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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Business of Food

Eat Just Partners with Qatar Free Zones to Bring Cultured Meat Facility to the MENA Region

Eat Just announced today that it has partnered with Doha Venture Capital (DVC) and Qatar Free Zones Authority (QFZA) to build a cultured meat facility in the Middle East and Northern Africa (MENA) region.

The new facility will be located in the Umm Alhoul Free Zone in Qatar, and will at first house Eat Just’s cultured meat division, GOOD Meat. Eventually, the facility will accommodate Eat Just’s plant-based egg brand JUST Egg as well. In addition to those brands, the facility will also conduct research and development, engineering, and business development.

According to the press announcement, the Qatar Free Zones Authority and Qatar’s Ministry of Public Health have indicated that they will grant regulatory approval for GOOD Meat’s cultured chicken “very soon” and have formally granted an expert license for the cell-based meat. If Qatar does come through with this approval, it would be the second region in the world to approve the sale of cultured meat, following Singapore’s decision to do so in December of last year.

Gaining regulatory approval in more countries around the world is obviously a key milestone that needs to be reached in order for cultured meat to gain any sort of traction. Cell-based meat startups around the world have raised a ton of money over the past year, and the technology is rapidly maturing. But all the funding and the best technology in the world doesn’t mean anything if you aren’t allowed to sell your product.

While there are skeptics that doubt cell-based meat will ever be able to economically scale, a number of startups have made moves that aim to bring it to market. After two drastic price reductions this year, the production price of Israel-based Future Meat’s cell-based chicken is now $4 for 110g (check out our recent podcast interview with Future Meat Founder and CSO Yaakov Nahmias for more). Here in the U.S. Memphis Meats re-branded to the more consumer-friendly UPSIDE Foods and announced a partnership with the Altier Crenn restaurant in San Francisco.

Eat Just has definitely pushed its way to the front of the cultured meat pack, however. It is the first company to ever commercially sell its cultured meat, and now it will have large-scale production facilities in both Singapore and Qatar.

PepsiCo Bringing SodaStream Professional and Unattended C-Stores to College Campuses

In July of last year, during the first wave of the pandemic, PepsiCo introduced the SodaStream Professional connected sparkling water system for offices. At the time we noted that the machine, which reduces the need for single-use platic bottles was a good idea, but its future seemed questionable given that offices were closed. Even now, more than a year later, it’s unclear when or how workers will return to the office, so like any good company, PepsiCo has adapted, and is now bringing its SodaStream Professional to college campuses.

PepsiCo has installed its SodaStream Professional at William and Mary College and College of the Holy Cross (it’s also installed a machine at Dana Hill High School in Dana Point, California), which dispense customizable carbonated water. Customers can choose from a number of flavors, adjust the fizziness of their drinks and even offer up enhancements like electrolytes and vitamin B.

There is an accompanying QR-coded bottle and mobile app that people can use to control the machine. Users download the app and scan the QR code with their phone. At the machine, they scan the bottle’s QR code which allows users to order via the app, contactlessly dispense the drink, and remember certain flavor/fizziness preferences for future drinks. For those without the QR-coded bottle, the machine works with other vessels, and can be controlled with the on-board touchscreen. Pricing for the drinks is dependent on the arrangement made by the university.

The move to colleges is a smart play by PepsiCo, given the unknown future of office work. Schools have re-opened (fingers crossed) and are once again alive with activity on campuses.

But PepsiCo isn’t stopping with the new beverage station. The company has also launched a branded convenience store at Kansas University that features cashierless technology. The new store is powered by New Stand, and is not as high tech as the computer vision + artificial intelligence-powered Amazon Go, so students can’t just grab what they want and walk out. But it does allow users to scan their items with the New Stand mobile app at checkout.

And if that weren’t enough, during a video chat this week, Greg Herman, Sr. Marketing Director, Beverage Innovation – Foodservice at PepsiCo told me that in addition to these programs, PepsiCo is also still running its robot delivery program that it launched back at the start of 2019. That program used small, rover bots from Robby to carry around snacks and beverages that students could order. Herman didn’t provide too many details on the program, but we haven’t heard much about it since launch, so it’s nice to see it’s still going.

Between these programs, cereal dispensing robot vending machines, and 3D printed plant-based meat, colleges are fast becoming hotbeds of food tech innovation.

