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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Chipotle Invests in Self-Driving Delivery Vehicle Company Nuro

QSR chain Chipotle announced today that it has invested in autonomous delivery vehicle startup, Nuro. The amount invested was not disclosed and according to the press announcement, Chipotle’s investment is part of Nuro’s Series C round, which was announced last November.

Chipotle has been playing the digital long game, adding features like advanced “Chipotlanes” for drive-thru customer. That shift was one reason it was able to weather the pandemic relatively well. According to today’s press release, Chipotle’s digital business grew over 174% year over year in 2020. On top of that, Chipotles also got into the ghost kitchen game last November as dining rooms remained closed thanks to COVID.

Tying these threads together, it’s not hard to see how digital ordering, high-tech drive-thrus, ghost kitchens and self-driving vehicles could all work together. An autonomous Chipotle pod pulls into a Chipotlane, a human (or conveyor belt!) puts the order in the pod, which then drives off to make the delivery. Repeat all day long.

The good thing about Nuro’s low-speed vehicles is that they travel faster and can go farther than a sidewalk robot like Starship or Kiwibot. Plus, Nuro’s technology has gotten approvals from both the federal government and the State of California. Nuro’s self-driving pods have actually been operating without human intervention for some time now.

But! Nuro’s pods are half the size of a regular car and have two compartments that can haul a week’s worth of groceries. The Nuro pod seems… excessive for carrying a burrito across town. I wonder if Chipotle will outfit its own Nuro pods with an automat-like cubby system to hold multiple orders. Or, perhaps they will initially reserve the use of Nuros for corporate catering, which bundles together a bunch of orders.

Regardless, a big QSR brand like Chipotle investing in autonomous vehicles is not just a feather in the cap (and money in the bank) for Nuro. It could help boost the overall autonomous delivery sector.

If you are curious about the future of autonomous vehicle food delivery, be sure to attend our ArticulATE food robotics virtual conference on May 18!

Nuro Gets Regulatory Approval for Self-Driving Delivery in California

Autonomous food delivery revved a few miles forward today. Nuro, a company that makes self-driving vehicles for delivery, announced it is receiving the first-ever Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit from the California DMV. According to an email sent to The Spoon, this gives Nuro permission to launch a commercial autonomous vehicle service in California (which would be the first in the state). 

In layman’s terms, that means Nuro can now delivery groceries, household items, and other goods to customers’ doorsteps via its own self-driving vehicles. 

These pod-like vessels are roughly half the size of a regular car and completely autonomous. There isn’t even room for a human drive to sit in the vehicle, which travels at a max of 25 miles per hour. 

The news follows Nuro’s $500 million fundraise from earlier this month, as well as the testing permit Nuro received in April to operate on public roads in California.

Regulatory approval, or lack thereof, is one of the major factors inhibiting widespread adoption of self-driving vehicles for food and grocery delivery. State and local governments have to ensure public safety on roads, sidewalks, bridges, and other throughways before they can allow fleets of unmanned vehicles to be unleashed in cities and towns. That explains why some companies, including Starship and Kiwi, started on college campuses.

But Starship and Kiwi rover bots that are considerably smaller than Nuro’s R2 vehicle, which wouldn’t in all likelihood easily drive through the camps quad. The Autonomous Vehicle Deployment Permit means Nuro won’t have to resort to such locations in order to make its delivery services available to U.S. residents. 

Nuro said in today’s email that it will start delivery service with existing partners in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties in the new year. Service will begin with the company’s autonomous Prius vehicles and eventually transition to the company’s “full fleet” of both Priuses and R2s. 

Also this week, Nuro acquired autonomous trucking company Ike. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Nuro Raises $500M for its Autonomous Delivery Vehicles

Nuro announced today that it has raised a $500 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from new investors that include Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Baillie Gifford, as well as participation from existing investors SoftBank Vision Fund 1 and Greylock. This brings the total amount raised by Nuro to $1.5 billion.

Nuro makes pod-like, self-driving, low-speed cargo delivery vehicles. Nuro’s R2 vehicle is roughly half the size of a regular car, is autonomous (there is literally no place for a driver to sit) and travels at 25 mph.

But equally as important as its technology is Nuro’s work around getting regulatory approvals for deliveries. Self-driving vehicles are new, and all levels of government are coming to grips with how to regulate the concept to ensure safety on public streets. In February of this year, Nuro got approvals from the federal government to drive on public roads. This was followed up in April when the state of California gave Nuro the green light to run on its public roads.

