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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

Just in Time for a Contactless World, Keenon Robotics has 6,000 Food Server Robots Already in Action

As restaurants across the country start to reopen, one question we’ve been asking is, assuming people will even want to go back into restaurants, how will they want to be served? Will customers want their server to wear a mask or not wear a mask? Which is less off-putting?

Another third option that may become increasingly common is having a robot server in your restaurant. Autonomous robots can shuttle food and empty dishes to and from the kitchen, they don’t get fevers and they’ll never cough anywhere near you or your food.

One company making such robots is China’s Keenon Robotics, which launched its first server robots back in 2016. Keenon’s robots use both 3D mapping and specially coded stickers mounted on ceilings to navigate. A camera pointing up on the robot sees the sticker and determines its route. The robots also feature obstacle detection and automated stopping so they don’t bump into people. Robots can be leased for $1,500 – $1,600 a month.

Other players in the space include Bear Robotics and PuduTech, but what sets Keenon apart is scale. Of the 9,000 robots Keenon has operational around the world, 6,000 are already in the hotel and restaurant industry. Simi Wang, the Director of Global Sales at Keenon Robotics, told me by phone this week that the company can produce 30,000 robots this year.

The question now is, will that be too many robots… or too little?

Keenon certainly seems to be filling its pipeline. The company has partnerships with Burger King in China, the Haidilao hot pot restaurant chain, and recently entered into an agreement with Chinese delivery service Meituan Dianping to create a new contactless restaurant.

Will there be that same demand for server robots here in the U.S.? When I spoke with Bear Robotics’ CEO last month, he said that there was definitely more inbound interest in his robots. He attributed this increased interest to customers wanting more transparency into who has touched their food. But again, we’re at the very beginning stages of restaurants coming back online, so we don’t know how much people will actually care.

Pre-COVID, the labor crunch was a big factor for restaurants considering a robotic workforce. Casual and quick service restaurants in particular had huge churn rates. With so many people out of work, and so many fewer restaurants still operational, the economics of human labor won’t be as much of an issue. The question now will just be how much people trust other people to handle their food.

Starship Angling to Make its Robot Food Deliveries in Frisco, TX. Notice the Pattern?

Starship’s small, autonomous food delivery robots could soon be rolling around Frisco, TX. The Community Impact Newspaper in Frisco reports that earlier this week Starship pitched its robotic plans to the town’s city council.

If adopted, Starship’s robots would be making deliveries from local restaurants and grocery stores in that area. More importantly during this COVID-19 pandemic, those deliveries would be done without human-to-human contact.

Community Impact writes that the city council is still working through details with Starship, but it looks like the program will proceed, with a launch announcement expected in the next few weeks.

The expansion into Frisco would follow Starship’s recent deployments to other cities such as Fairfax, VA and Tempe, AZ. One thing Frisco, Fairfax and Tempe all have in common is that they are (relatively) close to a college or university that Starship had previously been serving (University of Texas at Dallas, George Mason University and Northern Arizona University, respectively).

A Starship rep told Community Impact: “With the pandemic, a lot of campuses have emptied out of students. So we have accelerated our long-term plans, which is to offer neighborhood deliveries.”

It would make sense that Starship would take those college robots and let them loose in nearby neighborhoods to make deliveries to the general public. If that logic holds true, we can probably expect to see Starship robots making deliveries in towns near Houston, TX; Madison, WI, Pittsburgh, PA; and West Lafayette, IN.

Robots could have greater appeal as a delivery mechanism given heightened fears people now have of viral transmissions. Robots don’t get sick and can be easily sanitized. This, in combination with working with smaller towns, could make local governments more willing to put autonomous vehicles on their sidewalks.

Prior to the pandemic, cities and states were cautious about allowing robots to run about on public streets and sidewalks. But shelter in place orders across the country have spurred demand for home delivery of food and groceries. Robots, with their ability to run around the clock, can help meet that demand.

We’re already seeing more robots on public streets. In Ann Arbor, MI, Refraction’s REV-1 is making restaurant and grocery deliveries. And in California, Nuro has been given the go ahead to test its autonomous delivery vehicle on public roads.

