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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

robot delivery

Unilever & Robomart Rolling Out Mobile Ice Cream Shops in Los Angeles This Summer

If you live in select neighborhoods in LA this summer, you won’t have to wait for that familiar ice cream truck jingle before running outside to grab a cold treat.

That’s because you can order one to come to your house by using the store-hailing app of Robomart via its partnership with Unilever. Last week, the two companies announced they are partnering up to trial a fleet of mobile ice cream shops powered by Robomart’s technology under Unilever’s virtual ice cream brand, The Ice Cream Shop.

Here’s how it works: Customers hail the mobile Ice Cream Shop to their location using Robomart’s mobile app. Once it arrives, the user swipes across the app to open the vehicle’s door. Robomart’s checkout-free system allows customers to select their ice cream and walk away without tapping or pulling out a credit card.

Robomart founder Ali Ahmed told The Spoon that the Ice Cream Shops would run seven days a week for at least 12 hours a day. Robomart employees will drive the stores (interaction with the stores is fully automated) and restock the mobile shops at Robomart operations hubs.

Some might feel that using a Robomart Ice Cream Shop isn’t the same as that iconic childhood experience of hearing that familiar jingle, grabbing your change, and racing outside to grab a treat. This tech-powered approach is also much less accessible than the old-school ice cream truck since it requires someone to have a smartphone and someone old enough to have digital payment capabilities.

Concerns aside, there’s something to be said for being able to bring the ice cream truck to you, mainly because the everyday ice cream truck isn’t so everyday anymore.

For Robomart, the deal follows last year’s rollout of its mobile storefronts in West Hollywood. According to Ahmed, the company now has about 100 Robomarts “booked” under contract. After the trial, Ahmed says Unilever and Robomart plan roll out the Ice Cream Shop in new neighborhoods in LA and into other parts of the country.

Coco Raises $36M Series A for Teleoperated Robot Delivery

Coco, a teleoperated robot delivery service, announced today that it has raised a Series A round of funding led by Sam Altman, Silicon Valley Bank and Founder’s Fund.

Launched a year ago, Coco makes a four-wheeled, cooler-sized robot that delivers food and beverages. Coco prepositions its robot at merchant locations in dense city environments, and advertises that it completes deliveries in 30 minutes or less.

Unlike other delivery robots like those from Starship and Yandex, Coco’s robots are not self-driving and are instead piloted remotely. As with Tortoise, another teleoperated delivery robot, by foregoing autonomy, Coco can get to market faster because it doesn’t have to deal with the same state and city regulations around self-driving vehicles.

According to the company’s Careers page, those driving the robots are called “Coconauts,” and Coco is currently hiring remote drivers for Hawaii, Nevada, and Texas. Responsibilities include “Remotely drive a robot: carefully and responsibly” and “Follow a map to and from your destinations.” Under Qualifications, Coco asks that you have a “Reliable, high-speed internet connection,” and “Experience playing racing video games” (hopefully not just Mario Kart).

Coco is raising money at the right time as the food and restaurant world is accelerating its interest in robots and automation. Sweetgreen just acquired the robot restaurant Spyce, and 800 Degrees Pizza will launch 3,600 Piestro-powered robot pizza making vending machines over the next five years.

Robot delivery itself is poised to take off. As Ali Kashani, Co-Founder and CEO of robot delivery company Serve likes to say — you don’t need a two-ton car on the road to deliver a taco. With their smaller footprint, delivery robots can help ease congestion on the road by removing unnecessary full-sized delivery cars. With its new funding, Coco will be able to get its robots on the sidewalks (and provide humans with “driving” gigs), and scale up to more cities sooner than some of its competition.

Food Tech News: Scented Water, Kabocha Squash Milk, and Robot Delivery at Ohio State

Welcome to the weekend, and the Food Tech News round-up!

