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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

contactless

Presto Launches a Bundle of Tech Tools to Help Restaurants Reopen With Fewer Staff

Restaurant tech platform Presto today launched a new product bundle it says is meant to help restaurants keep their operations up-to-par in the midst of the ongoing labor shortage. The Staff Multiplier technology package is meant to help both QSRs and full-service restaurants reopen at full capacity even with limited workers onboard, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

From Presto:

“Presto Staff Multiplier includes a variety of technologies designed to enable restaurants to increase the guest-to-staff ratio, improve speed and quality of service, identify bottlenecks, and offer guests a superior experience.”

In terms of actual tools, that includes a feature called Vision, which uses computer vision cameras to track throughput and order accuracy, and the Line Buster/Server Assistant, which are handheld tablets staff can use to take orders from anywhere, whether in the dining room or drive-thru. The bundle also includes voice ordering and pay-at-the-table features via tabletop kiosks and QR codes that let guests order and pay from their own mobile devices.

Some of these features are not brand new. Presto began offering QR codes for diners early on during the pandemic. The computer vision system and the company’s pay-at-the-table kiosks both pre-date the pandemic. Rather than a suite of new tools, Staff Multiplier is instead a neatly bundled package of existing Presto hardware and software that can make the order and pay process faster for restaurants, and easier with fewer people on the floor. 

Presto, which counts Chilli’s, Outback Steakhouse, and Aramark among its clients, launched a similar “bundle” last year, just as restaurants began to cautiously reopen after the first major lockdown. It’s “contactless” package was one of the instances of a restaurant tech company bundling a suite of tools together and branding them as a way to help restaurants reopen. Others quickly followed Presto’s lead, unveiling their own bundles of “contactless” dining room kits.

Of course, all that got put on hold when new lockdowns and capacity restrictions once again shuttered dining rooms. Now, with vaccinations widely available and capacity restrictions lifting or already lifted, we can expect more restaurant tech companies to follow Presto’s lead and launch tech bundles branded as tools to help with reopening. Only this time, the angle is combating the labor shortage. While more complex than first meets the eye, the shortage of restaurant workers is creating difficulties for restaurant owners when it comes to delivering high-quality service to guests in the dining room. Hardware and software can’t fix some of the bigger issues at stake, like the need for wage increases, but they can help restaurants grapple with the current situation a little more easily.

Farmer’s Fridge Adds Contactless Ordering and Payment

Farmer’s Fridge vending machines have always had a lot of things people were looking for: 24 hour access, a creative menu, and fresh salads served in cute jars. But the one thing Farmer’s Fridge didn’t offer was contactless ordering and payment, features made more important by the COVID-19 pandemic. Customers still needed to touch the machine to place there order and make a payment.

Until recently, that is. I spoke with Farmer’s Fridge CTO, Candice Savino, this week, who told me that the company rolled out contactless reserve and pay functionality to its machines at the end of August.

Like so many other players in the vending machine space, the addition of contactless ordering was on Farmer’s Fridge’s roadmap but was bumped to the head of the feature queue when the pandemic hit. Savino’s team worked quickly, creating an early prototype in May and rolling out the finished product in August to 160 of its 200 machines that are still active (prior to the pandemic, Farmer’s Fridge had 700 machines active in places like office buildings and convention centers).

Farmer’s Fridge contactless ordering works through the company’s mobile app. In the app, the user selects the machine it wants to order from, places the order and pays. That machine then holds the food until the person arrives and punches in a special code generated by the Farmer’s Fridge app.

Savino said the solution allows the company to actually have more accurate inventory management across its entire fleet of machines because it moves stocking data from the edge to a centralized location in the cloud. There are also safeguards in place to prevent remote dispensing, say if you accidentally went to one machine but had ordered from a different machine across town. (If that is the case, the user cancels and re-orders.)

Savino said that adoption of the new ordering system has been good, with 20 percent of Farmer’s Fridge orders going through the mobile app and growing week over week.