As Cruise Buys Solar Energy, it’s a Good Reminder that Autonomy Requires Electricity

Self-driving vehicle company Cruise announced earlier this week that it is acquiring solar energy to power its fleet of autonomous vehicles in San Francisco. Cruise is doing so through Farm to Fleet, a program it created with BTR Energy to buy renewable energy credits (RECs) from agricultural farms that also house solar farms.

In a corporate blog post, Cruise said that starting earlier this spring it had been buying RECs from Sundale Vineyards and Moonlight, two farms in California’s Central Valley. Farm to Fleet doesn’t just provide cleaner energy to Cruise’s cars, but it also generates revenue for those farms in the program.

Cruise’s announcement is a good reminder that all of the autonomous vehicles we write about here at The Spoon — delivery trucks, sidewalk robots, drones — require power. On its face that may seem obvious, but the question of where and how autonomous vehicles are powered is an important one for robot startups, delivery services and local governments.

As Cruise notes, it operates its own electric vehicle charging stations, so the move to green power is one it can make entirely on its own. But what happens with smaller sidewalk robots or drones that are deployed to various businesses in dense urban areas? Space needs to be created for to vehicles re-charge, and that space can’t interfere with the natural flow of people on public sidewalks and streets. Once you have the space, then you need the actual electricity and enough of it. Robot and drone companies like to tout how their solutions are greener than having a two-ton car on the road bringing you a burrito. That is true, but that commitment to a cleaner world should ideally extend to greener power

This isn’t the most pressing issue for robot and drone companies, which have a lot more immediate concerns like regulations and economics of scale to deal with as they come to market. But thinking about basic infrastructure issues like electricity now, will help autonomous vehicle companies deploy more easily in the future.

Stop & Shop Now Accepting EBT Payments From SNAP Customers Shopping Online

The Stop & Shop grocery chain announced today that its customers on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) can use their Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card when placing orders online for pickup and delivery. The new program extends to all SNAP participants across Stop & Shop’s five state reach – Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey as well as delivery customers in New Hampshire.

Customers shopping online will be able to filter searches for SNAP eligible products, and apply their benefits at checkout. However, EBT cards can only be used for SNAP-eligible grocery items, and not for things such as fees, taxes or driver tips.

Adding an EBT payment option is absolutely a good thing to do. Providing greater access to grocery delivery can help alleviate food deserts in certain areas. Instacart has launched EBT payment options with ALDI, Publix, The Save Mart Companies and Price Chopper/Market 32. And last year, Amazon expanded the availability of EBT payments for groceries as well.

The outstanding issue for all of these services, however, is the payment of fees. Stop & Shop, for instance, charges $2.95 for pickup and $9.95 delivery fee for orders less than $100 (orders greater than $100 carry a $6.95 delivery fee). To really help bridge inequality and bring more equity to food availability, it would be nice if big retailers and well-funded delivery services did more to offset the costs of delivery and pickup for customers.

Sweetgreen Acquires Robot Restaurant Spyce

Salad chain Sweetgreen announced today it is acquiring the robot restaurant Spyce. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, and terms were not disclosed.

Spyce was created by MIT alums and launched its first restaurant in the Spring of 2018, which grabbed headlines because of its use of robots to prepare each meal. The company partnered with chef Daniel Boulud to develop its menu and went on to raise nearly $25 million in funding. In November of last year Spyce re-launched itself, and introduced its new “Infinite Kitchen” robot, which allowed for more ingredient customization and could make 350 meals per hour. Spyce currently operates two locations in Massachusetts, one in Cambridge and one in Boston.

In the press announcement, Sweetgreen said Spyce’s automation technology will allow its workers to focus more on customers service, expand its menu into warm foods, and make meal preparation more consistent.

In June of this year, Sweetgreen confidentially filed to go public. CNBC today speculated that the acquisition of an automation company like Spyce could help Sweetgreen attract investors because the technology could help alleviate some of the labor shortage issues facing the restaurant industry at large.

Labor issues and the pandemic have accelerated interest in restaurant automation. In addition to robots being able to work around the clock without a break, robots don’t get sick and provide customers with a contactless food transaction. Sweetgreen’s acquisition comes less than a week after Creator, another robot-centered restaurant that has raised a fair amount of venture capital, re-opened its doors after being shut down by COVID last year. And just today, robot pizza maker, Piestro announced a partnership to deploy 3,600 units co-branded with pizza chain 800 Degrees over the next five years.

As the pandemic maintains a looming presence in our lives and automation technology matures, expect more announcements like this over the coming year.

