But even if the company just focuses on new build opportunities, the idea is still a little far-fetched, the kind of far-fetched where you almost need a utopia-curious billionaire who invests in crazy ideas to get behind something like this.

Someone like, I don’t know, Jeff Bezos:

Jeff Bezos watching a demo of Pipedream Labs Home Portal. Image Credit: Canon Reeves

According to Reeves, Bezos stopped by last month to check out the home delivery prototype. And while Reeves didn’t say anything beyond that – like Bezos is interested in investing in the system – one could speculate that the guy who founded the biggest online ordering marketplace in the US might just be curious about what a future with an underground delivery network might look like.

Could he be there on behalf of Amazon? Maybe. It’s not like Amazon doesn’t invest in delivery infrastructure, and, in fact, the company invested around $40 billion from 2014-2020 and continues to do so. And, let’s not forget, Amazon itself has explored the idea of underground delivery before and was granted a patent for the idea in 2017.

And even if this isn’t an Amazon thing, but a billionaire-investor-Jeff-Bezos-thing, Bezos has shown a penchant for investing in big ideas like space flight, and if Elon can build underground tunnels for shuttling people around in Teslas, Bezos would be entirely in his right to think sending items around underground in pipes might have a future.

Walmart Gains Share in Online Grocery as Shoppers Look for Ways to Combat Inflation

While online grocery shopping continued to grow last year, where people shopped shifted significantly according to a new report from grocery researcher Brick Meets Click.

The new report, which details the egrocery performance for different retail formats, said Walmart was the big winner in 2022 as more and more customers looked for ways to save a buck. According to the report, which broke down the four major formats as supermarkets, Walmart, Target, and Hard Discount (i.e. Aldi and Lidl), Walmart saw its share of online grocery shoppers grow in both low-income and high-income households.

According to Brick Meets Click, households making less than $50 thousand per year were 25% more likely to shop at Walmart than a supermarket, and Walmart’s total share of online grocery in this household category grew by 2.1% vs. a contraction of 1.5% for supermarket’s share. On the high end of the spectrum, Walmart gained ground in households making over $200 thousand annually, expanding its reach into this segment by 2.1%. In contrast, supermarkets saw their reach shrink by 1.2% in 2022 vs. the previous year.

The reason for the shift towards Walmart for both segments was persistent inflation. Lower-income households were driven by what the researcher terms “flight to value,” where they buy products priced via an “everyday low price” pricing model employed at Walmart and hard discounters such as Aldi. And while high-end income households are three times more likely to shop online at a supermarket, the format lost share to Walmart in 2022 as upper-income earners also looked for ways to save on groceries.

As for Target, the retailer also saw its share of high-income households expand in 2022, which also contributed slightly to the decline of overall online share for the supermarket segment. In addition, the Minnesota-based retailer also continued to attract younger shoppers relative to the supermarket segment, as young households (18-29 years old) are 36% more likely to shop online at Target vs. a supermarket.

The report does not detail where Amazon fits in all of this. According to The Street, Amazon’s total share of physical store grocery spend was about 2% of total grocery sales at about $17.5 billion in 2021. That compares with Target’s $20.3 billion in food and beverage sales in the same year.

As for how households are getting their groceries, over half of the monthly active online shoppers (52.2%) picked up groceries via curbside or in-store pickup in March of this year, according to a separate report by the researcher. Ship to home, which usually means dry goods and shelf-stable products, dropped from 47.5% of monthly online grocery shoppers in March 2022 to 40.9% in March 2023, while grocery delivery (which usually includes fresh produce, dairy, and meat) grew from 40.8% in March of last year to 41.5% this March.

Despite the growth of the online grocery category, the researcher says that in-store is still the dominant form of grocery shopping. In a report released earlier this year, the total share of online grocery shopping accounted for just over a tenth (11.2%) of all grocery spending at the end of last year and is expected to grow to 13.6% by the end of 2027.

