One thing is becoming clear as all these speedy grocery delivery startups pop up, proliferate and pile on the funding: All this activity isn’t just about getting you groceries. Increasingly, it’s about getting you lunch and dinner.
Already we’ve seen 1520 expand into creating their own line of meals available for delivery. Gopuff is in the midst of a huge expansion into ghost kitchens. Food Rocket is also leaning more heavily on ready-to-eat meals, and is adding its own ghost kitchens.
However, I think the most interesting play in this space is coming from DoorDash, which is not a speedy grocery delivery service. Even so, DoorDash does have it’s own DashMart delivery-only convenience stores, and it also acquired robot startup Chowbotics earlier this year. As HNGRY recently reported, DoorDash is now testing Chowbotics’s Sally robot to make private label salads and microwaveable meals to be sold at DashMarts. This is a smart idea.
The whole point of speedy grocery delivery services like Gorillas and JOKR is that they will get you your food fast. With Chowbotics’ Sally, DashMart can offer a menu of salads, yogurt parfaits, or even grain bowl-style food, all of which can be dispensed quickly. Even better, the meal can be customized by the user and made on demand by the robot, so the store doesn’t have to order a bunch of packaged meals ahead of time, only to have them sit on shelves unsold.
The key factors at play here are speed and size. Fast delivery services need an automation solution that can prep a meal quickly, but it also has to be done in a space that’s pretty limited size-wise. Part of the reason these services like JOKR and Fridge No More believe they can economically scale is because they don’t need a lot of real estate to operate. These dark stores are typically around 2,000 – 2,500 sq. ft, so there isn’t a ton of room to house all the inventory and a lot of machinery. Part of the beauty of a Sally robot is that it’s only the size of a vending machine and could be plugged in just about anywhere.
Since Chowbotics is already owned by DoorDash, other speedy delivery will have to look elsewhere for any robo-solutions. Thankfully, there are a number of robot startups like Karakuri, Kitchen Robotics and RoboEatz that make standalone kiosks capable of assembling and cooking all kinds of hot and cold meals. Even better, because speedy delivery services typically operate on a hyper-local level, the ingredients and menus for any food robot could be customized for that neighborhood. Bonus: The delivery service can put all kinds of local order/deliver data to work to improve efficiencies — or add more services.
Adding more meal services wouldn’t even be that hard considering the advances in vending machine technology. A fast grocery service could deliver hot ramen from a Yo-Kai Express machine, or a pizza from a Piestro robot, or a boba tea from Bobacino.
Of course, robots ain’t cheap. DoorDash had the scratch to buy its own robotics company but these other services don’t. (Well, Gopuff’s second round of billion dollar funding could get it a few robots.) But there could be an opportunity if robots were paid for with revenue sharing. That way there’s little to no upfront cost for a delivery startup, and as the delivery service (ideally) grows and gets more use, robot companies could generate greater amounts of money.
Fast grocery delivery and food robotics are both very new ideas, and there might be some trepidation on both sides to partner with unproven ideas. But there could also be a peanut butter + chocolate type scenario where these two hot innovations help each other scale up fast.
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Basil Street Using Equity Crowdfunding to Raise $20M for its Pizza Vending Machines – The company has thus far shunned traditional VC funding.
Air Protein Company NovoNutrients Raises $4.7 to Complete Its Pilot Program – NovoNutrients feeds the CO2 inputs it collects to naturally occurring microbes via a fermentation process. The resulting proteins have a variety of uses, including as ingredients in meat analogues as well as animal feeds.
DoorDash Expands Its Ghost Kitchen Operation in California – DoorDash Kitchens San Jose will house six different restaurant concepts from both nationally known restaurants and those from the San Francisco Bay Area.
ConverseNow Raises $15M for Restaurant AI Assistant Tech – The company says its assistants achieve an 85 percent order accuracy rate, and that they increase check size by 25 percent.
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