Air Up uses scent to trick people into drinking more water

UK-based Air Up has developed a bottle that flavors water through scent, and tricks the brain with retronasal smelling technology. The top of the bottle has space to insert a scented pod, which is made from aromas extracted from fruits, plants, and spices. Once the bottle is filled with still or sparkling water, and the desired pod has been selected, the user sips from the silicon straw attachment on top. While drinking the water, air from the pod rises up, and the olfactory center perceives it as taste, rather than just smell.

The scented pods come in flavors like berry, kola, coffee, and cucumber, with a single pod lasting for about 5 liters of water. Air Up products are currently available in Germany, Austria, Swiss, France, Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands, and the company has plans to continue expanding throughout Europe and to the U.S.

Eat Just to launch alternative egg product in South Africa

Alternative protein company Eat Just and Infinite Foods, a market platform for plant-based food brands, announced this week they have partnered to launch JUST Egg products in South Africa. The JUST Egg Folded, made predominantly from mung beans, will be sold in a box of four in the frozen aisle. Wellness Warehouse, a grocery and wellness product retailer, will carry the product across South Africa, as well as in restaurants in Durban, Cape Town, and Johannesburg. Additionally, the alternative egg will be available on Infinite Foods’ website. According to the press release, this will be the first plant-based egg available in South Africa.

Grubhub and Yandex will offer robot delivery on the Ohio State University campus

Grubhub, a food delivery platform, and Yandex, a robot delivery service, have announced that they will be operating together on the Ohio State University. There will be 50 Yandex robots on campus that are able to deliver between the hours of 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. seven days a week. A robot is able to move throughout the campus going three to five miles an hour, navigate through crosswalks, and deliver in all weather. The campus is home to 60,000 students who can order delivery from any on-campus dining establishment to any residence hall on campus, and to the Bricker Hall and Thompson Library. This is the first college campus that the Yandex robots will be operating on.

Kabochamilk launches for consumers in Asia

We can buy milk made from chia seeds, barley, oats, pistachios, and now, kabocha squash. Shane Newman, a kabocha squash farmer in Hawkes Bay, Zealand, and Sachie Nomura, a celebrity chef and the creator of avocadomilk, have collaborated to produce Kabochamilk. The company received $95,000 from the Ministry for Primary Industries in New Zealand through the Sustainable Food and Fibre Futures fund to launch. The Kabocha Milk Company has created a shelf-stable formula that is intended for consumers in Japan, Korea, and China, where kabocha squash is a dietary staple. The alternative milk is currently available in two high-end chains, Tsurya and Harashin, in Japan.

Starship’s Delivery Robots Roll Out to Four More College Campuses

It’s back-to-school season here in the U.S, and for an increasing number of students, that means getting back to robot food delivery on campus. Along those lines, Starship announced today that it is growing its roster of college campus clients with the addition of robot delivery at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), University of Kentucky (UK), University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) and Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Daytona Beach, FL campus.

Starship makes cooler-sized robots that autonomously scurry along sidewalks to bring food and other goods to people. Customers order through the Starship mobile app (depending on location can use credit/debit card or student meal plan), and can watch the robot on a map as it makes its journey. Once it arrives, customers unlock the cargo compartment using the Starship app.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, robot delivery service has already kicked off at UNR and Embry-Riddle. The University of Kentucky will get its robots next week and UIC’s program will start this fall. Starship provided the following breakdown of its added robot delivery:

  • UIC: 25 robots, with 11 merchants including Starbucks, Panda Express and Freshii
  • UK: 20 robots, starting with 7 merchants including Starbucks, Subway and Auntie Anne’s
  • UNR: 20 robots, with 14 merchants including Panera Bread, Habit Burger and Baja Fresh
  • Embry-Riddle: 20 robots, with 10 merchants including Starbucks, QDOBA, Flight Cafe and Legacy Walk Wings Food Truck

We’ve been chronicling the rise of Starship’s college delivery program since the company kicked it off at George Mason University back in January of 2019. Starship now serves nearly 20 different campuses in 15 states.