One thing that could hold robot delivery back, however, is the commission fees it is charging. We learned recently that Starship can charge almost as much as a human-powered third-party delivery service. This seems to defeat the labor cost savings robots are supposed to bring, and not at all helpful to restaurants that are struggling to stay in business. But as Starship pointed out, they are working on an accelerated timeline, and hopefully the company will soon bring more equity to its delivery.

If you’re in one of these towns where robots can bring you food, drop us a line and let us know how it went, and if you’d use them again!

Gatik Launches Self-Driving Box Truck for Middle Mile Deliveries

Gatik, an autonomous vehicle startup focused on middle mile delivery, announced a new self-driving box truck today. The new trucks feature temperature control, allowing them to transport cold and frozen food and goods.

Don’t expect to see these self-driving box trucks in your neighborhood. Gatik’s service is meant for the middle mile, meaning it shuttles deliveries between business locations, not to a consumer’s front door. For example, last year Walmart announced it was using Gatik to move food between its own store locations.

The middle mile is actually ripe for autonomous driving. Self-driving vehicles are good with set routes that are heavily traveled. Keeping within a limited scope of travel means the vehicles’ self-driving systems don’t have to contend with the complexities of traveling through busy neighborhoods, and the limited geography can be more appealing to local regulators wary of unleashing fully autonomous vehicles on public roads.

Gatik’s new self-driving trucks are also arriving during a global pandemic when the world is trying to reduce human-to-human contact. Autonomous vehicles can remove at least one human from the supply chain equation, which, when multiplied across multiple industries, companies, and supply routes can add up pretty quickly.

Autonomous vehicles can also operate without breaks, helping keep stores better stocked, which we’ve seen can be an issue when people are panic shopping. Gatik said it’s been shuttling Walmart deliveries 12 hours each day, 7 days each week since July of last year. 

The COVID-19 outbreak could accelerate the acceptance of autonomous vehicles on the road. Nuro got the greenlight from the state of California to further test its self-driving pod-like vehicles on public roads. Refraction is using its autonomous REV-1 for restaurant and grocery delivery in Ann Arbor, MI. And Starship robots are making food deliveries in Tempe, AZ and in Fairfax, VA.

Gatik says that it has delivered more than 15,000 orders for multiple retail customers across North America and that its new box truck is the first autonomous delivery vehicle with temperature control capabilities. Gatik just might make the middle mile very cool for self-driving vehicles.

Chowbotics Deploying 50 New Salad Making Robots to Hospitals Across the Country

Chowbotics announced today that it is deploying 50 new salad making robots to hospitals across the country. The company said that by the end of June, it will have a total of 70 Sally robots in hospitals in the U.S. and Europe, up from 16 at the beginning of February.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrust Chowbotics into a unique position, especially when it comes to feeding healthcare workers. Doctors and nurses are working around the clock and need access to fresh food, and Sally, which can make yogurt, grain and salad bowls, can serve a variety of meals for every daypart , 24 hours a day.

Additionally, open salad bars are being removed from cafeterias, restaurants and grocery stores out of concern that they can spread the coronavirus. So finding and selling a salad will get more complicated. Sally’s 22 ingredients are stored in airtight containers that are held within the robot, providing an added layer of protection from outside contamination.

It’s not a good thing that hospitals represent such a big opportunity for Chowbotics and other robotic vending services right now. The fact that hospitals are busy illustrate a sad and deadly fact about the COVID-19. From a strictly cold, business standpoint, Chowbotics’ ability to sell into the healthcare market right now comes at the same time when colleges, the company’s other big customer segment, have shut down, eliminating those lines of business.

With their ability to reduce human-to-human contact, and inability to actually get sick during this pandemic, robots are starting to play a larger role in our meal journey. Robots like Sally are making meals, while delivery robots like those from Starship and Refraction are bringing meals to our doorsteps. As the effect coronavirus has on social distancing continues to ripple long after the virus has receded, we will be interacting with more robots in our day-to-day lives.

Refraction’s “Goldilocks” Size Could Make it Pretty Great for Robot Grocery Delivery

Contactless delivery as a concept, didn’t exist prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. The phrase describes the way of delivering food and other goods without humans having to interact with or touch one another.

