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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

San Francisco

City By the Bot: Postmates Gets Permit to Test its “Serve” Delivery Robot in San Francisco

San Francisco has given Postmates the city’s “first-ever permit for sidewalk robotics operations,” according to a story in TechCrunch. The move marks a turn in the city’s official attitude towards delivery robots on its city sidewalks.

Postmates unveiled its rover robot, dubbed Serve, in December of last year, but has been relatively quiet about the program since then. Serve is a cooler sized robot on wheels that can carry 50 pounds, go 25 miles on a charge and uses a combination of cameras, lidar and human assistance when needed to navigate.

But perhaps more intriguing than the robot itself is the city it will, errr, Serve. In December of 2017, the city of San Francisco enacted tight restrictions on the use of commercial sidewalk robots. At the time, San Francisco’s robot ban was seen as part of its attempt by the city to get ahead of a technology issue and avoid the civic complications things like ridesharing and corporate commuter busses created.

But while San Francisco clamped down, nearby cities like Berkeley and Sacramento and other towns across the country like Phoenix and Houston rolled out the welcome mat for delivery robots… at least for testing. Perhaps San Francisco felt that getting ahead of any robotic problems could wind up leaving it behind.

Postmates told TechCrunch that it has “…been eager to work directly with cities to seek a collaborative and inclusive approach to robotic deployment that respects our public rights of way, includes community input, and allows cities to develop thoughtful regulatory regimes,”

The robot delivery sector is certainly heating up this year. In addition to Postmates, rivals Kiwi and Starship have been heading to college campuses, Amazon is testing out its Scout robot in Irivine, CA, and Refraction AI just recently launched its three-wheeled autonomous delivery vehicle.

Postmates raised $100 million at the beginning of this year and is expected to go public later this year. If they follow through, perhaps a robot could ring the opening bell.

San Francisco Vote Bans Cashless Retail (Good Thing Amazon Go Now Accepts Cash)

San Francisco is the latest local government to put the kibosh on cashless retail operations. As the San Francisco Examiner wrote, yesterday the city’s Board of Supervisors unanimously approved legislation to ban cashless businesses, which will go into effect 90 days after its final approval.

The move follows similar legislation passed recently by both New Jersey and Philadelphia (and currently being contemplated by New York), all of which aim to help reduce income inequality and protect the rights of the non-banked and underbanked who don’t have access to a credit card. While businesses have argued that going cashless is more accurate, secure and efficient for consumers, ultimately, regulators see it as discriminatory.

There are some exceptions to San Francisco’s new law. As the AP reports: “Temporary pop-up stores and internet-only businesses such as ride-hailing companies would be exempt, as would food trucks, which say they lack the resources to handle cash.”

San Francisco had initially exempted Amazon Go from the ban, but then changed its mind in March. The city’s new rule also comes just days after Amazon launched its first cash-accepting Amazon Go store, which is also the first Go store in New York. The new location features a dedicated entrance for cash payers and a counter in the middle of the store where a person with a handheld scanner rings up shoppers and accepts payment. Amazon hasn’t indicated when it will add cash payments to its other stores, but the company basically has three months to get its three SF locations compliant with the new law.

There are actually a number of startups looking to retrofit existing supermarkets with Amazon Go-like cashierless checkout. But as these new cash-requiring rules pop up around the country, it will be table stakes for any such startup to tie in with a retailer’s POS system to enable both grab-and-go checkout as well as traditional payment checkout.

Video: We Check Out Creator, the Burger-Making Robot

When I was in San Francisco last week I had the good fortune to visit Creator, the restaurant that cooks their burgers via robot.

Creator‘s 14-foot robot creates custom burgers from scratch. It splits and toasts the bun, adds condiments and toppings (like ketchup, lettuce, and pickles), drops and melts freshly-shredded cheese, and grinds and cooks beef patties — all to order. The process takes roughly 5 minutes and can make approximately 120 patties per hour.

Unfortunately, Creator doesn’t have a vegetarian option (yet), so I didn’t get to taste anything made by the burger-bot. But I did get to see it in action! Check out the sped up video below to see the whole process from start to finish.

A Visit to Creator Burger in San Francisco

Are you a huge food robot nerd? (Same!) Join us on April 16th in San Francisco for Articulate, the food robotics and automation summit! Tickets are available here, but they’ll go fast — snag yours now.

San Francisco Eyes Ban on New Corporate Cafeterias

Like a shark smelling blood in the water, the city of San Francisco is looking to clamp down on the free lunches that keep tech workers from spending money in local neighborhoods.

The New York Times writes:

“Two San Francisco supervisors introduced an ordinance last week that would forbid employee cafeterias in new corporate construction. It is not clear whether the measure will pass, but it is a direct attack on one of the modern tech industry’s most entrenched traditions.”

The ordinance was introduced around the same time new surfaced that neighboring city Mountain View had placed restrictions on the free food offered at Facebook’s new offices in that city.

The problem these and many other cities in the Bay Area face is that tech workers who receive free meals throughout the day (not to mention snacks, beer, coffee and kombucha on tap) have no incentive to ever leave the office and spend money at nearby restaurants and bodegas.

When San Francisco offered tax deals to companies like Twitter to keep them in the city, they hoped that the shiny new tech offices would result in a revitalization of the areas around them. This hasn’t happened, and the fact that tech workers don’t venture outside their offices to eat or drink is a big part of that.

San Francisco won’t consider this new ban until the fall, and even then, it will only address cafeterias in new construction. This means that existing cafeterias and corporate catering services won’t be impacted. Which is good news for the number of startups in the corporate catering space that have secured millions in funding over the past year.

But the city has shown it’s not afraid to bite the hands that feed it. Last year it enacted strict rules over how delivery robots could roam its sidewalks.

There could be an intangible halo effect from all this municipal scrutiny. While the idea of a city telling employees of private businesses where they can and can’t eat is unsettling, perhaps the public attention will force companies to at least examine their existing policies — and do more to share their wealth.

If you are interested in the future of lunch at work, be sure to come to the Smart Kitchen Summit: North America in October where we’ll be hosting a panel dedicated to “Leave The Lunch Box Behind: How Tech Is Changing How We Eat At Work” with speakers from Chowbotics, EZCater, and more.

San Francisco Restricts Robot Delivery

Before robots can rise up and take over the world, they will need to overcome… municipal laws. Case in point, San Francisco, where the Board of Supervisors voted to enact tight restrictions on the use of delivery robots in the city.

The ordinance allows companies to get a permit for the purposes of testing autonomous delivery devices–for research purposes only— and include a lengthy list of requirements including:

  • Robot can’t go faster than 3 miles per hour
  • A human operator needs to be within 30 feet
  • The robots have to give the right of way to people
  • Testing can only be done in certain areas of the city

The move from the SF board highlights the importance of humans in fulfilling the promise of automated robot delivery. While advances in robotics continues at a rapid clip, local governments tend to lag behind technology. Indeed, as Curbed writes, the SF board is saying this measure was a way to get ahead of an impending technology shift and not be caught off guard by one like they were with Uber and Google busses. Whether that plays out remains to be seen.

But while San Francisco dips its cautious toe in the robot delivery waters, other areas of the country are jumping in. SF neighbor, Redwood City has a robot delivery pilot program in effect with Starship Technologies, and other states such as Wisconsin, Virginia have passed laws allowing robot deliveries.

And if peer pressure to keep up with other governments isn’t enough, perhaps seeing cross-state rival, Los Angeles, roll out their Top Chef robot deliveries this week will light the robotic fire in San Francisco.

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