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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Sidewalk delivery

Half a Million Deliveries & Counting: A Five-Year Snapshot of Sidewalk Robot Deliveries at George Mason

This week, sidewalk robot delivery startup Starship Technologies celebrated the fifth anniversary of its first campus deployment in the US and, as part of its announcement, gave us a peek into how its fleet has grown over the past half-decade at George Mason University (Mason).

According to Starship, their robots started rolling around Mason on January 22, 2019. Since then, they’ve grown their fleet from its initial 25 robots to 60 and the number of merchants around campus from 4 to 18. According to Starship, the Mason fleet is the world’s largest sidewalk robot delivery fleet.

Here are some of the stats about the Mason deployment sent to The Spoon:

  • Nearly 500,000 deliveries have been made.
  • The robot fleet has covered over 474,225 miles.
  • A single student has made a record 880 orders.
  • The most popular menu item has been The Original Double ‘N Fries from Steak’ n Shake, ordered 15,779 times.

It’s all interesting and impressive in some respects, but I have to admit the stat I am most curious about is the student who’s ordered using the company’s sidewalk robot 880(!) times. I’m unsure if Starship has a loyalty program, but that’s essentially the sidewalk robot equivalent of the airline million-mile club.

According to the company, since it was first deployed at Mason, the Starship fleet saw its service grow from 25,000 deliveries and 150,000 miles traveled in 2019 to over 2,000 robots, 5 million deliveries completed, and over 7 million fleet delivery miles traveled.

That it’s a university setting where Starship has racked up the most miles and has grown its fleet to its largest single deployment makes lots of sense; not only are university campuses optimized for foot traffic and have relatively predictable delivery destinations (dorms, and student halls), but they also have built-in and receptive customer populations who frequent the same locations.

Serve Robotics Strikes Deal With Uber to Scale Up to Two Thousand Sidewalk Delivery Robots

Uber Technologies Inc. is gearing up for a robotic future, bolstering its partnership with Serve Robotics Inc., a maker of sidewalk delivery robots. Following a successful trial in Los Angeles, the companies announced they would deploy up to 2,000 of Serve’s delivery robots in multiple markets across the United States. The deal marks one of the largest robotic delivery fleet deployments ever announced.

According to Serve, the expansion follows a year of strong growth, which saw the startup’s robotic deliveries grow 30% month over month since their introduction in 2022. Serve says that they currently serve over 200 Los Angeles restaurants.

“We are thrilled to be growing our partnership with Uber,” said Dr. Ali Kashani, co-founder and CEO of Serve Robotics. “This partnership is a major step towards mass commercialization of robotics for autonomous delivery, and it is a testament to the success of our partnership. We are excited to continue our work with Uber to bring this innovative technology to more cities across the country.”

For Serve, fleet expansion is made easier by the higher utilization of their robots in the field resulting from their fleets serving more than one customer in a given market. In the Los Angeles market, for example, the company’s fleet of about 100 robots delivers for both UberEats and 7-Eleven.

According to the company, they are eyeing San Jose, Dallas and Vancouver for possible expansion and have also started working with Pizza Hut in Vancouver and Walmart in Arkansas.

Long term, it will be interesting to see how cities begin to accommodate growing sidewalk robot traffic. Some cities have banned them, while others have begun to classify them as pedestrians.

Ottonomy Partners With Norwegian Post Office to Trial Sidewalk Robot Delivery

Ottonomy.IO, a maker of autonomous (and swervy!) sidewalk delivery robots, has partnered with Posten Norge to trial its robot in Oslo. The partnership, which also includes Nordic autonomous vehicle integrator Holo, will test how autonomous robots can improve Norway’s post office intra-logistics in city centers. Posten Norge also plans to trial Ottobots for first-mile pick-ups, receiving and delivering goods for the digital marketplace AMOI from the Aker Brygge area in Oslo.

Posten Norge looks to be all-in on this trial, going so far as creating a special page for its cute little Ottobot. The page, which features a video of Ottonomy’s robot (which you can see below), talks about the goals for the trial:

The purpose of this project is simply to learn as much as possible. We want to learn how people interact with Ottobot, the maturity of the technology, and we want to explore whether Ottobot can help solve challenges in connection with picking up and delivering goods in the city. 

Among other things, the project will give us insight into how the citizens of Oslo experience a robot in the urban environment, how do people feel about interacting with a robot, and whether it creates unforeseen challenges in our city. In addition, we need to understand which obstacles are difficult for the robot to maneuver, whether it can manage driving in Nordic weather conditions and how reliable Ottobot is in operation. 

While there’s no doubt that some of the sidewalk robot startups have struggled over the past year as a darkening economic outlook has led to cutbacks among logistics and delivery companies, Ottonomy looks like it’s faring pretty well. The company recently raised money and is showing up in airports in the US and Europe, and now, with its new partnership with one of the largest post offices, Ottonomy may have cracked open a potentially lucrative (and deep-pocketed) customer category.

Chili’s is Trialing a Sidewalk Delivery Robot From Serve Robotics

Hankering for some Chili’s but don’t want to jump in your car? It might not be long before that grilled chicken and bowl of chili arrive at your front door via sidewalk robot.

That’s because Chili’s parent company Brinker has been secretly piloting a trial with sidewalk delivery startup Serve Robotics and is evaluating the possibility of a wider rollout.

The first hint of the Brinker-Serve pilot came via a small mention last week in an article in a Dallas publication about the company’s drone delivery trials with Flytrex. Both Brinker and Serve have since confirmed to The Spoon that they are running an early stage sidewalk delivery pilot but were not ready to discuss further details of a wider rollout.

“We can confirm Serve is working with Brinker International to roll out robotic delivery for Chili’s customers,” a Serve spokesperson told the Spoon. “We will have more to share once service is launched.”

Chili’s Serve pilot is just the latest move into robotics by the casual dining chain. Last October, robot servers named Rita from Bear Robotics started showing up across the country. And as mentioned previously, the company started testing out a Flytrex drone in North Texas.

As more restaurant revenue share comes via off-premise delivery, chains like Chili’s are exploring drone and sidewalk delivery to counter the high cost of traditional delivery from the likes of Uber and DoorDash. Wade Allen, Brinker’s SVP of innovation, told Dallas Innovates that drone delivery is “a lot cheaper” than solutions that involve a human and a car. Likewise, the cost economics of sidewalk delivery robots are also likely to be much lower than that of traditional delivery.

For Serve, which began life as a division of Postmates and spun out of Uber last year, Brinker represents a massive opportunity with over 1,600 Chili’s locations worldwide. The trial comes on the heels of last year’s seed round with strategic investors Uber, 7-Eleven, and Delivery Hero, all of which represent potentially interesting opportunities for the company.