Misfits Market Expands Availability to Four More States

Misfits Market, the online grocer that specializes in rescuing food products that might otherwise be thrown out, announced the geographic expansion of its services to four more states today. Misfits now delivers to Arizona, Nebraska, New Mexico and Oklahoma, bringing its total coverage area to 43 states plus the District of Columbia.

Founded in 2018, Misfits Market works with farms, distributors and even airlines to source a sell perfectly good food that would otherwise go to waste, at a discount. The company started selling imperfect or “ugly” produce, and has steadily expanded into other categories like pantry and packaged goods. For packaged goods, for example, if a production run of olive oil wound up printed with upside down labels, Misfits sells those bottles rather than having them be discarded. When the pandemic hit last year and flights were shut down, Misfits was able to obtain and sell things like the cheese plates airlines would have had to throw out.

Earlier this year Misfits raised a $200 million Series C round of funding and added proteins to its offerings. Like with other categories, Misfits finds places in the supply chain where there is excess or waste. In the case of meats, there are often whole cuts that aren’t in “season” during a particular time of year, or trimmings that typically get discarded that the company rescues.

Mail order groceries have had a pretty banner year when it comes to funding. Fellow rescued food service, Imperfect Foods raised $110 million, and Weee!, an online grocer specializing in Asian and Hispanic Foods raised $315 million. Part of what drove all this investment interest in online grocers is, of course, the pandemic, which pushed people into e-commerce last year.

The bigger question surrounding ship-to-home grocers like Misfits and Imperfect is whether customers will stick around with the less convenient mail order delivery as the pandemic (eventually) recedes. Survey data from Brick Meets Click shows that online grocery shopping has declined in recent months, with most of the drop occurring in the mail-delivered category.

Misfits, however, said it continues to grow. During a video chat last week, Vice President, Growth & Analytics at Misfits Market, Kelly-Marie Bermudez, told me that the company is experience 5x growth in both active customers and order volume. Additionally, Bermudez said that Misfits rescued more than 170 million pounds of food in 2020, and has already exceeded that figure in the first half of 2021.

800 Degrees and Piestro Partner to Create 3,600 Automated Pizza Kiosks

Piestro, which makes an robotic pizza kiosk, announced today that 800 Degrees Pizza will be using Piestro’s technology to offer a fully automated eating experience. According to the press announcement, the deal will have a projected order volume of 3,600 units that Piestro will produce and sell over the next five years.

Piestro’s machine is an automated pizza making kiosk. It holds the dough and dispenses sauce, cheese and a variety of toppings on demand to make a piping hot pie in three minutes. This is the first American restaurant brand partnership for Piestro.

Licensing out its technology is one of two go-to market strategies for Piestro, which will also own and operate a number of its own machines. Kiosks created for 800 Degrees will be labeled “800 Degrees by Piestro,” and will be placed in high-traffic areas such as airports, universities, hotels, etc. As part of the deal, 800 Degrees will have a number of machines that it operates to determine how customers are interacting with the kiosk. 800 Degrees Founder and Chef Anthony Carron told me by video chat this week that eventually the plan is to franchise out its machines to other owners.

Automated kiosks such as Piestro could have a lot of appeal for established restaurant brands looking to expand. With its small footprint, a kiosk can be installed just about anywhere there is power. This allows restaurants to put their brand in places without building out a full restaurant. Hotels, for example, could install an 800 Degrees pizza kiosk in the lobby to offer fresh hot pizza around the clock.

Carron said that this is his restaurant’s first foray into automation, driven mostly by two main factors. “Labor and consistency have been huge issues in our business,” Carron said. A robot like Piestro’s helps mitigate these issues as the robot can run all day without taking a break and makes the exact same pizza every time.

We are starting to more established brands partner with automated vending companies. Yo-Kai Express has already opened up its hot ramen vending machine platform to a number of well-known restaurants. And Chowbotics (part of DoorDash), which makes the Sally robot recently partnered with Kellogg’s to automate cereal and yogurt bowls for students at two different universities.

PMQ Pizza reported sales of pizza in the U.S. in 2020 topped $46 billion, which means there’s a huge opportunity for Piestro and other players in the automated pizza vending space. One big difference between Piestro and its competition right now is that Piestro makes its pizza on the spot. Other machines from API Tech, Basil Street and PizzaForno are storing and re-heating pre-made pizzas.

With the amount of money consumers spend on pizza, the ongoing labor issues and the pandemic still driving interest in contactless food retail experiences, we’re going to see a lot more pizza vending machines pop up, and a lot more co-branding announcements like the one from Piestro and 800 Degrees.