Delivery robots hold the promise of taking contactless delivery one step further, by removing humans from the equation altogether. Over in Ann Arbor, MI, Refraction.ai launched its robot fleet for restaurant lunch delivery earlier this year, and this month started piloting a grocery delivery service.

Refraction builds the REV-1, an autonomous three-wheeled delivery robot that is ruggedized so that it can handle inclement weather. The company has eight robots rolling through a 3.5 mile radius around Ann Arbor right now making deliveries , with another 15 robots being manufactured.

I first came across Refraction’s grocery work in a WIRED article about the delivery fees Refraction was charging. So I hopped on the phone with Refraction Co-Founder, Ram Vasudevan, to find out more about its grocery program and catch up with the company.

According to Vasudevan, Refraction has partnered with a local grocery store called the Produce Station and has another grocery partner coming online soon. The program is currently being tested and is not yet open to the public, but for now, customers are directed to a special website created by Refraction where they can shop online for food items just as they would from any retailer. A robot is dispatched to the store where a worker there packs it with the order (a REV-1 can hold six grocery bags). The robot is then sent off to the house for delivery with a text message alerting the shopper when the robot has arrived.

The Refraction robot isn’t completely contactless, however. Recipients still need to touch the robot to unlock it, something Vasudevan says the company is working on. Refraction is also looking to add UV lights to the cargo cavity to help with sanitization.

Refraction isn’t the only company that is doing robotic food delivery. Starship’s cooler-sized robots have been doing grocery delivery in Milton Keynes, England, and are now doing restaurant delivery in U.S. cities like Tempe, AZ and Fairfax, VA. And Nuro was given the greenlight by California to start testing its autonomous pod vehicles, which about half the size of a regular car, for deliveries as well.

But one advantage Refraction’s robot may have is its “Goldilocks”-like size. It stands five feet tall and is narrow enough to travel in the bike lanes on roads . This could potentially make it more friendly to city regulators who don’t want their sidewalks clogged with robots. It could also prove more attractive than a pod, because the robot can skooch off to the side to make way for traffic, and have an easier time finding enough space to park.

Vasudevan said that Refraction was “overwhelmed” with interest from restaurants when it launched that delivery option earlier this year. As the company moves past the testing phase, it’s going to have quite a bit of contact with grocers as well.

Wait, Robot Delivery Companies Charge the Same Commissions as Human Delivery?

One of the key selling points of our delivery robot future was that it would be less expensive than existing human efforts. Yes, automation would take some human jobs, but the savings would create cheaper food and faster service. But a story out in WIRED today shows that at least right now, robot delivery companies are charging the same commissions as their human counterparts.

The main thrust of the WIRED story is that robot deliveries should be having a big moment during this pandemic. Robots reduce human-to-human contact, can go into dangerous areas, and can operate around the clock. But they aren’t having that big moment, hampered by technical limitations, local regulations, and in some cases — cost.

WIRED highlights two delivery companies: Starship and Refraction. Starship makes cooler-sized robots that are best known in the U.S. for scurrying around a number of college campuses bringing meals and snacks to hungry students. Refraction makes the bigger REV-1, a robust three-wheeled robot that can tackle inclement weather and launched lunch delivery in Ann Arbor, MI at the end of last year.

In Fairfax, VA, where Starship recently started making restaurant deliveries, the owners of the Havabite restaurant told WIRED that Starship is charging them 20 percent commission fees (after a one-month free trial), which they said is more than the restaurant pays GrubHub for delivery.

Up in Michigan, Refraction is charging 15 percent commission on deliveries, which WIRED says is “a rate equal to or lower than that charged by human-powered delivery apps.”

We have reached out to both Starship and Refraction for confirmation clarification. A Refraction rep emailed us the following: “Average delivery fees for a restaurant are typically 30% (like through Doordash or Uber Eats) and [Refraction is] charging half of that. On the consumer side, there is a $3 fee which is about a quarter of the typical order cost. Refraction is also now testing a grocery delivery pilot with zero fees.”