Nuro has also done a number of tests over the past couple of years, delivering food for Kroger and Walmart as well as Domino’s.

At the end of October, Nuro revealed that it had been running fully autonomous tests, meaning no drivers and no chase cars, successfully over the previous few months in Houston, TX, Phoenix, AZ and Mountain View, CA. You can see a video of the R2 in action here:

Nuro’s technology is certainly coming to market at the right time. The global pandemic has more people staying at home and thereby ordering more restaurant meals and groceries for delivery. Nuro’s vehicle can carry a full load of groceries directly to a customer’s curbside around the clock. The autonomous nature of the Nuro also means that delivery is contactless, an important feature as people look to reduce human-to-human contact in order to stem the transmission of the virus.

Nuro isn’t alone in the autonomous last-mile delivery space. Other players range from the small cooler-sized robots of Starship to the larger three-wheeled REV-1 from Refraction to the cargo vans of Udelv.

In other words, autonomous delivery is coming, and Nuro now has more money to assert its place when it arrives.

Nuro’s Driverless Delivery Vehicles Get Approval to Run on California Roads

Nuro announced today that it has been given permission to operate its driverless delivery vehicles on California’s public roads.

The Nuro R2 is a pod-like, low-speed autonomous vehicle about half the size of a normal car that only travels up to 25 mph. It features two cargo compartments and no area for a human driver or passenger.

Nuro has been on a bit of a regulatory roll this year. In February, the R2 got federal approval to operate on public roads.

But the world is a vastly different place today than it was back in February. With a global pandemic raging across the country and planet, the idea of a humanless means of delivering food seems pretty enticing right now. With trips to the grocery store now constituting a risk of contracting COVID-19, there has been a surge in grocery e-commerce. Instacart and other delivery service have instituted no-contact delivery and arm their workers with gloves and masks. Still, having a robot drive your groceries curbside removes another vector of human-to-human transmission.

It will be awhile before autonomous delivery vehicles like Nuro’s move into the mainstream, though. Previously, Nuro partnered with Walmart and Domino’s Pizza for autonomous delivery in Houston, TX. Given the shelter-in-place orders in California, there is no set timeline for Nuro’s R2 tests to begin other than “soon.” When it does, it will start in Mountain View, before rolling out to Santa Clara and San Mateo counties and eventually the whole state.

Even then, however, Nuro is going to have to work with local governments who are grappling with rapid technological change in real time, let alone a time of pandemic. Hopefully we won’t have to experience another global health crisis like this one in our lifetime. If we do, though, it would be nice to have more autonomous vehicles allowed to take over jobs that are vital, yet suddenly more dangerous, like food delivery.

Nuro Debuts New R2 Self-Driving Vehicle, Gets Federal OK for Use on Public Roads

Nuro unveiled its second-generation autonomous delivery vehicle today and announced that it’s been given the greenlight to drive on public roads, thanks to some federal exemptions.

The new R2 is another electric, low speed, driverless delivery vehicle from Nuro that will replace the R1. According to a corporate blog post, the company is no longer custom-making its vehicles, as it did with the R1. For the R2, Nuro has partnered with a Michigan-based company called Roush to design and assemble the new models.

According to the announcement post, the R2 features a more durable body so it can handle bad weather, as well as an updated sensor array, two-thirds more cargo space (without increasing the width of the vehicle), and a new temperature control system. A new custom battery also means that the R2 can run all day.

But all these bells and whistles are useless if it’s not allowed to drive on public roads. Which is why Nuro applied for regulatory exemption from the National Highway Traffic and Safety Administration. As Nuro points out in its post explaining the move, today’s regulations were made for traditional cars. But the R2 is a totally different type of vehicle. From the post:

Today’s decision shows that “exemption” can mean more safety. It allows us to replace the mirrors relied on by human drivers with cameras and other sensors. We can round the edges of the vehicle body to take up less road space, and make it safer for those around us. In addition, we can remove the windshield meant to let human drivers see out and keep passengers in — instead using a specially designed panel at the vehicle’s front that absorbs energy, better protecting pedestrians. And we won’t have to ever turn off the rearview cameras that help R2 see (part of a rule meant to avoid distracting human drivers), providing a constant 360-degree view with no blind spots.