Slice Launches Tiered Packaging for Its Pizza-Centric Tech Platform

Slice, a company fast becoming a go-to piece of restaurant tech for indie pizzerias, announced a new tiered packaging feature for its software offering. With it, pizzerias can choose which level of service they need from the software stack based on their individual business.  

The founders of Slice created the software platform as a way to give independent pizza restaurants some of the same digital tools and advantages the bigger chains — Domino’s, Papa John’s, etc. — can afford. The pandemic may have pushed the restaurant industry firmly over the threshold of the digital realm, but as was noted at The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit this week, many mom-and-pop stores may not even have a POS system, let alone sophisticated online order and delivery tools.

Slice’s platform now offers such tools via three different levels of service. All levels give pizzerias a listing on the Slice app/marketplace as well as access to marketing tools. Slice Essentials adds access to a rewards program to that bundle.

Shop owners that need more digital capabilities can graduate to the Slice Premium level, which gives them access to online ordering, a customized website, and boosted search rankings on the marketplace. The top tier, Slice Complete, includes all of the above plus Slice’s POS system, which the company launched earlier this year. 

As Slice’s Chief Product Officer, Preethy Vaidyanathan, explained to The Spoon a while back, pizzerias have “specialized needs” when it comes to technology that might not exist elsewhere. Menus are one small example: pizza shops have to accommodate for things like different crust styles, and half-and-half toppings in their online ordering tools. Those capabilities are harder to develop in an interface that it might first seem.

Restaurants pay a fixed cost per order to use the Slice technology, as opposed to the percentage-per-transaction model used by most third-party delivery services. (Slice does not provide delivery drivers/couriers.) Consumers, meanwhile, use the app much as they wold any other restaurant-ordering interface. Slice is currently available in all 50 U.S. states at over 16,000 shops. 

The company raised $40 million in Series D funding this year, which it is using to expand its current line of products. 

Restaurants Are ‘Always Blamed’ When It Comes to Bad Delivery. Here’s How Tech Can Help

Who is responsible when something goes wrong with delivery?

A succinct-yet-apt answer to that question recently came from fast casual chain Wow Bao’s President and CEO Geoff Alexander, who spoke at The Spoon’s Restaurant Tech Summit this week: “As the restaurant brand, you are always blamed.”

If you’ve ordered via third-party delivery with any frequency, you’ve likely dealt with the following scenario: The order is late or does not arrive. The customer calls the delivery service and gets an automated response. The customer calls the restaurant itself, who may not know where the food is because it left the the building ages ago. If and when the meal finally arrives at the consumer’s door, it will be cold, soggy, dry, or all of the above. It’s usually not DoorDash, Uber Eats, or any other delivery service that gets blamed for these problems. 

By way of example during the event, Alexander brought up Fargo, North Dakota, where Wow Bao operates one of its dark kitchen locations. For these kitchens, other restaurants cook some of the Wow Bao brand’s signature items and sell them on the usual third-party delivery channels as a way to make incremental revenue. Wow Bao has about 350 dark kitchen locations around the country right now, with a “moonshot goal” of reaching 1,000 by the end of the year. 

Brand integrity is always something to watch for with these kitchens. “When an issue happens there, it’s not Wow Bao,” Alexander explained at the event. “It’s somebody running one of our dark kitchens. And [the food is] delivered via one of three or four delivery platforms. I get the phone call. Wow Bao corporate gets the phone call, we get hit on Instagram or social or Google Reviews. That whole brand transfer hast to be the most guarded and respected piece by the brand itself and by the operator to work together. At the end of the day, the way that guest is handled is what’s going to decide if the guest is going to come back and who they’re gonna tell.”

As to how tech can help restaurants guard this brand transfer, the other panelists pointed to tools that can optimize operations. Ava Ghaiumy, Delivery Hero’s regional director for global foodservice operations, pointed out that there is “almost no bigger KPI than speed.” Her company, which is investing heavily in various tech initiatives, is working on things like improved dispatching and rider-tracking features that can help with speed of service when it comes to delivery.  

Olo’s Marty Hahnfeld, who was also on the panel, said it’s all about “precision in operations.” That includes improving order accuracy, making sure menus are up to date across all ordering channels at all times, and that pricing is correct on those channels as well. Olo offers its Dispatch service that allows restaurants to order directly from a restaurant’s own website or mobile app. Though in most cases, there is still a reliance on third-party delivery to handle the last mile.

At the end of the day. the most important technology to keeping brand integrity intact may be one that’s been around for quite some time: the POS integration.