Back in January of 2019, as it was rolling out to its first college campus, Starship told us that it “uses different revenue models depending on location,” and that it “sometimes charge[s] a margin on top of the delivery fee.” For its part, Refraction told us in July of 2019 that it was charging a delivery fee that was better than what Uber is charging.

I get that 2019 was a lifetime ago and a lot has happened since then. I also get that robots ain’t cheap, especially when they are just starting out and haven’t reached scale yet. But human third-party delivery services are being vilified for cutting into the already slim margins of restaurants during this pandemic crisis, so much so that local governments are enforcing caps on delivery commissions. You’d think robot companies, which still have technical and regulatory hurdles to overcome, would want to make them as attractive an alternative as possible.

But maybe that isn’t possible right now. This COVID-19 pandemic is impacting every corner of the economy, including the companies behind these burgeoning robot delivery services. It’s not exactly the easiest time to raise fresh capital to fuel growth. Starship reportedly went through a round of layoffs at the end of March.

Despite all this, the coronavirus has strengthened my belief that robots are the future of delivery, especially in a more socially distant post-pandemic world. Hopefully the economics will work out so robots can help us get through all this to find out.

Online Grocery Demand Up 80-100 Percent At Takeoff’s Robot Fulfilment Centers

Anyone who has tried to order groceries online in the past month knows how backed up the supermarkets are. Amazon has implemented a waitlist for grocery delivery, ShopRite has virtual waiting rooms before you can actually shop for groceries, and Instacart is ratcheting its delivery force up to 750,000 workers to deal with demand.

One thing that could alleviate some of the stress being put on grocery e-commerce is robots, specifically the robotic fulfillment of online orders. Automated fulfillment centers use a series of totes and rails to to gather items for online grocery orders. These fulfillment centers are either built into the back of existing stores, or in standalone facilities.

Robots are ideal for this surge in grocery fulfillment for a few reasons. They are fast, precise, tireless, and, perhaps most important in our pandemic world, they don’t get sick.

Robotic fulfillment is still pretty nascent, with most retailers bringing robotic fulfillment online in just the past year. Given the crush of new e-commerce grocery shoppers and the need to fulfill all those orders, I spoke with Curt Avallone, the Chief Business Officer of Takeoff Technologies by phone last week. Takeoff builds automated fulfillment centers for a number of retailers including Albertsons, Loblaws, Sedano’s, and ShopRite.

“We have nine large grocery chains, six operational units and another 20 under construction,” Avallone told me. “The demand for online grocery is up 80 percent to over 100 percent at our facilities.” Additionally, Avallone said order volume is up. Where the average basket size used to be $150, that number is now pushing up towards $200 since the coronavirus outbreak.

Avallone also said that their current retail partners are ordering more micro-fulfillment centers as grocers anticipate a larger proportion of their business will be online.

“Speed is being requested by most of our retail partners, so they can do a better job of meeting customer demand,” Avallone said.

Takeoff clients are also looking to build more standalone facilities, rather than putting them in the backs of stores. “We still have a lot of facilities being attached,” Avallone said, “but there is a desire to move as quickly as possible. Sometimes standalone is faster.”

Part of the allure of standalone facilities is the ability to locate them away from traffic congestion and closer to major roads for easier routing. They can also be built without any complications from also needing to service in-store customers, and can operate 20 – 22 hours a day, and only require a crew of 12 people.

For retailers looking to add robotic fulfillment, Avallone says that Takeoff’s solution costs $3 – $4 million and takes between 12 and 16 weeks to be operational.

Takeoff isn’t the only company providing robotic fulfillment for retailers. Fabric (formerly Common Sense Robotics) is expanding its presence here in the U.S., Amazon is working with Dematic at its new standalone grocery stores, Kroger is building out standalone facilities powered by Ocado‘s technology, and Alert Innovation is working with Walmart.

With sheltering in place likely to be with us for a while, and at least one study showing that 60 percent of US shoppers are scared to go into grocery stores, online grocery’s sudden surge could become new normal. If so, we’ll need all kinds of tools, including robots, to help fulfill orders and the promise of online grocery shopping.