2023 Restaurant Tech EcoSystem: Nourishing the Bottom Line

In collaboration between TechTable and Vita Vera Ventures, we are pleased to share an updated 2023 Restaurant Tech Ecosystem map.

We all saw that the pandemic brought a wave of experimentation in the restaurant tech space, but we also know that tech-driven change is not always linear. 

In early 2022, we made bold predictions about the restaurant tech environment in 2023, as we anticipated numerous acquihires ahead (acquisitions primarily driven by tech talent vs strategic tech value). This was due to the tight tech labor market (at the time) and the increasingly challenging funding and interest rate conditions. 

However, with the recent wave of macro tech layoffs, the tech labor market is no longer tight, and we believe more restaurant tech companies may be forced to shut down rather than finding a soft landing through acquisition. We’ve already seen a strong reset on requirements for capital efficiency and valuations of startups in the sector. This macro shift may create potential for rollup opportunities, but many early-stage assets across the sector are overfunded single-point solutions and still subscale.

This is ironic as the need for tech-driven solutions has never been stronger, but companies without the right growth metrics will likely struggle to survive. The inflationary environment is also forcing harder decisions for operators, which may further dampen their willingness to engage with new solutions.

With that in mind, we are pleased to share our 2023 Restaurant Tech Ecosystem, which serves as a current heat map of the broader ecosystem within the US (and is clearly not exhaustive). 

Click here to enlarge/download image of map. Click here for downloadable PDF.

The Journey from Point Solutions to Comprehensive Tech Stacks

While single-point solutions for things like online ordering, loyalty programs, and delivery were popular during the pandemic, we have reached a moment now with perhaps too many point solutions in the market. 

Tech stacks that require too many logins are now in fact creating a cognitive burden for employees, rather than the intended promise of efficiency and ease of use. As a result, operators are beginning to seek integrated systems and smaller tech stacks that can do more. (See commentary in the previous section about rollup opportunities!) 

Restaurant tech advisor David Drinan succinctly identifies the near-term priority for most operators: “The restaurant industry is thirsty for technology innovation that will deliver high margin, incremental revenue.”

On the operational side, managers are still struggling with certain areas such as scheduling and inventory management. These tasks can be time-consuming, especially for independent restaurant owners who have limited resources. As a result, we have seen a growth category of solutions that can automate these functions and provide real-time data to help operators make informed decisions.

Help *Still* Wanted   

The labor shortage in the restaurant industry has been a major challenge for operators in recent years, and labor optimization is still at the top of every operator’s mind. The pandemic caused many workers to permanently leave the hospitality industry, leaving restaurants short-staffed. 

According to the National Restaurant Association, almost two-thirds of US restaurant operators say they do not have enough employees to support existing demand. Instead of replacing this lost workforce, many operators are turning to tech to automate more functions and reduce the need for human labor. 

From digital menus and ordering kiosks to automated kitchen equipment, there are many ways that technology can help restaurants operate more efficiently with fewer employees. By automating basic tasks such as taking orders and processing payments, operators can free up their staff to focus on more complex tasks that require human expertise, such as customer service and food preparation.

Another trend the restaurant industry is grappling with is the changing expectations of younger workers when it comes to the employer/employee relationship. With more emphasis on work-life balance, career development, and job satisfaction, younger workers are looking for more than just a paycheck. 

To meet these expectations, operators are looking for workforce management solutions that can help to improve engagement, development, and rewards for their employees. This includes tools for tracking and managing schedules, as well as innovative solutions for tip outs and other compensation mechanisms. By investing in these solutions, operators can not only attract and retain top talent but also improve the overall efficiency and productivity of their workforce.

Finally, it is worth noting that basic scheduling and labor management tools can have a significant impact on profitability by reducing labor costs and improving operational efficiency. By automating scheduling and timekeeping, for example, restaurants can reduce the likelihood of overstaffing or understaffing, which can be costly in terms of wasted labor or lost sales opportunities. 

