Kiwibot and Sodexo are expanding their existing relationship to bring food delivery robots to three new college campuses this month. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Kiwibots will be rolling out to New Mexico State University, Loyola Marymount University in California, and Gonzaga University in Washington state.
Founded in 2017, Kiwibot makes a squat, rover-sized robot that scurries along sidewalks to securely deliver food and drinks to consumers. Kiwibot first partnered with Sodexo in September of 2020 to bring delivery robots to the University of Denver campus. For these new school delivery programs, students will be able to use their meal plans to pay for food through the local delivery app Bite+. Each campus is getting between 25 and 30 robots, and there will be a $2 delivery plus 10 percent of the order size fee.
That college campuses are getting food delivery robots is nothing new. Starship has been steadily rolling out its robot program to schools across the country for the past couple of years (and announced this morning it has added four more colleges). But Kiwibot and Starship are taking two different approaches. Starship requires users to download the Starship app in order to make deliveries. Kiwibot initially started out using a similar marketplace model, but then abandoned that approach when it pivoted to more of a B2B play and partnered with Sodexo.
Interest in robot delivery was accelerated by the pandemic as contactless food delivery became more important to stop the spread of the virus. Even outside of the COVID pandemic, robots could find more use at colleges, which are packed with kids in dorms. The ability to get food delivered by a robot so a sick person doesn’t have to leave their room and go to the food hall is probably a good thing all around.
In April of this year, Kiwibot announced v4.0 of its robot, along with a manufacturing agreement with Segway. In addition to its college campus program, Kiwibot is now making deliveries in San Jose and Santa Monica in California, Dallas, Texas, Taipei, Taiwan and Medellin, Colombia.
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