Bear Robotics CEO on the Role of Restaurant Server Robots in a COVID (and Beyond) World

For the past couple of years, robots were the shiny new object for restaurants. They could automate cooking, serving and delivering food, and even wash the dishes when all was said and done. But last year’s robots were still first generation tech and more of a novelty as the restaurant industry figured out the cultural and economic costs and benefits of automation.

Then COVID-19 came along and the world turned upside down. Restaurants that haven’t shut down permanently are looking to see what socially distant changes will be mandated in order for them to reopen. With their inability to get sick, robots could move from a novelty in restaurants to a necessity.

To see if there’s been a increase in robot interest from the restaurant industry, I checked in with John Ha, Founder and CEO of Bear Robotics. Bear is the company behind Penny, the autonomous front of house robot that can bring food to tables and carry empty plates back to be cleaned.

“Interest is going up a lot,” Ha said about incoming inquiries of his robot. “Before COVID, [restaurant] operators loved our robots, but employees were fifty-fifty, and customers didn’t really care. Now the changes that I see are on the customer side.”

The changes he’s talking about are what concerns customers now have. Before they didn’t care about the robot because they were most interested in the food. But in a pandemic world, customers now want to know who has touched their food and the cleanliness of those hands.

“People come back for the food before, now people are going to pick the restaurant they can trust,” Ha said. “People want less contact in the restaurant.”

Robots are a way of providing one less point of human contact. Kitchen staff can load up the robot tray and the robot then drives itself to its table destination to bring people their order. But then it actually gets a little complicated. When it comes to moving the food off the robot and onto the table, as Ha explained. “Should we allow customers to pick up the food? There’s danger involved with that as well.” It’s not hard to imagine, for example, a customer dropping a bowl of scalding soup as they lifted it off the robot.

“But would you want the servers to touch the food?” Ha continued. “They can’t wash their hands every minute, and even if they could, how do you know?”

One thing Ha does know is that the next version of Penny will be easier to clean. “The next version much easier to clean and food contact safe,” said Ha, “From the materials to design.”

Sterilization is going to play an increasingly important role in food robotics, and could become one of its biggest selling points. It’s much easier to wipe down a robot than it is to constantly monitor all your employees for any sign of illness.

Then there is the question of what do restaurant customers want to interact with? Restaurants in California will reportedly need to have servers wear gloves and masks. Which is less threatening to a customer, a masked human or a robot?

I don’t know. We’re all figuring this out in real time, and robots may not be the answer for every restaurant. “Adopting a robot is an intrusive change for the restaurant,” Ha said. “They have to redefine the workflow for expediters, servers, bussers.”

Despite all that, in a world wary of human contact, robotics could solve at least part of the meal journey puzzle. As Ha noted “Now it’s something everyone will consider.”

Expect More Restaurants to Use AI Cameras Like DragonTail’s to Show a Kitchen’s Cleanliness

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, people mainly worried about where their food came from. Was it organic, locally raised, grain-fed, etc. (It was a simpler time.) But as the virus has spread, the bigger concern for consumers is who has touched their food, and were they wearing gloves and a face mask when they did so.

This is the socially distant, contactless delivery world that we now live in, which actually makes it the perfect time for Dragontail Systems to launch its new AI-powered camera that detects the sanitary conditions of food prep areas as the food is being packaged up for delivery.

You may remember Dragontail when its camera + computer vision system debuted at Domino’s in Australia last year. Dragontail’s camera is mounted above the workstation in Domino’s back of house where pizzas come out of the oven, are sliced up and boxed.

Back then, the Dragontail system was being used to assess quality control: that the pizza was the right shape with the right toppings, and that it was cooked properly. Dragontail’s camera took pictures of the pizza and Domino’s sent those pics to the customer as a way of showing hey, your pizza order was made properly and it’s heading out to you.

Now, in addition to the existing quality control features, Dragontail announced today that its camera system can check for sanitation conditions. The camera detects things like whether gloves and facemasks being worn, or how often a workspace is sanitized. The exact parameters of what to look for are up to the restaurant, as are how violations are communicated to the worker and/or manager.