In the end, the ability to leverage technology to optimize labor is critical for restaurants to remain competitive in a challenging operating environment. While kiosks and text ordering have shown promise in the QSR space, there are many other opportunities for technology to make a positive impact on the industry as a whole.

Ghost Kitchens: It’s Even More Complicated

In our 2021 restaurant tech retrospective, we had a lot to say about this growing subsector, including the challenges for success (a.k.a. profitability) within the confines of a ghost kitchen business model.  

Now, as the concept of virtual and ghost kitchens continues to evolve even further, it’s important for operators to understand the complexities involved and navigate these challenges to build successful ghost kitchen operations.

One major obstacle has been the potential for tension between virtual brands and existing businesses, where adding virtual brands can lead to direct competition with their own existing businesses. Finding the right tech and operational partner to balance between these two is key.

Additionally, ensuring food safety and maintaining quality standards across multiple brands can be a challenge. Many of the generic virtual brands have lacked distinct value or clear taste standards, leading to underwhelming food quality issues and removal from the major third-party delivery platforms.

Last Mile Magic

Making the economics work for restaurant delivery is a growing priority for the industry. This includes better interoperability between POS/Kitchen systems and delivery providers, better routing and batching systems, localized kitchens, and of course even the mode of transportation for delivery.

We are tracking over 20 companies in the North American unattended last mile category, but it is still early days with most (all?) of the solutions operating in limited geographies and customer trials. So we have left this slice off the infographic for 2023, but don’t forget to keep your eyes on the sky, as we’ve seen recent growth of backyard drone delivery companies which are proving to be faster and better for the environment (if they can outweigh the noise and regulatory concerns).

GenAI on the Menu

Tech entrepreneurs have long dreamed of personalized food recommendations, but few have succeeded in creating true personalization beyond dietary concerns, allergens, or ingredient likes/dislikes. 

However, we have now reached a unique moment where new technologies like ChatGPT will be able to create meaningful and personalized interactions with guests. This has always been the premise of a variety of AI-driven restaurant tech startups, but the ability to leverage the underlying data to engage and interact with guests in a truly personal and conversational manner is game-changing. 

By using data from previous orders and interactions alone, ChatGPT can help to create a more tailored experience for guests, from recommending menu items to offering personalized promotions. ChatGPT can become a critical part of a restaurant’s marketing team by creating content, with the ability to easily translate to different languages as well. This could give operators a crucial competitive advantage as consumers demand more personalized experiences. We have only begun to see the capabilities of ChatGPT with free templates being offered to restaurant operators already.

Moreover, conversational AI like ChatGPT can also be a valuable tool for restaurant operators seeking to understand their own operating metrics. By integrating ChatGPT into their tech stack, operators can ask natural language questions and receive real-time responses, empowering them to make informed decisions about their operations.

Emerging Restaurant Tech Concepts to Watch

  • Chat/AI across marketing and operations
  • Tech-enabled employee support and training (for example, personalized perks, tip-out options, or language choices) 
  • AI for scheduling to free up managers
  • Dynamic pricing
  • Reusable containers + tech-driven circular economy for foodservice 

Looking ahead –  As always, we welcome your thoughts and reactions, and look forward to continuing to follow this sector together in the coming years. Reach out to us: Brita@vitavc.com and hello@techtablesummit.com. 

Starship Logs 10 million Kilometers With Sidewalk Robots

I remember reading as a kid about a guy who had driven his Volkswagen Bug a million miles, enough to drive to the moon and back twice. I remember thinking that’s a lot of miles!

And today, after learning Starship, the company which kicked off the sidewalk robot industry back in 2014, had logged 10 million kilometers (about six million miles, or 12-plus roundtrips to the moon), I thought the same thing: That’s a lot of miles!

Unlike Albert Klein’s 1963 Volkswagen, Starship reached the milestone with a fleet of vehicles, which the company says number two thousand today. Still, it’s an impressive feat, especially compared to self-driving car companies like Waymo and Cruise, each of which Starship says it’s lapped six times.