With the pandemic still raging, it’s a safe bet that all vending services will adopt contactless ordering and payment going forward. Chowbotics, which makes Sally the robot salad maker, added contactless ordering at the end of last month, and Blendid, which makes a robot smoothie kiosk, has always featured contactless ordering and payment.

Farmer’s Fridge is definitely in touch with the times, especially when it comes to removing touch from its retail experience.

Burger King, Popeye’s to Modernize Their Drive-Thrus With More Tech

Restaurant Brands International (RBI) announced today its plans to “modernize” the drive-thru at more than 10,000 Burger King and Tim Horton’s locations in North America by 2022. Additionally, a drive-thru modernization for Popeye’s, also owned by RBI, will kick off later this year. 

RBI first hinted at this development back in February. Most of the updates and changes are around the digital menu boards on display in drive-thru lanes. These menu boards will be equipped in the future with “predictive selling technology” built in-house that can learn consumer purchasing habits and make recommendations based on those as well as factors like current weather and traffic.

These new menu boards will also incorporate loyalty programs and contactless order/payment features, with the latter being developed in partnership with Verifone. The first prototype of this order/payment integration is currently testing at a Tim Horton’s location in Canada. An additional 15 locations are set to test it by January 2021. 

RBI notes that it already has a number of these newly revamped menu boards installed at its restaurant brand locations: 800 at Tim Horton’s locations in the U.S. in Canada and more than 1,500 at Burger King in the U.S. As noted above, Popeye’s will start to incorporate them into its drive-thru layout later this year.

Making menu boards more dynamic is just one way QSRs are modernizing their drive-thrus to make them faster, more efficient, and more contactless. That modernization, while broad in terms of real-world application, is necessary now that the pandemic has forced the restaurant biz to go off-premises. Drive-thru times are about 30 seconds slower right now than they were in 2019, a lag QSR Magazine says equates to lost revenue, typically around $64,182,668 annually per 2,000 stores. That’s a lag restaurant chains will have to fix in order to remain competitive, since the future of the dining room still hangs in the balance (because pandemic) and drive-thru sales can account for up to 70 percent of a chain’s overall sales.

Efforts from other restaurant companies of late include full-on pivots to drive-thru format from the likes of Shake Shack and Chipotle as the companies add more lanes and increase mobile order-ahead functionality for this format. KFC is exploring license plate-recognition technology, and of course there is McDonald’s Dynamic Yield technology that’s currently installed at thousands of the chain’s locations.

RBI actually has much more than menu boards up its sleeve when it comes to modernizing the drive-thru. The company recently showed off a Burger King prototype that features a conveyor belt system for delivering food to cars and a kitchen built over the drive-thru lanes. Undoubtedly, some of the ideas embedded in that prototype will make their way to other RBI brands and locations in the future.

Some Fun High-Tech Suggestions for Contactless Halloween Candy Delivery

Among the many, many, many things COVID-19 has upended is Halloween. For obvious reasons, the idea of interacting with hundreds of strangers crowded on your doorstep in a single night to personally hand out candy isn’t quite as sweet during a pandemic.

As such, we at The Spoon have wracked our brains to figure out how food tech might be able to rescue any Halloween encounters you might have with contactless delivery. Here are a few methods we’ve seen elsewhere online.

ALEXA POWERED CANDY CHUTE
One idea that seems to be gaining traction around the web is building a candy chute. Basically you get a six-foot piece of PVC pipe or whatever, and slide those fun-sized Snickers and more down to the trick or treaters. There isn’t much “tech” in this approach, and you still have to touch the candy bars to slide them down the chute. But those intrepid enough could zhuzhe it up a bit by building some kind of Alexa-enabled, Arduino-powered food dispenser at the top. Kiddos arrive and just have to yell “Alexa, gimme some candy!” and out it comes.