The company says it will be rolling out delivery on public roads in Houston in the coming weeks. Getting the federal thumbs up should help Nuro and its customers like Kroger, Walmart and Domino’s expand driverless delivery into new cities. As we’ve discussed before, technology is changing rapidly, and state and local governments are grappling with creating regulations that balance innovation with safety, accessibility and revenue in real time.

With its new design that can handle inclement weather, we’ll have to see if Nuro starts expanding delivery programs beyond the bright and sunny climates of Arizona and Texas. Will it move in on Refraction AI’s snowbound, Michigan turf?

Technology like Nuro’s has the potential to drastically change the delivery game. Pod-like vehicles can run all day and night, quietly delivering meals, groceries and more to your door with just the tap of a button. And now that Nuro has the OK from the government, we’ll be seeing a lot more of them on the road.

Nuro and Walmart Partner for Autonomous Grocery Delivery in Houston

Walmart and Nuro announced a collaboration today in which the two companies will pilot autonomous grocery delivery in Houston, TX via Nuro’s self-driving pod-like vehicles.

According to the press release:

In the coming months, the autonomous delivery service will be available to Houston customers who have opted into the program. The service will use R2, Nuro’s custom-built delivery vehicle that carries only products with no onboard driver or passengers, and autonomous Toyota Priuses, all powered by Nuro’s proprietary self-driving software and hardware.

Nuro’s R2 pods are low-speed vehicles roughly half the size of regular cars. There are two compartments for cargo, and literally no room for a driver. The advantage of the R2 is that is is more nimble than a full-sized auto and can’t drive as fast. This could make it a “safer” choice than self-driving cars as local governments look to regulate the emerging world of autonomous vehicles on city streets.

This is not the first autonomous delivery rodeo for either Walmart or Nuro. Nuro has tested self-driving grocery delivery for Kroger in Arizona as well as Houston. Walmart announced a partnership with self-driving van delivery startup Udelv earlier this year, and with Gaitek in July to make “middle mile” deliveries between Walmart stores.

Questions remain, however, about whether consumers will want fully autonomous grocery delivery devoid of any human. While it opens up a whole new world of around-the-clock delivery, the drawback is that the vehicles stop at the curb, so shoppers still need to go out to the vehicle and lug the groceries back in. Most of the time, that’s probably a first-world problem. However, it becomes more of an issue if you in a fourth-floor apartment or have mobility issues.

Houston, which has become quite the hotbed for self-driving vehicles and robots. In addition to Kroger, Nuro has been doing self-driving pizza delivery for Domino’s there. Starship robots are now rolling around the University of Houston delivering food to hungry students and staff.

Kroger and Nuro’s pilot will first be available to a select group of those who have opted-in to the service, with plans to expand to the general public later in 2020.

Domino’s Innovation Garage Doubles Down on GPS Tracking, Driverless Cars

Domino’s has wasted no time in ramping up its innovations since opening the doors on its Innovation Garage in August. And at an event held at the facility this week, the pizza chain-turned-tech company highlighted a couple of the top innovations it is currently working on.

Nation’s Restaurant News, who was at the event, reported on these developments, which are geared towards getting pizzas to customers’ doorsteps as fast and as seamlessly as possible.

GPS tracking technology topped the list of developments the company is working on. Earlier this year, Domino’s started testing its system that lets customers and stores track drivers in 27 company-owned locations around Phoenix, Arizona. The system allows customers to see their driver’s progress on a map and receive a notification when their pizza is just a couple minutes away. Store managers can also track drivers via a screen inside the store. Domino’s has said it will roll out this tracking technology to all U.S. stores by the end of 2019.

At the Innovation Garage this week, the company wouldn’t give data on how much GPS tracking improves the pizza delivery experience, but said Domino’s locations are seeing improvements and that more of them are adopting the technology.

Speaking of cars, the company also said at the event that it has finished its testing of autonomous delivery in Houston, TX, and is ready to officially roll the program out in that city. Domino’s piloted driverless delivery this past summer, teaming up with a company called Nuro, who makes a fully automated, low-speed vehicle about half the size of a regular car.

With Nuro, customers who select the “autonomous” option when ordering a pizza use a PIN to unlock the car when it arrives and retrieve their pizza.