Starship noted in the announcement that the milestone was reached through more than four million deliveries and that they currently complete 140 thousand road crossings daily.

Since Starship started rolling its robots onto college campuses and towns back in 2016, there’s been several new companies have launched similar products. Uber launched its robot and spun it out as Serve, and Kiwibot started delivering in the Bay area in 2018. Amazon unveiled its Scout sidewalk robot in 2019 but has since scaled back the initiative.

This expansion of the sidewalk delivery space has resulted in several cities debating just how much space should be ceded to the robotic rovers, with some cities banning them while others granting them pedestrian rights.

Through it all, Starship has continued to build out its fleet, and today many of them are delivering goods with little to no human intervention. In fact, according to the company, one robot recently made 24 deliveries in a 16-hour period without any human oversight.

Who knows, at this rate, that productive little robot may make the million-mile club all by itself someday.

French Fries & Bananas Top The List of Popular Drone-Delivered Items

So what items flew off the shelves last year when it came to drone delivery?

According to Flytrex, a company specializing in backyard drone delivery, the most popular item ordered off restaurant menus last year was french fries, followed by turkey sandwiches, burrito bowls, Italian sandwiches, and pizza, according to a report published by the company summarizing its 2022 delivery activity.

On the grocery side, Flytrex says the top banana was, well, bananas, followed by sports drinks, milk, chocolate, and eggs.

Both lists of high-flying products jibe with the category breakouts detailed in the report. On the restaurant side, sandwiches & salads was the top overall category, followed by chicken & wings, Mexican food, and burgers.

On the grocery side, the top category was fresh produce (like bananas), followed by dairy & eggs, pantry items, and sweets & snacks.

Some other interesting tidbits from the Flytrex report:

  • The average time from takeoff to delivery was 3:32 minutes.
  • The fastest time from order to delivery was 12:13 minutes.
  • The largest order Flytrex delivered last year was a comfort food special: 3 Tomato Soups and 1 Noodle Soup, 2 Cobb salads with Chicken, 2 BLTs, and 2 (and 1/2) Cheese Sandwiches.

It should be noted that these statistics are from Flytrex’s drone delivery service in the North Carolina and Texas markets, so they might differ slightly if extrapolated to, say, Seattle, where salmon chowder and sushi might show up, or New York City, where bagels would likely make an appearance. Overall, though, it’s an interesting look into ordering patterns for those markets that have greenlighted drone delivery.

You can check out the full report here.

Kroger to Use Gatik Robotic Trucks for Middle-Mile Delivery of Fresh Products

This week Kroger announced a collaboration with Gatik, a company specializing in autonomous middle-mile logistics, to utilize autonomous box trucks in Dallas, Texas. According to the announcement, the partnership aims to enhance delivery frequency, reliability, and responsiveness for customers while streamlining costs and increasing efficiency throughout the supply chain.

Starting in the second quarter of 2023, Gatik’s medium-duty autonomous box trucks will be responsible for transporting fresh products from Kroger’s Customer Fulfillment Center (CFC) in Dallas to several retail locations. These trucks are fitted with a 20-foot cold chain-capable box, designed for the safe and efficient transportation of ambient, refrigerated, and frozen goods.

The two companies believe the collaboration will provide Kroger customers with an expanded range of same-day pick-up times and more flexible order cut-off times. Gatik will handle the transportation of groceries, foodstuffs, and general merchandise for 12 hours daily, seven days a week.

Gatik’s autonomous middle mile solution will assist Kroger in addressing the needs of customers who shop online and in-store, offering quicker and more dependable access to products. Since commencing commercial operations in 2019, Gatik says it has successfully delivered half a million customer orders using its robo-trucks.