So now, in addition to a picture of the food cooked properly, restaurants can provide a customer with a checklist of steps taken to show that the food was also handled properly. The end customer, then, can feel a little more comfortable knowing the restaurant followed proper cleanliness procedures.

We actually started seeing similar technology pop up last year in, of all places, China. As we wrote then, AI systems were installed in restaurants in the Shaoxing Province of China to monitor for unsanitary conditions like improper uniforms and mixed use of cutting boards. More recently in India, home cook marketplace FoodCloud launched a Kitchen Cam, which offers customers video footage of the kitchen and cooks as they make and package food.

Dragontail’s camera is currently being used in more than 2,500 stores across Australia, Canada, Singapore, the UK and Belgium. With today’s announcement, the company is ready to expand into the U.S. and work with restaurants of all sizes. The cameras cost between $500 and $1,000 and there is a $50 monthly fee for the computer vision systems.

As we’ve written before, the COVID-19 pandemic is accelerating changes throughout the meal journey. With cameras like Dragontail’s likely becoming more commonplace, the meal journey will now include pictures.

From Michigan to Korea, Robots Keep Food Rolling When People Can’t

Prior to this pandemic, the big ethical questions surrounding food robotics and automation was their impact on loss of human jobs. But as COVID-19 has forced us to social distance and rethink our regular activities, replacing humans with robots for food delivery seems like a more ethical choice. Robots, after all, don’t need face masks, can be placed in frontline situations and won’t accidentally cough on your groceries.

As it’s done with many other aspects of the meal journey, the coronavirus is accelerating the adoption of certain types of food tech — like robots — that otherwise would have come to market on a much longer timeline.

The Detroit News posted a story yesterday about the increased demand for Refraction’s delivery robots in Michigan. Refraction makes the rugged, three-wheeled, self-driving REV-1 delivery bot. It’s bigger than Starship’s cooler-sized robots, yet not as big as Nuro’s self-driving pod vehicles.

At the end of last year, Refraction kicked off a beta program to deliver takeout meals from four different Ann Arbor restaurants. The Detroit News reports that Refraction now has more than 400 restaurant partners and the company’s fleet of five robots is running at capacity. Refraction is also working to get into grocery delivery.

The robots are cleaned between deliveries, and Refraction has added UV lights to the interior of the robot to further sanitize the cargo compartment. The robot is also contactless as consumers use their phone to unlock and open the robot to retrieve their food.

Refraction’s robots also, obviously, reduce human-to-human contact for people receiving food while sheltering in place. Our country may regain a certain amount of freedom to move in the coming months, but we’ve had a pretty healthy fear of other people pumped into us for the past couple of months. Robots may be more welcome once we’re past this.

These robotic advantages could also be applied beyond restaurant delivery and into restaurants themselves. The Korea Times reports that this week Woowa Bros. announced it would offer free rentals of its “Dilly” server robot to 50 restaurants in Korea for two months starting in mid-April.

The Dilly is an autonomous robot with a series of racks meant to work the front of house, delivering food from the kitchen to tables and bringing empty plates back.

Woowa Bros. launched the Dilly server program back in November and charged roughly $773 a month (with a two-year contract) for the robot. The Korea Times writes that 164 restaurants applied for the program, and currently Woowa has 23 robots operating in 16 restaurants across Korea.

It’s entirely likely that we’ll see more server robots in restaurants here in the U.S. as well. Though coronavirus has permanently shuttered at least 3 percent of restaurants across the nation, there’s already talk of what restaurants will look like when dine-in rooms re-open. Expect fewer people, disposable menus, and possibly servers wearing masks.

One has to wonder what people will prefer interacting with: a server wearing a mask or a robot? To be fair, a lot more of us will probably be wearing masks in public in the near future, but the cold, sterility of a robot may be more appealing to nervous people just starting to come out from sheltering in place.

Refraction and Woowa aren’t the only examples of robots gaining more popularity. Starship recently expanded the use of its food delivery robots beyond college campuses and onto city streets in Arizona and around Washington DC. And Nuro just got the greenlight to test its autonomous delivery vehicles on public streets in California.