For now, autonomous delivery via Nuro will be concentrated on the downtown Houston area. Domino’s didn’t say whether a larger rollout is planned for other parts of the city or the U.S. However, highlighting the struggles around rising labor costs and the struggle to find enough drivers, Domino’s Chief Digital Officer Dennis Maloney said at the event, “This is the future of our company.”

Domino’s and Chevrolet Team Up for In-Car Ordering

Pizza had a big week, in no small part thanks to new developments from Domino’s that are all about finding new ways to get the pie to your front door faster.

The Ann Arbor, MI-based company announced at the beginning of the week that it had partnered with autonomous car company Nuro to test pizza delivery via self-driving vehicles.

The Nuro pilot is currently limited to Houston, TX, at the moment. But anyone in the U.S. with a connected Chevrolet vehicle can take advantage of Domino’s other big news news, which is that the chain is now available for order through Chevy’s in-car Marketplace system.

Marketplace is part of Chevy’s in-vehicle commerce platform that lets users order food, make hotel reservations, and even pay for fuel right from the car’s dashboard. It works independent of users’ smartphones, though anyone wanting to order Domino’s through the system will first need to set up a profile online or through the mobile Domino’s app. Once the user has set up their preferred delivery address, payment information, as well as pie preferences, they can link their Domino’s profile directly to Chevy’s in-car system and order pizza straight from the latter, whose touchscreen interface sits in the dashboard of the car.

Domino’s is the first pizza chain available through Marketplace, which also makes it the first pizza chain you can order with from the car without picking up your smartphone.

The move follows Domino’s announcement from March that it had partnered with Xevo, who makes the in-vehicle commerce technology that powers systems from Chevrolet, GMC, and others. Domino’s has said it wants to have its in-car ordering capabilities on 1 million vehicles by the end of 2019. Joining Chevrolet’s marketplace will be another step towards realizing that goal.

Dominos Partners with Nuro for Driverless Pizza Delivery in Houston

Domino’s announced today that it has partnered with Nuro to deliver pizzas in the Houston, TX area via self-driving delivery vehicles. Select customers will be able to choose the “autonomous” option from participating stores later this year.

Nuro’s R2, which is a pod-like low-speed vehicle that’s about half the size of a normal car, is built for hauling goods (there is no space for a driver). Customers receiving their Domino’s order via one of Nuro’s vehicles will be able to track the progress of the vehicle through the Domino’s app and, once it arrives, use a PIN to unlock the cargo bay holding their pizza.

Since there is no driver for this type of delivery, it also means there is no one who will run the pizzas to the front door, so customers who opt for it will have to (shudder) walk to the curb. Of course, with no driver that also means there’s no need to tip.

Houston is becoming a hotbed of autonomous action for Nuro, which has also been running a self-driving grocery delivery pilot with Kroger in that city since March. There was also a report earlier this year that Nuro and Uber were talking about a food delivery partnership in Houston later this year, though there’s been nothing official announced yet. All in all, it looks like that $940 million investment from Softbank in February is really helping Nuro scale up.

This Nuro partnership also reinforces why we put Domino’s on our Food Tech 25 list this year. The pizza company has already started testing chatbots, in-car ordering and delivery to non-addressed locations (like a beach). With self-driving delivery, Domino’s is taking that further down its delivery stack.

Report: Uber Exploring Nuro Partnership for Self-Driving Restaurant Food Delivery

Just in time for Uber’s IPO today comes word from The Information (paywalled) that the mobility company has been chatting with autonomous vehicle company Nuro about a food delivery partnership. If such a partnership were to come to pass, using Nuro’s self-driving pods could be a way for Uber to lower driver costs and improve Uber Eats’ margins.

Nuro makes electric, low speed vehicles that are about half the size of a regular car and top out at 25 miles per hour. They are built for cargo and do not even have a space for a driver. According to documentation seen by The Information, the partnership with Uber would start later this year in Houston. This makes sense as Nuro is already operating there as part of its expanded pilot with Kroger to do self-driving grocery delivery.

Nuro’s partnership with Uber would be different from its program with Kroger. Instead of Nuro vehicles carrying food from restaurants directly to a consumer, they would instead take food from restaurants to a central hub. Once at this central hub, a human driver would take it the last mile, delivering it to doorsteps. The Information writes:

The hope is that the centralized hub for orders would allow drivers to handle more food orders than they currently do and potentially make more money because they won’t have to spend time going to each restaurant to pick up the food.