Starship is not the only robot delivery service hitting colleges however. Last year, Kiwibot, which makes its own cooler-sized rovers, partnered with Sodexo to bring robot food delivery to the University of Denver campus. While both companies use robots, there is a difference in the user experience for each service. Kiwibot integrates with the Sodexo food ordering app, while Starship requires users to download its own mobile app.

Starship weathered the pandemic last year despite forced closures of colleges and universities across the country. Having lived through that experience, I wouldn’t be surprised to see even more colleges adopt robot-powered delivery this school because of its contactless nature.

Tortoise Delivery Robots Rolling Into Dallas via Vroom Delivery

Tortoise‘s sidewalk delivery robots are making their way to Dallas, Texas, thanks to a new pilot program with Vroom Delivery and Urban Value Corner Store announced today. Launching in the coming months, the new service will use Tortoise’s teleoperated robots to deliver goods like milk and eggs, as well as snacks and alcohol.

Tortoise is different other players in the robot delivery space like Starship and Kiwibot. Tortoise’s robot is much bigger than those cooler-sized robots and able to carry 100 pounds of goods. Tortoise’s robots are also fully driven by remote human operators, as the company chose to forego the autonomous driving option in order to sidestep local regulatory issues around self-driving vehicles to get to market faster.

Another benefit of having human operators could be when it comes to robotic beer and alcohol delivery. Tortoise’s hefty robots are actually perfect for carrying beverages like cases of beer typically purchased at a convenience store. As Tortoise Co-Founder and President Dmitry Shevelenko explained to me by phone this morning, while details and regulations still need to be worked out, there is a scenario in which the human operator of the Tortoise robot could assist in providing ID verification on age restricted purchases.

Contactless delivery from robots like Tortoise could find increased interest as the COVID-19 Delta variants keep the pandemic top of mind here in the U.S. Though online grocery shopping, which requires curbside pickup or delivery, has come down from its record highs during the summer of last year, it is still much higher than pre-pandemic levels. Experts from Brick Meets Click anticipate that many consumers will stick with their new grocery e-commerce habits.

This deal with Vroom and Urban Value marks another publicly announced delivery deal this year for Tortoise. In March of this year, Albertsons said it would use Tortoise robots for grocery delivery at two Northern California Safeway locations.

According to the press announcement, Urban Value will launch its first Tortoise delivery location from its downtown Dallas location. Customers can use Vroom’s e-commerce platform to place their order for robot delivery from Urban Value. Vroom said that it is making Tortoise deliveries available to other convenience stores across the country.

Yandex Delivery Robots Coming to College Campuses Courtesy of Grubhub

Food delivery service Grubhub announced today that it will be bringing delivery robots to college campuses this fall thanks to a new multi-year partnership with Russian tech giant Yandex.

Yandex’s rovers are squat, cooler-sized robots that can autonomously traverse pre-mapped areas. As yet, there aren’t a ton of public details on the partnership, such as where the the robot delivery will launch or how much it will cost, but in the press announcement, Yandex said it would be deploying “dozens” of its robots for the program.

College campuses are actually a pretty great environment for last-mile delivery robots. Campuses hold large populations that eat at all hours of the day and night. They are contained geographic with ample pedestrian walkways, and they can be difficult for full-sized delivery cars and drivers to navigate. Robots and their contactless delivery can also be of use in these post-pandemic times for students packed in college dorms. Should someone living on campus get sick, they don’t need to leave their room and stand in line with other people in the cafeteria. Instead, they can ring up a robot and have food delivered, reducing their human-to-human contact.

As such, colleges are among the first places to deploy delivery robots. Starship operates at a growing number of colleges throughout the U.S., and Kiwibot is ramping up its own college food delivery programs as well. Grubhub has existing partnerships with more than 250 college campuses across the U.S., integrating student meal plans with delivery from on- and off- campus restaurants.

In addition to giving Grubhub a robotic entrée onto college campuses, this partnership also gives Yandex its first foray into the U.S. market. Yandex has been making meal deliveries around the Russian cities of Moscow and Innopolis since December of last year.