Such an integration connects, among other things a restaurant’s main POS system with the many different channels through which customers buy meals nowadays, including third-party delivery. Whereas in the old days (two years ago), delivery services provided an external tablet and restaurant staff manually key’d in orders to the main POS system, more restaurants are now directly connecting delivery to that main system. Panelists were unanimous in their belief that this is an extremely important technology when it comes to improving order accuracy, timing, and a generally smoother experience for everyone.  

Apeel Raises $250 Million to Accelerate Its Fight Against Food Waste

Apeel, best known for its shelf-life-extension technology for produce, has raised a $250 million Series E round of funding led by Temasek.

Additional participants include Mirae Asset Global Investments, GIC, Viking Global Investors, Disruptive, Andreessen Horowitz, Tenere Capital, Sweetwater Private Equity, Tao Capital Partners, K3 Ventures, David Barber of Almanac Insights, Michael Ovitz of Creative Artists Agency, Anne Wojcicki of 23andMe, Susan Wojcicki of YouTube, and Katy Perry. The round brings Apeel’s total funding to date to over $635 million, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

The company’s food-safe powder coating was developed to cover pieces of produce, such as avocados, and act as a barrier against water and oxygen, which are major contributors to rot. Apeel will use the new funding in part to expand the availability of its coating product to additional parts of the U.S., U.K., and Europe. The company currently works with 40 retailers and 30 suppliers throughout eight different countries.

Earlier this year, Apeel acquired hyperspectral imaging company ImpactVision to add another layer of information about plant ripeness to its process. The advanced imaging technology can essentially look inside each piece of fruit and gather information about maturity, freshness, and phytonutrient content. With this information, suppliers and distributors can decide where each piece of produce can then go. For example, a more mature piece can go to a retailer closer by, so it can reach the store shelf sooner.

Apeel said today it will also use the new funds to advance such data and imaging capabilities and integrate those capabilities deeper into its system. The company suggested there could be more acquisitions in this area in the future. 

In the U.S. alone, 35 percent of all food produced goes to waste, equalling about $408 billion annually and 4 percent of all U.S. greenhouse gases. At the same time, more than 40 million Americans are considered food insecure. Recent data from Project Drawdown found reducing food waste to be first of 76 solutions meant to reverse climate change, ahead of plant-based diets and utility-scale solar projects. 

Apeel’s edible coating is one method of fighting food waste. Others include Hazel Technology’s sachet that extends produce shelf life and Ryp Labs (née StixFresh), which makes a sticker that does much the same thing.

“Suppliers have a clock that’s ticking,” Apeel CEO James Rogers explained last year at a Spoon event. At the end of the day, he said, “we have to make the most environmentally beneficially solution the cheapest, easiest solution.”

Cox Enterprises Acquires High-Tech Greenhouse Grower BrightFarms

Cox Enterprises has acquired indoor farming company BrightFarms, the two companies announced today via press release. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. The companies noted that the acquisition will be key to helping Cox Enterprises build out a “multibillion cleantech business” by 2030. 

Multi-industry conglomerate Cox is in the midst of expanding from its core lines of business (communications and automotive), hence its goals related to cleantech innovation. The company says it is currently investing in and/or acquiring “clean resource efficient businesses that provide sustainable energy, food, and water for the rapidly growing global population.”

Cox nabbed a majority stake in BrightFarms in 2020, though the two companies’ relationship goes back to 2018. Speaking in today’s press release, Steve Bradley, vice president of cleantech for Cox Enterprises, noted, “Over the years, our enthusiasm for BrightFarms and the opportunity to transform the industry has increased tremendously, which led us to want to play a larger role in what they’re doing.”  

BrightFarms operates a network of greenhouses that use hydroponics, natural sunlight, and a proprietary software system to grow leafy greens. The company announced its fifth greenhouse earlier this year and more recently said it would open an “innovation and research hub.” Ten percent of the company is now dedicated to developing “patented growing solutions to be used across BrightFarms entire network to improve crop yield, flavor, and other factors. The company says that by the end of the year, its leafy greens will be available at over 3,500 stores.

BrightFarms said joining Cox will allow it to scale more rapidly. As part of the acquisition, BrightFarms will grow its physical footprint from 15 acres of crop today to more than 140 by 2025. This growth will, the company says, let it reach roughly two-thirds of all U.S. consumers. Additionally, BrightFarms will build out multiple 30-acre greenhouses and increase the number of stores, restaurants, and food distributors it serves.