There aren’t many details, so this Uber/Nuro partnership could manifest in different ways, but two things immediately spring to mind. First is that it seems like more wear and tear on the food. Restaurants place meals in a Nuro that travels to the hub. Food is removed from Nuro and sits on a shelf until a human picks it up and puts it in their car. Human drives the food to the consumer.

Then there’s the temperature of the food because as we know, soggy food sucks. I’m sure Nuro’s can be outfitted with thermal zones to keep hot food hot and cold food cold, but that seems like a recipe for disaster when bundling together multiple entrees, sodas and desserts, especially when they need to be packed and re-packed.

The second thought that springs to mind is whether Uber would employ a similar hub system as Zume Pizza. Zume sets up mobile distribution points in various neighborhoods where delivery drivers come and pick up orders. Rather than leasing a brick and mortar location, Uber could set up a customized van or food truck that could be parked in different locations. Based on the data Uber has about what types of food people are buying, when and how often, Uber could change and optimize the location of these mobile hubs on any given night.

Then again, all this speculation is moot if the deal never comes to pass. Neither Uber nor Nuro would confirm the story with The Information. Uber is understandably a little pre-occupied with its IPO today, and thanks to the $940M investment from Softbank this year, Nuro has some runway to experiment with programs like this.

Regardless if this particular deal comes to pass, it’s nice to see companies are continuing to experiment and iterate the food delivery process. Whether its low-speed-vehicles, full-on self-driving sedans, rover robots, or even drones, the way we get our meals delivered to us is going to drastically change over the next five years.

Here’s The Spoon’s 2019 Food Robotics Market Map

Today we head to San Francisco for The Spoon’s first-ever food-robotics event. ArticulAte kicks off at 9:05 a.m. sharp at the General Assembly venue in SF, and throughout the daylong event talk will be about all things robots, from the technology itself to business and regulatory issues surrounding it.

When you stop and look around the food industry, whether it’s new restaurants embracing automation or companies changing the way we get our groceries, it’s easy to see why the food robotics market is projected to be a $3.1 billion market by 2025.

But there’s no one way to make a robot, and so to give you a sense of who’s who in this space, and to celebrate the start of ArticulAte, The Spoon’s editors put together this market map of the food robotics landscape.

This is the first edition of this map, which we’ll improve and build upon as the market changes and grows. If you have any suggestions for other companies or see ones we missed you think should be in there, let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at tips@thespoon.tech.

Click on the map below to enlarge it.

The Food Robotics Market 2019:

Kroger and Nuro Expand Self-Driving Grocery Delivery to Houston

They say everything is bigger in Texas, but soon, diminutive electric vehicles will be autonomously shuttling around Houston, as Kroger announced today it is expanding its self-driving grocery pilot with Nuro to Texas’ largest city.

Kroger began its self-driving partnership with Nuro in Scottsdale, AZ in August last year and in that time has made thousands of deliveries, according to today’s press announcement. The expansion into Houston will involve two Kroger stores serving four zip codes:

  • Store One: 10306 South Post Oak Road, Houston, TX, servicing 77401 and 77096
  • Store Two: 5150 Buffalo Speedway, Houston, TX, servicing 77005 and 77025

Today’s news comes a little over a month since SoftBank invested $940 million in Nuro, which makes the R1, a pod-like, electric low-speed vehicle. They are about half the size of a traditional car and have a top speed of 25 mph. But Houstonians won’t see those pods on the street quite yet. Similar to the Scottsdale program, the Houston roll out will initially use self-driving Toyota Priuses, before shifting to Nuro’s R1s next year.

While the pilot in Scottsdale has evidently generated enough positive results to expand the program to a more populated city like Houston, there is still a bigger question over whether people want self-driving vehicles for grocery delivery. Part of the value in grocery delivery is the delivery person, who lugs heavy bags from the curb to your front door (or up your steps). This is one reason Nuro’s self-driving rival, AutoX, is putting more emphasis on its restaurant food delivery business.

Kroger didn’t provide a specific launch date for its Houston delivery, only saying that it will start this Spring.

Autonomous grocery delivery is definitely something we will be talking about at our upcoming ArticulATE food robot conference next month in San Francisco. AutoX’s COO, Jewel Li will be speaking as well as Ali Ahmed, the CEO of Robomart, which also uses pod-like vehicles to get you your food. Get your tickets today!