Refraction AI Launches Robotic Delivery Service in Austin, Texas

Refraction AI announced today that it is expanding its delivery robot service outside of Michigan and into Austin, Texas. This is the second location for Refraction’s robots, which will offer restaurant delivery in the South Congress, Downtown and Travis Heights neighborhoods.

Refraction is a little different from other robot delivery players in the space. Unlike Kiwibot or Starship, which make cooler-sized sidewalk robots, Refraction’s REV-1 robot is bigger, faster, and meant to drive in city bike lanes. The REV-1 is meant for suburban areas with a sizeable population in a relatively contained geography. In Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Refraction originated, the REV-1 has a delivery radius of roughly 3.5 miles.

That Refraction chose Austin as its second location is really not a surprise. Though the company was founded in Michigan, Luke Schneider, who was brought in as Refraction CEO last fall, is based in Austin, TX. When Refraction raised $4.2 million earlier this year, Schneider told me that part of that money would go towards building up operations in Austin.

Southside Flying Pizza will be the first restaurant offering Refraction’s robot delivery option. The Austin pilot will debut with a fleet of 10 robots with the possibility of more being added as more restaurant partners join the program. Customers in the service area will place orders directly through participating restaurants and choose robot delivery. Text messages are sent to the customer with delivery updates, notification when the robot arrives and a unique code to unlock the robot.

Worth noting is that in the press release announcing the Austin expansion, Refraction only mentions restaurant partners at launch and not grocery delivery. With its rather sizeable cargo hold, groceries are a good fit for the REV-1, and during the pandemic last year Refraction quickly added grocery delivery in Ann Arbor as people looked for contactless ways to get their food. I presume we’ll see grocery partners added to the list should REV-1’s delivery catch on with consumers.

Starship Robots Delivering Costa Coffee in the U.K.

Those feeling a little sluggish in the U.K. town of Milton Keynes don’t even need to leave their house to get their morning latte. MKFM reports that Starship robots are now making deliveries of drinks and snacks from the Oakgrove and Sunset Walk Costa Coffee stores in Central Milton Keynes.

Starship has been operating in Milton Keynes for years, delivering things such as groceries and packages. Users interested in getting their Costa Coffee delivered by robot need to download the Starship app to place their order. Deliveries are made within the hour, which seems like a long time in our increasingly on-demand world. Starship’s robots only travel at a pedestrian-friendly pace of 4 mph, which seems like it would cool down coffee before it reaches the customer. But early reports suggest the coffees arrive piping hot.

Though this delivery is limited in scope, the new service is worth highlighting for a couple of reasons. First is the partner, Costa Coffee. We don’t know as of yet if this is an official partnership between the two companies, but this is another robot-related move for the Costa Coffee chain. Last year Costa bought U.S.-based robot barista company, Briggo and re-branded the latter’s automated coffee kiosks as Costa Coffee BaristaBots. This pilot could be a prelude to more widespread robot deliveries for Costa and, looking further out, a first step towards connecting various robot puzzle pieces. Similar to the Kiwibot/Piestro relationship, it’s not hard to envision a BaristaBot one day placing a hot drink inside a Starship robot for a fully automated coffee experience.

The news also fits into a larger pattern of increased activity we’ve seen around delivery robots all year. Here in the U.S. Refraction AI raised funding, while Tortoise started grocery delivery pilots with Safeway and Kiwibot unveiled version 4.0 of its delivery robots. Around the world, more delivery robot services are popping up, from Bizero in Turkey to Woowa Brothers in South Korea to Tiny Mile in Canada. Spurred on by the pandemic and the desire for contactless delivery, the robots are coming to our city sidewalks and streets.