The deal is another win for Gatik, which has previously secured middle-mile delivery contracts for Walmart in Louisiana and Arkansas and for Loblaws in Canada. The company, which raised over $121 million in funding, was recently rumored to be in talks with Microsoft to raise more funding at a $700 million valuation. The Microsoft deal would be a strategic investment that would result in the autonomous truck company using Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform to develop technology for autonomous delivery vehicles.

Flytrex & CAU Plot Nationwide Roll Out Drone Food Delivery After Getting FAA Approval

Drone delivery startup Flytrex and partner Causey Aviation Unmanned (CAU), announced today they had received Standard Part 135 Air Carrier Certification from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. According to the FAA, Part 135 “certification is the only path for small drones to carry the property of another for compensation beyond visual line of sight.”

With this notch in its belt, Causey and Flytex become just the fifth group to receive Part 135 certification, joining Amazon/Prime Air, Google/Wing, UPS, and Zipline. According to the company, this certification will allow Flytrex to complete long-range commercial drone deliveries across the U.S. and expand its delivery service to all eligible back and front yards nationwide.

“We live in an era of instant gratification, where consumers want to get their food or goods faster, more reliably, more economically and more sustainably – and drone delivery has risen to the occasion,” said Yariv Bash, Flytrex CEO. “Flytrex’s continued success delivering to customers throughout North Carolina and Texas has put us ahead of the curve. With this certification, we look forward to bringing our super swift, sustainable and safe airborne delivery systems to every backyard across the U.S.”

Flytrex and CAU currently have five operational delivery stations in North Carolina and one in Texas, delivering tens of thousands of items to hundreds of thousands of homes. Flytrex says it has worked closely with regulators, including participating in the FAA’s UAS Integration Pilot Program and BEYOND initiative, to ensure the highest safety standards for drone delivery.

In case you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to order food delivery via a Flytrex drone, it’s a somewhat involved process that factors in a safety and viability analysis of each customer’s backyard. First, the company analyzes available space in a given backyard, whether there are power lines, and once a safety review is passed, the address is added to the Flytrex flight network.

You can watch the drone (and an explanation of the customer onboarding process below):

Delivery Process | Flytrex

Wonder Pulls a Zume, Drops Futuristic Food Trucks as it Pivots to Lower Cost Operating Model

According to a report this week in the Wall Street Journal, food delivery startup Wonder is laying off employees and will begin to phase out its signature food delivery trucks in the hopes of creating a lower-cost operating model.

This is a massive shift for a company that became the talk of the food delivery business for a high-touch approach built around its delivery vehicles. Wonder not only brought the food to a customer’s home, but it cooked it curbside in vans that had become ubiquitous over the past year and a half in the North Jersey market in which it operates.

According to the Journal, the company will pivot to a more conventional ghost kitchen model, operating ten kitchens around New Jersey and New York. In addition to delivery, Wonder will offer in-location dining and pickup at locations.

Tightening venture capital markets have cast a pall over the startup world over the past 12 months, and today’s news suggests that even superstar fundraisers like Wonder founder Marc Lore aren’t immune to investors’ darkening moods. It had always been an open question whether Lore could continue to raise enough money for an operating model that looked incredibly expensive from the outside, and now it looks like we have our answer.

Lore told the Journal he believed the current model would require another $1 billion in investment over the next two years to expand its mobile truck fleet. Lore now hopes to raise $350 million over the same time period.

In some ways, Wonder’s pivot is reminiscent of Zume, another high-flying startup that used custom-made delivery trucks and raised hundreds of millions of dollars. Zume, which made pizzas using robotic technology in central locations, used its customized delivery trucks with built-in pizza ovens to cook food on the way to customers. By early 2020, the company had run into financial problems and started pivoting away from its food trucks. It wasn’t long before Zume gave up on pizzas altogether, and today the company is a compostable food packaging company.

Now, the question for Wonder going forward is whether it will be able to maintain its momentum with customers in its current markets without the part of its business that most sets it apart from traditional delivery. Wonder has been extremely popular in the market it operates in, in large part due to the high quality and white-glove service enabled by its trucks.