ROBOT DELIVERY
This one is a little more complex, but instead of going outside to personally meet trick-or-treaters, you could send a robot. Now, most people don’t have access to a personal Starship or Kiwibot, but the Keyes family over in Austin, TX have developed their own cool looking candy carrying robot (see below). If you don’t have that mechanical know-how, maybe strap a tray on top of a remote controlled car and drive it down to the curb?

CANDY BY DRONE
I’m thinking that for potential legal and regulatory reasons, I should say that you should definitely not try this at home. But over on done maker, DJI’s forum, you can see where someone did indeed deliver candy using a drone and some rope. There are definite navigational issues with this approach, with the rope swinging wildly (it’s no Google Wing), but perhaps the drone expert in your life could hack together a better solution. And then not use it because, again, we think that is a crazy idea.

Of course, if you’re looking to discourage trick or treaters, you could 3D print this double barrel candy corn launcher, because candy corn is gross.

Do you have any contactless candy dispensing hacks? Leave a comment and let us know!

Nespresso Adds Touchless Features To Its Momento Machine

Since the start of the pandemic, the words “contactless” and “touchless” have become the new buzz words in food tech. Nespresso Professional is the latest company to accommodate this COVID-19-prevention protocol: Today, the company announced the release of three new touchless features for the Nespresso Momento machines.

The Nespresso Momento machines are commonly found in office settings, so these new features aim to provide a safer coffee-making experience for those returning to work. The Nespresso Momento machine and its new features are available for businesses on the Nespresso Professional website.

One of the machine’s new features is an app, which allows a user to control the machine from their phone. A user must insert a capsule (so it’s not completely touchless), and then they are able to select the cup size and choose the recipe without ever touching the screen. The machine has a QR code that users scan with their phones to connect to the app.

The machine can also be set to automatically brew a cup of coffee when a particular pod is inserted. A user can pre-set the machine to brew a certain size or recipe with different coffee pods that the machine will automatically recognize when inserted. Lastly, the machine can be set to force users to clean the touch screen before using it again. A “lock screen” appears after every use, and it must be disinfected to use the screen.

Amongst Nespresso Professional, countless other companies have also expanded to oblige with COVID-19 safety precautions in the workplace. Pepsico released a Sodastream Professional over the summer that allows users to select different unsweetened, carbonated beverages through a mobile app. Minnow’s pods, which are essentially Amazon lockers for food, can be placed in a workplace to provide a solution for contactless food pick-up and delivery. With no clear end to the pandemic, these new contactless features don’t seem to be going away anytime soon.

In November, Nespresso Professional will additionally be launching a single touch capsule filling dispenser that is compatible with the Nespresso Momento machine.

Byte Adds Dynamic Pricing to Its Smart Vending Fridges

Byte Technology added dynamic pricing to its smart fridges this week, giving its clients the ability change prices of stocked items on the fly.

Through a combination of RFID and IoT, Byte makes smart vending refrigerators that allow shoppers to swipe their credit card, take what they want from that fridge and get charged automatically. The company licenses its technology platform to retail operations like supermarkets or restaurants, which brand the fridge to sell their packaged food (or anything really).

Because of the RFID tags and connectivity, a Byte fridge knows exactly what’s in its inventory as well as what items sold, when and to whom. With the addition of dynamic pricing, Byte fridge operators can now automatically discount items for just about any reason.

For example, if a fridge is stocked with fresh sandwiches, the operator can create a 25 percent discount on any of them set to expire. Because the fridge already knows everything about its inventory, it automatically knows which sandwiches this discount would apply to, so the operator doesn’t have to set a specific date or create a new rule each time. It could also run promotions on particular drinks, such as half-off carrot juice after 5p.m. on weekdays, or broader discounts like discounts on cobb salads every Monday.

By giving operators the ability to offer dynamic pricing, Byte hopes to reduce the amount of spoilage and food waste created through its platform. This type of dynamic pricing already exists in grocery stores through solutions like Wasteless, which algorithmically discounts food price based on factors like expiration date. And the Karma app teamed up with Electrolux to create special fridges in grocery stores that sell almost expired food for at least half off.