We’ll be discussing issues around this global delivery robot rollout at our upcoming ArticulATE food robotics and automation virtual conference on May 18. We’ll have executives from robot startups like Refraction AI, Tortoise and Ottonomy talking technology as well as policymakers like the Mayor of West Hollywood, Los Angeles talking about what local regulators require before robots can hit public streets. Get a glimpse of our robot future and be a part of the conversation, get your ArticulATE ticket today!

South Korea: Hyundai and Woowa Brothers Partner for Delivery Robots

Hyundai Motors and Woowa Brothers announced this past weekend that they are partnering to develop last-mile food delivery robots.

Woowa Brothers, which operates the popular Baedal Minjok food delivery service in South Korea, launched its robot program last summer, making deliveries to Gwanggyo Alley Way, a housing complex in Gwanggyo, Suwon city.

According to the Korean Economic Daily, the Woowa and Hyundai signed a Memorandum of Understanding last Friday outlining two phases of development. The first will have robots autonomously taking deliveries from the entrance of a residential building to an apartment’s front door. (Presumably a human delivery driver would bring the order from the restaurant to the robot.) Later on, the two companies will work on robots that can autonomously make the entire journey from a restaurant or delivery hub to a customer’s home.

This agreement appears to build on a relationship that Woowa and Hyundai Elevator entered into last year. The two companies were also working with networking development platform HDC-I Controls to develop robots capable of gaining access to a secure building and autonomously riding an elevator once inside.

The global pandemic has spurred interest in contactless delivery, and a number autonomous robot delivery services have launched around the world. In Russia, Yandex is making robot food deliveries in Moscow. In Turkey, both Delivers AI and Bizero are doing robot delivery. And here in the U.S., there are a number of delivery robot players including Starship, Kiwibot and Refraction AI.

Woowa’s partnership with Hyundai, however, is exciting because we’re starting to see what happens when you connect various automated services together to create a truly autonomous last mile. Elsewhere in South Korea, LG is using its robots to make deliveries from a convenience store to the LG Science Park. Once inside, the the LG robot can ride the elevator and navigate between different floors to make deliveries.

If you are interested in the future of robot delivery, be sure to attend our ArticulATE virtual conference on May 18. It will bring together all the best thought leaders in the food robotics and automation space for one day of insight and foresight. Get your ticket today!

Refraction AI Raises $4.2M for its Three-Wheeled Robot Delivery

Robot delivery company Refraction AI announced today that it has raised $4.2 million in new seed funding. The round was led by Pillar VC, with participation from eLab Ventures, Osage Venture Partners, Trucks Venture Capital, Alumni Ventures Group, Chad Laurans (founder of SimpliSafe), Invest Michigan, and others.

Based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, Refraction’s take on delivery robots is between smaller rovers like those from Starship and larger autonomous vehicles like Nuro‘s. Refraction’s REV-1 robots have three wheels, are ruggedized for inclement weather, and are fast enough to travel in bike lanes.

Refraction debuted the REV-1 back in July of 2019, and started making limited lunch deliveries from Ann Arbor restaurants in December of that year. In June of 2020, right after the pandemic’s first big wave in the U.S., Refraction launched its grocery delivery service.

We’re still early into the new year, but 2021 is already been a pretty active year for delivery robots. A number of startups around the world like Ottonomy, Delivers AI and Bizero have come out of stealth. Last week Safeway announced it was piloting the use of Tortoise’s teleoperated robots for grocery delivery. And Kiwibot will be making making deliveries in Santa Monica, California as part of that city’s zero emission delivery zone.

Luke Schneider, CEO of Refraction, told me by phone last week that the company will use its new capital to start scaling up the business. Refraction currently has 25 robots in operation around Ann Arbor. Schneider said that Refraction will be adding to its fleet and doing more deliveries, and will expand either to different cities or into different retail sectors. He also said that the company will also hire more people to expand the team, and build up operations in Austin, Texas where Schneider is located (though manufacturing will remain in Michigan).

Albertsons Partners with Tortoise for Remote Controlled Robot Delivery

Grocery giant Albertsons announced today that it has partnered with Tortoise to pilot remote-controlled robot grocery delivery at two Safeway stores in Northern California.