Q&A: The Future of Restaurant Delivery Bots, According to Serve Robotics’ Ali Kashani

If Serve Robotics CEO Ali Kashani has his way, more restaurants in the near-term future will offload the last mile of their deliveries not to human couriers but to wheeled rover bots that can autonomously traverse the streets en route to hand over your food.

Serve started life as a part of Postmates, eventually spinning out into its own company when the latter was bought by Uber. The wheeled Serve bots are all-electric, autonomous sidewalk rovers that require minimal human supervision to deliver burritos, sandwiches, and other food items to customers. They’re also, according to Kashani, way better for the planet and the restaurant industry.

Ahead of our upcoming upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17 (that’s tomorrow!), we caught up briefly with Kashani to get his thoughts on how robots help the restaurant biz and what role they’ll play in the future. Read our full Q&A with her below, and if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the virtual show here.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: What problem does Serve Robotics solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

Ali Kashani: Moving a two-pound burrito in a two-ton car doesn’t make a lot of sense. Yet it’s what we do 10 to 20 million times a day in the United States alone. It’s resulting in carbon emissions, traffic congestion, and accidents. Beyond that, it’s also expensive. Restaurants are paying 20-30% of their revenue to fulfill their customers’ delivery demands. 

Serve Robotics is creating a fleet of all-electric, autonomous sidewalk robots that require minimal human supervision. They don’t cause congested roads or emit CO2. They also don’t cause safety risks — it takes 3,000 sidewalk robots to have the same kinetic energy of a single street car. And finally, they make delivery affordable for restaurants and local businesses by significantly reducing the underlying costs. This is a win-win-win, for restaurants, for customers, and for cities. 

Starting with sidewalks, autonomous deliveries will reduce the cost burden that’s carried by restaurants today, while enabling more customers to shop locally — whether it’s from a nearby restaurant, a convenience store, or a local mall. And cities win too. If we take 5% of restaurant deliveries off the road in five years, which is our goal, we’d be removing 80,000 vehicles off the roads in the U.S., which translates to over 1 billion fewer miles traveled by cars.

By the way, robotic delivery will also be better for employment, as it helps local SMBs, the backbone of our economy, be better positioned to sell to local customers and compete effectively against larger e-commerce players. 

What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic?

Some impact was very visible to everyone, such as the adoption of digital menus almost overnight. Some other changes were uniquely visible to us. For example, robotic delivery as a whole was validated as a necessary tool, a part of city infrastructure, rather than a science project. Before the pandemic passersby would often wonder what a delivery robot was doing, but after the pandemic, everyone immediately recognized what they were seeing was a contactless delivery.

The impact of the pandemic has continued. Driver shortages have increased the importance of having several available delivery modes, creating significant inbound interest for us.

3. Where will we see the most deployments of delivery bots in the near-term future (e.g., major cities, campuses, etc.)?

We know from having access to food delivery data on major platforms that over half of all restaurant deliveries can be addressed on the sidewalk. Closed environments like campuses are a great place too. We decided to focus on cities instead because on campus basket sizes are smaller, so it’s a lower-margin space, and the demand is more peaky and seasonal. So all and all, the steady higher-value demand of cities made them a more interesting market.

Granted, cities are a harder problem to solve. We had to invest significantly in developing the right vehicle capable of navigating city sidewalks. But that’s a worthwhile investment that serves as a competitive barrier. With years and millions of dollars invested, we now have the most suitable robot for sidewalk delivery, with the largest cargo capacity, longest mileage range and battery life, and most capable drivetrain for handling the roughness of city sidewalks.

4. What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

We’re excited by the experiences restaurants can potentially offer customers when delivery robots become a part of everyday life. There’s so much waste in how we deliver today — not just the car emissions mentioned earlier, but also in the packaging. Delivery is also not yet on-par with the experience of dining at the restaurant. 

Now imagine if the cost of last mile logistics was so low, that restaurants could send food in fine china and silverware. Similar to room service at a hotel, the robot would wait to return the dishes at the end of the meal. We could create new experiences that are similar or even better than dining in a restaurant, and do so at less cost and with less waste.

5. What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years?

Our goal is to take at least 5% of restaurant deliveries off the road, and bring down the cost of delivery overall. The impact this can have on our cities is enormous. From congestion and emissions, to the increase in customer adoption of local delivery, to the increase in employment and commerce opportunities.

Think about the kind of impact Ford had when they introduced the first car. Our cities look different today because of it. This would take longer than five years, but new forms of mobility offered by Serve and other companies in this space have similar potential to reshape our cities into more liveable and green places.