But it’s not just the consumer end of the robotic equation that we should be thinking about. While robots may help reduce human-to-human contact when accepting your food, they also relieve some of the new dangers of being a delivery person. Let’s face it, delivery people have worked hard during this outbreak and have often gotten the short end of the gig economy stick. Ideally the food industry can use any savings from automation to help fund new job opportunities for humans.

The ethical questions surrounding the availability of human jobs in an increasingly automated world will remain and need to be addressed in a thoughtful manner after this virus recedes. But in the shorter term, robots may help reduce transmission of a deadly virus and perhaps ease a little bit of anxiety around getting our food delivered.

Just in Time for Social Distancing, Rozum Cafe Launches its Robot Barista

There are two opposing forces during our sheltering in place and social distancing. We are actively avoiding other people, especially those we don’t know, and also actively working to maintain small comforts where they can be found — like in your morning cup of coffee.

While at-home packaged coffee sales have surged during our isolation, sales at Starbucks have dropped precipitously. A massive part of this drop, obviously is that Starbucks had to shut down its walk-in options last month. But once we emerge from quarantine, will those in need of a latté still stand in crowded stores with other people and trust the human hands crafting their drinks?

Perhaps the coronavirus could spur greater interest in robot-powered coffee kiosks. With their lack of humans, consistent product and ability to work around the clock, robo-ristas could become the next hot thing in coffee. Which means that the Rozum Cafe appears to have launched at the right time.

Developed by Belarus-based Rozum Robotics and announced this past weekend, the Rozum Cafe is an enclosed kiosk with an articulating arm that serves up a variety of coffee drinks. According to its FAQ, the Rozum Cafe can serve 300 drinks “per shift,” though they don’t say specifically how long a shift is. It can also be customized to expand drink menus and even serve up pastries.

There’s no official pricing for the Rozum Cafe, with the web site only saying that anyone buying one should actually get three of them for “optimal results” with the ROI. New owners will also have to pay for shipping, installing and setup of the machines.

The Rozum Cafe is certainly not alone in the robot coffee space. Cafe X, Briggo and MontyCafe have all already been on the market for more than a year.

However, the world has changed drastically in just the past few months and the opportunity for automated coffee could wind up being bigger than ever. In a post-pandemic world where we may no longer shake hands, grabbing a cup of coffee is something we’ll still want to do, just perhaps in a more humanless way.

Starship Robots Making Food Deliveries in Tempe, AZ

If a person dropping food off on your doorstep is still one human too many in these COVID-19 times, then maybe you should try moving to Tempe, AZ where Starship’s autonomous robots have started making restaurant deliveries.

Starship’s li’l rovers are squat, six-wheeled, cooler-sized robots that can scurry around town making deliveries. In a time when people are being asked to shelter in place, autonomous robots can help reduce human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus by, well, not being human.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Starship now has more than 30 autonomous, on-demand robots delivering daily between 10:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. Meals are available from three different Tempe restaurants: Fate Brewing Company, Tempe City Tacos and Venezia’s Pizza. For those in Tempe, the delivery area is bordered by S. Mill Ave. to the east, S. Rural Road to the west, Route 60 to the south and Southern Ave. to the north.

Starship had been focusing its go-to market in the US on colleges, where it has been steadily rolling out on different campuses over the past year. But with the global pandemic forcing schools to send students home and the rising need for contactless delivery, Starship’s shift towards deliveries for the general public makes sense.

Tempe is the third location in the US where Starship has been making non-college deliveries. The company has already begun delivering different restaurants in Washington DC and Irvine, CA. According to a Starship spokesperson, future delivery cities include the City of Fairfax in DC and Moutain View, CA (which will also be testing Nuro’s driverless delivery pods!).

In addition to requiring one less human putting themselves at risk to bring you a burrito, autonomous robots can also run continuously without needing a break, and can be easily cleaned in between trips.

Starship’s robots aren’t the only ones pitching in during these dire times. The Postmates Serve robot has been making deliveries in Los Angeles. On a much larger scale, the CEO of driverless van startup, Udelv, has publicly offered his company’s autonomous delivery services to help make deliveries in quarantined areas.

If you’re in the designated area in Tempe and use Starship’s robot delivery, take a picture and let us know how it went!