As I wrote about in my recent The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report, the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing retailers to examine new, contactless ways of selling. Vending services like Byte’s offer the ability to sell products without human-to-human interaction. And though the pandemic has shut down offices, which were a main line of business for Byte’s machines, Byte Founde, Lee Mokri told me by phone this week that it is seeing increased interest from places like residential buildings.

Come to think of it though, having a smart vending machine in the lobby of an apartment building that can automatically discount a pint of ice after midnight might not be the greatest thing in the world.

Sevenrooms Raises $50M Series B Funding for Its Data-Driven Restaurant Tech Platform

Restaurant tech company Sevenrooms has raised $50 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Providence Strategic Growth and brings Sevenrooms’ total funding to $71.5 million. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Sevenrooms will use the new funds to “further enhance” its restaurant guest-management platform as well as continue expanding globally. 

Sevenrooms, which was founded in 2011, has over time evolved from a reservations platform to a full suite of front-of-house tools that nowadays includes some pandemic-friendly features like contactless ordering and payments. The company continues to offer its reservations system, as well as waitlist and table management tools, marketing automation, and online ordering. Pre-pandemic, Sevenrooms was exploring voice-enabled restaurant tech as well as data-driven personalization.  

Like other front-of-house-focused restaurant tech companies, Sevenrooms quickly reacted to the COVID-19 crisis and the dining room shutdowns that followed. At no extra cost, it launched its DirectDelivery feature, which gives restaurants more ownership over their customers data on delivery order. The company also recently released its version of the contactless dining kit, meant to equip freshly reopened restaurant dining rooms with more contactless solutions, from order and pay technologies to digital menus. 

Others have made similar moves recently. In fact most restaurant tech companies — Presto, Zuppler, Paytronix, etc. — are offering enhancements to their platforms that emphasize contactless tools for the restaurant dining room.

Standing out from the masses will be the biggest challenge for all of these companies. Sevenrooms’ previous work around voice tech and personalization would give it a push in a somewhat unique direction. Its continued focus on giving restaurants more control over customer data will also be an important asset for the company going forward as digital properties become the restaurant experience, rather than an add-on sales channel.

The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report

Thanks to advances in hardware, the internet of things, and food preparation, vending machines today are basically restaurants in a box. They offer high-end cuisine in minutes, require minimal setup time, and have the on-board computing smarts to manage inventory and communicate any issues that arise.

With these capabilities, it’s no wonder the vending machine category was valued at more than $30 billion in 2018, according to Grandview Research, and was anticipated to have a CAGR of 9.4 percent from 2019 through 2025.

Had this report been written even just a few months ago, the main takeaway would have been that vending machines are perfect for high-traffic areas that operate around the clock: airports, corporate offices, college dorms, and hospitals.

But we’re living in a world continuously being shaped and reshaped by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Right now, some form of shelter-in-place orders blanket most of the U.S. Global air travel volume has plummeted, so airports are not busy. Non-essential businesses are closed and people are working from home, not office buildings. And colleges may not hold in-person classes until 2021.

While on the surface, those factors suggest vending machine companies will be yet-another sector wiped out by coronavirus, there has actually never been a better time for the automated vending machine industry. The small footprint and high-end food these devices offer are perhaps more important than ever at a time when minimizing human-to-human contact in foodservice is paramount to doing business. That makes the vending machine market uniquely positioned to capitalize on a post-pandemic world.

This report will define what the automated vending machine space is, list the major players, and present the challenges and opportunities for the market going forward.

Companies profiled in this report include Alberts, API Tech/Smart Pizza, Basil Street, Blendid, Briggo, Byte Technology, Cafe X, Chowbotics, Crown Coffee, Farmer’s Fridge, Fresh Bowl, Le Bread Xpress, Macco Robotics, TrueBird, and Yo-Kai Express.

This research report is exclusive for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.

Bevi Will Socially Distance Its Smart Water Coolers With Touchless Tech

As restaurants reopen and (some) employees go back to the office, ensuring sanitary, socially distanced public spaces is a major topic of discussion, and contactless is fast becoming a requirement for everything from restaurant menus to grocery deliveries to lunch.