Tortoise is a little different from other players in the robot delivery space. First, the Tortoise bot is bigger than other rover bots. It can carry 120 pounds and is meant to haul a week’s worth of groceries. Second, the Tortoise is not meant for on-demand delivery, but rather scheduled drop offs (like a weekly grocery order). Finally Tortoise is different because it is eschewing autonomous driving for full teleoperation of its robots, meaning there is a human always remotely in control as the robot travels from store to door.

Tortoise Co-Founder and President, Dmitry Shevelenko, told me by phone today that Safeway will be using the second generation Tortoise bot, which has improved functionality and a flatbed carrying platform. Orders will be placed inside Safeway-branded containers that have Bluetooth locks. Eventually, Shevelenko said that these containers will be motorized, which will allow them to slide off the flatbed of the robot and sit outside a person’s home so groceries can be dropped off even when someone isn’t there.

Safeway’s first Tortoise tests will be in the northern California towns Tracy and Windsor. As Shevelenko pointed out, these suburban locations are actually significant because it shows robot delivery is “not just an urban phenomenon.” This type of suburban location is also being targeted by Refraction and its rugged three-wheeled, bike lane-riding robot.

During these Safeway tests, Tortoise robots will be accompanied by humans, which is not uncommon as city and local government figure out how to safely deploy robots on public city sidewalks. For instance, Postmates’ autonomous Serve robot still has a human escort while making deliveries in the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

The Tortoise partnership is just the latest in a string of automation moves for Albertsons. The company is expanding the use of robotic micro-fulfillment of e-commerce orders in the Bay Area, and more recently, it started testing a robotic kiosk in Chicago for automated curbside pickup.

Tortoise is the latest robot delivery company to officially hit the road making commercial deliveries. In addition to Postmates and Refraction, Starship and Kiwibot are also scurrying around Modesto and San Jose, respectively. For a broader picture of the robot delivery space, check out The Delivery Robot Market Report I wrote for our Spoon Plus member service.

Postmates X Spun Out of Uber to Become Serve Robotics

Uber has officially spun out its Postmates X division to become its own standalone company now called Serve Robotics. The news was first reported by TechCrunch and confirms rumblings about such a move reported back in January.

Uber acquired Postmates for $2.65 billion last year, which included the Postmates X robotics unit. The Serve delivery robot is an autonomous cooler-sized rover robot currently making deliveries around the West Hollywood neighborhood of Los Angeles.

According to TechCrunch, Serve Robotics has raised an undisclosed seed round of funding led by the VC firm Neo, with participation from Uber, Lee Jacobs, Long Journey Ventures, Western Technology Investment and other investors. Serve Robotics will be led by Ali Kashani, who headed up Postmates X, will have 60 employees, and will be headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Los Angeles, and Vancouver, Canada.

Delivery robots like Serve are definitely on the rise as a number of startups come to market around the world. In the U.S. Starship, Kiwibot and Refraction all have robots making deliveries. In Russia there’s Yandex, in South Korea there’s Woowa Brothers, and in Turkey there’s Delivers AI. (For more, check out our Delivery Robot Market Report available to our Spoon Plus members.)

With all these robotic solutions plus other autonomous vehicle options, Uber doesn’t need to have its own full-stack robotic delivery solution. As I wrote last month:

“…as Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi recently explained on Kara Swisher’s Sway podcast, his company is in the networking business. Khosrowshahi doesn’t think Uber needs to create the technology uses, it just needs access to the best technology that allows it to facilitate deliveries and ridesharing. That’s one reason Uber offloaded its autonomous driving unit at the end of last year.”

Additionally, spinning off Serve Robotics means that Uber itself does not need to devote resources to figuring out the patchwork of state, county and city laws when it comes to actually getting commercial autonomous delivery vehicles on public sidewalks and streets. The flip side of that however, is that dealing with this patchwork of regulations is something Serve will have to do on its own.