Just in the last day, two food robot startups have shared some deployment data that make clear they – and the broader space – appear to be getting some traction.
First was the CEO of Yo-Kai, Andy Lin, who shared a map of the American cities in which Yo-Kai ramen kiosks are deployed:
When I followed up with a question about exactly how many locations and cities, Lin told me, “26 states, 127 locations.” He also said the company hopes to have Yo-Kais in all fifty states soon.
Impressive momentum, and it doesn’t even include the company’s presence in Asia and Europe.
Next up was Starship, which put out a news release this morning with updated college campus rollout numbers. According to the company, Starship sidewalk bots will traverse the campuses of 50 universities this fall – 20 more than last fall – including new schools like Wichita State University, Boise State University, and The University of New Orleans. The company says it now has a fleet of over two thousand sidewalk rovers and operates in over half of the US states.
The company also announced it is introducing wireless charging this year, which will allow the Starship bots to roll up to charging stations, connect, and charge, all without a human, using the same basic technology many of us use to charge our smart watches or iPhones with nowadays.
You can see the Starship charging stations in the video below:
Interestingly, the Starship numbers dwarf publicly available numbers from Serve, the spinout from Uber that said in its filing to go public via reverse merger that it currently has a fleet of about 100 sidewalk delivery bots.
While the past year has been a challenging one for food robots, the recent updates from Yo-Kai and Starship and Serve’s recent filing to go public show there is some hope for the market despite the difficulties of running complex and capital-intensive food robotics businesses.
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