Your office water cooler can join that list now, too. Today, Bevi, a tech company that makes smart water coolers for office and commercial spaces, announced a new touchless dispensing feature meant to make it machines feel more sanitized and socially distanced to users.

The Bevi machine dispenses both still and sparkling water in a variety of flavors. The system involves an internet-connected dispenser that hooks up to a tap water source. Up to now, users could set flavors, carbonation levels, and other preferences using a touchscreen built into the machine. But come July 13, both new and existing Bevi machines will offer touchless dispensing that utilizes an individual’s mobile phone, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Come July 13, Bevi will send an on-screen animation to all its machines that includes instructions on how to use touchless dispensing. To enable the animation, companies just have to run a simple software update. From there, users can scan a QR code, which will replicate Bevi’s dispensing menu on their own personal screen. The same options for drink customization (carbonation levels, flavor, etc.) will appear on the user’s phone just as they would have on the machine’s touchscreen.

On the surface, the update seems a small one, but actually, these micro innovations from the tech world play an important role in making the world, or at least your office or local restaurant, a more sanitary place. While the scale of germophobism varies from one individual to the next, the pandemic has definitely called into question our use of these screens in public settings.

Various efforts are in place to address those concerns. Restaurants across the world are being urged to adopt contactless menus. My colleague Chris Albrecht makes a good argument for gesture control on kiosks and smart dispensers. Others are releasing facial recognition technology on their machines, so that a user need only have their face scanned to access the customer profiles and past orders. 

But facial recognition systems are expensive and come with a double side of privacy concerns. In lots of cases, it may be that a simple QR code is more feasible for a business to implement, especially if it’s for something simple like dispensing a lime-flavored water.

That seems to be Bevi’s thinking behind its new feature update. Doubtless we’ll see many other device-makers rolling out their own touchless functionality in the near future.

Hold the Phone. Soon it Will Be Your Restaurant’s Menu

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A couple of years ago I came across a restaurant in Dallas, Texas that featured a menu written entirely in emojis. It was unexpected and creative, yet clear enough that a server didn’t have to come over and re-explain everything on the page.

I’m not (necessarily) advocating we battle the current restaurant industry fallout with emoji menus, but maybe we could use some of that outside-the-box thinking when it comes to revising menu formats to fit the new reality we live in. 

Since reusable menus are basically germ repositories, it’s no surprise they’re out now that dining rooms are reopening. The CDC’s recently released guidelines for reopening suggest restaurants “avoid using or sharing items such as menus” and to “instead use disposable or digital menus. . .” The National Restaurant Association’s guidelines tell restaurants to “make technology your friend” and suggest mobile ordering, and every other restaurant tech company that contacts me these days is offering up some form of digital menu for restaurants to integrate into their operations. 

A lot of restaurants will definitely start out by offering simple disposable menus. Paper is cheaper than software most of the time, and typing up and printing out a menu is faster than onboarding your business to a new tech solution.

Over time, though, that could change. As more emphasis gets placed on digital ordering for everyone, we’ll access more restaurant menus through our own phones and mobile devices. That opens up a whole world of possibilities in terms of what restaurants could one day offer on their menus beyond just the food items themselves.

Just a few examples: Menus could provide in-depth information the ingredients in a dish, like where that cilantro came from and how many months the apple traveled before it hit your plate. Menus might also include ratings from other customers, and Amazon-esque “you might also like” recommendations could show up on the screen. Maybe you could dictate the portion size you want, thereby reducing food waste.

With AI making its way into restaurant tech more and and more, restaurants could also build dynamic pricing into menus, based on time of day, foot traffic, weather, and offer coupons and promotional offers in real time. And sure, if someone really wanted to, an emoji menu would probably fly right now in more than a few places.

Most of these things exist already, though they’re not widespread and some are still in conceptual stages. The massive overhaul of the restaurant menu is a chance to start bringing those disparate pieces together to revamp the way we order our food.