Without that, will Wonder become just another – albeit very expensive – ghost kitchen startup? Only time will tell.

Ottonomy Partners With Norwegian Post Office to Trial Sidewalk Robot Delivery

Ottonomy.IO, a maker of autonomous (and swervy!) sidewalk delivery robots, has partnered with Posten Norge to trial its robot in Oslo. The partnership, which also includes Nordic autonomous vehicle integrator Holo, will test how autonomous robots can improve Norway’s post office intra-logistics in city centers. Posten Norge also plans to trial Ottobots for first-mile pick-ups, receiving and delivering goods for the digital marketplace AMOI from the Aker Brygge area in Oslo.

Posten Norge looks to be all-in on this trial, going so far as creating a special page for its cute little Ottobot. The page, which features a video of Ottonomy’s robot (which you can see below), talks about the goals for the trial:

The purpose of this project is simply to learn as much as possible. We want to learn how people interact with Ottobot, the maturity of the technology, and we want to explore whether Ottobot can help solve challenges in connection with picking up and delivering goods in the city. 

Among other things, the project will give us insight into how the citizens of Oslo experience a robot in the urban environment, how do people feel about interacting with a robot, and whether it creates unforeseen challenges in our city. In addition, we need to understand which obstacles are difficult for the robot to maneuver, whether it can manage driving in Nordic weather conditions and how reliable Ottobot is in operation. 

While there’s no doubt that some of the sidewalk robot startups have struggled over the past year as a darkening economic outlook has led to cutbacks among logistics and delivery companies, Ottonomy looks like it’s faring pretty well. The company recently raised money and is showing up in airports in the US and Europe, and now, with its new partnership with one of the largest post offices, Ottonomy may have cracked open a potentially lucrative (and deep-pocketed) customer category.

Subway Debuts Smart Fridges To Sell Pre-Made Sandwiches

Can you ‘Eat Fresh’ from a vending machine?

Subway believes you can, and to that end, the sandwich franchiser has begun to roll out a new line of smart fridges in the US to sell premade Subway sandwiches. The new fridges feature “artificial intelligence and natural language processing” and are restocked daily with sandwiches from local franchisees. The new line of vending machines is a part of the company’s growing focus on non-traditional formats to target “on-the-go” customers.

Subway’s New Smart Fridge

The first smart fridge from Subway showed up this September at the University of California San Diego. According to the company, the initial feedback has been strong among franchises to install the new fridges near their stores.

While the UC San Diego fridge was the first Subway vending machine to show up in the states, the company began experimenting with vending machines last year in Singapore. The Singapore machines were also supported by Grab & Go but looked a little closer to a traditional vending machine than the newly introduced smart fridges.

In an interview with QSR Magazine, Subway’s senior VP of development Steven Rafferty said the franchisees drove the push into unattended retail solutions.

“The partner says, ‘Hey, how can we maximize our sales even in the hours when we’re not open?’” Rafferty said. “We had some success with limited trials of this in international markets, in some Asian markets specifically. But closer to home, as I said, travel plaza partners have really latched on to this and it’s really meeting the needs of our customers who are our franchisees who in turn want to meet the needs of our consumers.”

I like the idea of the Subway machines and could see them finding traction, especially in public spaces where no fresh options are available. I’d like to see the new machines offer non-sub menu options like their non-bread bowls, which could provide customers with a nice option beyond carb-heavy sandwiches.

While Subway doesn’t mention hardware partners in their announcement, I’d be surprised if they didn’t work with a technology partner to develop the fridges. If one of our Spoon readers knows who Subway may have worked with to build their fridge, drop us a line and let us know.

According to Subway, their new smart fridges will begin appearing at college campuses, airports, and hospitals. Interestingly, the company’s announcement emphasized Subway’s focus on exploring non-traditional formats, including ghost kitchens. If the unattended business begins to take off, I could see how some franchisee partners may forgo the traditional store format and build ghost kitchens to support a network of unattended offerings in their market.