Kitchen United Is Open for Business in Austin

One effect of this whole pandemic is that we’ve seen an uptick in to-go orders, and that trend won’t subside anytime soon. That makes now a good time for restaurants — some of them, at least — to consider adding a ghost kitchen to their operations. 

Those in Austin, TX can add Kitchen United to their list of choices when it comes to choosing a facility. The company, which provides ghost kitchen infrastructure (space, equipment, etc.) to restaurants announced this week its new location near the University of Texas is open for business. 

A number of restaurant chains have either already moved into the space or plan to do so in the coming weeks. Kitchen United has also allocated one of the kitchens in the new space to Keep Austin Fed, a nonprofit that gathers surplus food from commercial kitchens and distributes it to charities. As part of the deal, Keep Austin Fed will be able to “rescue” food from restaurants with kitchen operations inside the new KU facility. 

A press released emailed to The Spoon notes that “additional kitchen space is currently available” for restaurants that want to expand their off-premises operations. On that note, a word of advice for restaurants: make sure your restaurant is actually in need of a ghost kitchen before signing up with one. Kitchen United’s own CEO, Jim Collins, told me recently that restaurants need a certain amount of customer demand in order for the economics of a ghost kitchen to make sense. It’s not a small demand, either. In times like these, where the future of all restaurants is uncertain and what little money there is needs to be spent carefully, it pays to exercise some caution, even when it comes to an enticing new trend like ghost kitchens. 

Los Angeles Moves to Cap Third-Party Delivery Commission Fees

Behold, more fee caps for third-party delivery companies. This week, the Los Angeles City Council voted 14–0 to ask attorneys to draft a law that caps the commission fees delivery services charge restaurants at 15 percent. “Why should restaurants, and their customers, be put in a position to subsidize delivery app companies? We need to level the playing field,” Councilman Mitch O’Farrell told the Los Angeles Times.

This week’s proposal would also require that 100 percent of the tips customers leave on delivery orders through these apps go directly to the driver, which is pretty standard nowadays but caused some ruckus in the not-so-distant past. The fee caps would end 90 days after Los Angeles lifts its dining room closures. 

Needless to say, the move — which several other cities have already made — is not popular with delivery companies. Postmates, which is LA’s most popular third-party food delivery service, said governments setting a price on fees threatens jobs and creates “a false choice between local restaurants and the delivery network companies that support them.” The service wants instead to have a fee charged in delivery orders that would assist restaurants. That in turn would translate to yet-another fee for the customer, and be yet-another way in which restaurant food delivery services will suggest/try anything to avoid having to shoulder some of the burden the pandemic has brought on the restaurant industry.

As restaurants slowly reopen and the industry starts to adjust to its new normal, now we’ll begin to see if fee caps actually make a difference for struggling restaurants, and if they are here to stay for the long run.

Most Restaurants Will Mimic Shake Shack’s Digital-Centric Store Format in the Future

Shake Shack is modifying some store formats to be more off-premises friendly as the chain prepares to reopen dining rooms. These “Shack Track” stores, as they’re being dubbed, will include things like walk-up windows and more drive-thru lanes meant to encourage increased digital ordering, according to the company’s Q1 2020 earnings call this week.

Shake Shack CEO Randy Garutti said on the call that the chain will start opening dining rooms regionally, though with reduced capacity to ensure social distancing guidelines are in place. There will also be fewer cashiers and kiosks in stores, and the chain plans to “shift guests to mobile and contactless pre-ordering.”

Hence the new store formats the company will test as it reopens restaurants. On the call Garutti also mentioned interior and exterior pickup windows and, where space permits, curbside pickup and drive-thru lanes, which is new for Shake Shack. The company has been testing these formats over the last several weeks while dining rooms remain shuttered. Garutti said the current pandemic has “reinforced how necessary and beneficial this strategy will be for Shake Shack.” 

It has also reinforced how necessary digital ordering and payments will be to the future restaurant experience in general. On that front, Shake Shack is better prepared than most restaurants. As of April 29, digital channels represent roughly 80 percent of total Shake Shack sales. Garutti said on this week’s call that digital sales are “very literally keeping us in business.”

The new store formats will encourage this digital preordering, and Shake Shack said it will continue to improve its digital properties and eventually integrate delivery into those interfaces, which means less reliance on third-party services Shake Shack currently has partnerships with. 

“Contactless” is definitely the buzzword du jour in the restaurant industry right now as businesses look to reopen while maintaining social distancing requirements. Not every restaurant has the cash or resources to double-down on expensive mobile apps made in-house, and so some are turning to restaurant tech companies for those digital capabilities.

Meanwhile, Shake Shack isn’t the only major chain tweaking its store format to fit our to-go-centric times. Chipotle was testing new store types long before the pandemic and will continue building those out. McDonald’s had to step on the brakes a little in terms of its Experience of the Future stores but will continue building some of those, as well. 

These redesigns matter because they could set standards for the rest of the industry in the future. Smaller chains and independent restaurants have neither the time nor the money to extensively redesign their restaurants. But as states mandate reduced capacity in dining rooms, these smaller businesses may look to the major chains for guidance on how to incorporate off-premises ideas into their business. In time, a new, standardized restaurant format (or several) could emerge that no one would have predicted two years ago — and everyone will expect a decade from now.

Minnow Adds Disinfecting UV Lights to No-Contact Food Pickup Pods

Earlier this month, Minnow announced that it had installed its IoT-connected cubbies for food deliveries in seven locations in Portland, Oregon. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Seattle-based startup just announced it will be taking extra steps to make its Pickup Pods safer and contaminant-free.

Chiefly, the company is adding UV lights to the interior of its cubbies to sterilize any food containers placed inside. However, we should note, while UV light does have the ability to kill some bacteria and viruses, it’s not 100 percent proven that it protects against the coronavirus.

Contactless food pickup, like Minnow offers, is already useful in a time when we’re trying to avoid touching things as much as possible (including our faces). For those who aren’t familiar with their technology: Minnow installs their pods, which contain 20 individual insulated cubbies, in public spaces like office buildings, apartments, and universities. Residents can pre-order lunch from a rotating menu of local restaurants via text or through the mobile web, then Minnow batches the orders and has them delivered all at once by one of their drivers.

The driver places each meal in an individual cubby and texts folks when their order is ready. Customers can then tap a hyperlink on their smart phone (no need to touch a screen on the actual Pod) to open the cubby’s automatic doors and grab their lunch.

According to an email from the company, Minnow has processed 4,000 food orders thus far. That’s significant, but currently most of Minnow’s pods are in office buildings. At a time when more and more people are being directed to work from home, that’s not exactly good for business.

However, a Minnow representative told me that the company is currently in talks with residential buildings about installing pods, which can be set up in as little as an hour and are totally turnkey (the company provides hardware, software, and support). Spaces lease them out for a monthly fee.

If folks continue to stay at home — and at this point, it looks like we’re going to be social distancing for a while — I could see services like Minnow’s pods gaining a foothold in apartment buildings as resident managers grow weary of coordinating delivery drivers coming in and out of the building.

There’s an obvious appeal for consumers. Even if delivery drivers drop off food at your doorstep, you still don’t know for sure if the container is sanitary, or how many people touched it on its way to your home. If you live in an apartment building, where you have to leave your home and go outside to get your order, that adds even more opportunities for contamination. Placing food in pods like Minnow’s, where they’re promptly disinfected by UV light, adds an extra layer of security that I imagine many people would welcome.

This might all sound over the top right now, especially since people are still allowed to go out and grocery shop and do takeout from their local restaurants (which you should do if you can!) But we don’t know how long COVID-19 will last. If quarantine measures escalate and paranoia around contamination grows, contactless and sanitizing tech like Minnow’s could be a helpful option for those hungry for food delivery.