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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Starship

Wait, Robot Delivery Companies Charge the Same Commissions as Human Delivery?

One of the key selling points of our delivery robot future was that it would be less expensive than existing human efforts. Yes, automation would take some human jobs, but the savings would create cheaper food and faster service. But a story out in WIRED today shows that at least right now, robot delivery companies are charging the same commissions as their human counterparts.

The main thrust of the WIRED story is that robot deliveries should be having a big moment during this pandemic. Robots reduce human-to-human contact, can go into dangerous areas, and can operate around the clock. But they aren’t having that big moment, hampered by technical limitations, local regulations, and in some cases — cost.

WIRED highlights two delivery companies: Starship and Refraction. Starship makes cooler-sized robots that are best known in the U.S. for scurrying around a number of college campuses bringing meals and snacks to hungry students. Refraction makes the bigger REV-1, a robust three-wheeled robot that can tackle inclement weather and launched lunch delivery in Ann Arbor, MI at the end of last year.

In Fairfax, VA, where Starship recently started making restaurant deliveries, the owners of the Havabite restaurant told WIRED that Starship is charging them 20 percent commission fees (after a one-month free trial), which they said is more than the restaurant pays GrubHub for delivery.

Up in Michigan, Refraction is charging 15 percent commission on deliveries, which WIRED says is “a rate equal to or lower than that charged by human-powered delivery apps.”

We have reached out to both Starship and Refraction for confirmation clarification. A Refraction rep emailed us the following: “Average delivery fees for a restaurant are typically 30% (like through Doordash or Uber Eats) and [Refraction is] charging half of that. On the consumer side, there is a $3 fee which is about a quarter of the typical order cost. Refraction is also now testing a grocery delivery pilot with zero fees.”

Back in January of 2019, as it was rolling out to its first college campus, Starship told us that it “uses different revenue models depending on location,” and that it “sometimes charge[s] a margin on top of the delivery fee.” For its part, Refraction told us in July of 2019 that it was charging a delivery fee that was better than what Uber is charging.

I get that 2019 was a lifetime ago and a lot has happened since then. I also get that robots ain’t cheap, especially when they are just starting out and haven’t reached scale yet. But human third-party delivery services are being vilified for cutting into the already slim margins of restaurants during this pandemic crisis, so much so that local governments are enforcing caps on delivery commissions. You’d think robot companies, which still have technical and regulatory hurdles to overcome, would want to make them as attractive an alternative as possible.

But maybe that isn’t possible right now. This COVID-19 pandemic is impacting every corner of the economy, including the companies behind these burgeoning robot delivery services. It’s not exactly the easiest time to raise fresh capital to fuel growth. Starship reportedly went through a round of layoffs at the end of March.

Despite all this, the coronavirus has strengthened my belief that robots are the future of delivery, especially in a more socially distant post-pandemic world. Hopefully the economics will work out so robots can help us get through all this to find out.

Starship Robots Making Food Deliveries in Tempe, AZ

If a person dropping food off on your doorstep is still one human too many in these COVID-19 times, then maybe you should try moving to Tempe, AZ where Starship’s autonomous robots have started making restaurant deliveries.

Starship’s li’l rovers are squat, six-wheeled, cooler-sized robots that can scurry around town making deliveries. In a time when people are being asked to shelter in place, autonomous robots can help reduce human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus by, well, not being human.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Starship now has more than 30 autonomous, on-demand robots delivering daily between 10:30 a.m. and 8:30 p.m. Meals are available from three different Tempe restaurants: Fate Brewing Company, Tempe City Tacos and Venezia’s Pizza. For those in Tempe, the delivery area is bordered by S. Mill Ave. to the east, S. Rural Road to the west, Route 60 to the south and Southern Ave. to the north.

Starship had been focusing its go-to market in the US on colleges, where it has been steadily rolling out on different campuses over the past year. But with the global pandemic forcing schools to send students home and the rising need for contactless delivery, Starship’s shift towards deliveries for the general public makes sense.

Tempe is the third location in the US where Starship has been making non-college deliveries. The company has already begun delivering different restaurants in Washington DC and Irvine, CA. According to a Starship spokesperson, future delivery cities include the City of Fairfax in DC and Moutain View, CA (which will also be testing Nuro’s driverless delivery pods!).

In addition to requiring one less human putting themselves at risk to bring you a burrito, autonomous robots can also run continuously without needing a break, and can be easily cleaned in between trips.

Starship’s robots aren’t the only ones pitching in during these dire times. The Postmates Serve robot has been making deliveries in Los Angeles. On a much larger scale, the CEO of driverless van startup, Udelv, has publicly offered his company’s autonomous delivery services to help make deliveries in quarantined areas.

If you’re in the designated area in Tempe and use Starship’s robot delivery, take a picture and let us know how it went!

Starship Robots Deliver Food Over Social Distances at Bowling Green

There is probably some grim metaphor in the fact that while people across the US shelter in place to avoid human contact, robots continue to roll out, making deliveries, unaware of the pandemic that surrounds them.

Ever since this outbreak started, we at The Spoon have wondered why autonomous delivery robots aren’t being used more often, especially in cities. As grocery and restaurant deliveries surge, robots could remove at least one human from the delivery equation (and they are a lot easier to scrub down after each use).

Turns out that Bowling Green State University is still using Starship robots for food delivery on campus, according to the Sentinel-Tribune. At least Jon Zachrich, Bowling Green State University Dining Director of Marketing and Communications, thinks that’s a good thing in these end times.

“I personally think it’s a good opportunity for social distancing, just because your only interaction is going to be with the actual robot, once it comes from our facility,” Zachrich told the Sentinel-Tribune.

He also spilled some factoids that I, as someone who follows the robot space, found interesting. The surface of the robot is non-porous, so it’s easy to clean. Zachrich also outlined some of the sanitizing protocols for the robot, saying that each robot is wiped down with disinfectant and anti-bacterial cleaners after each use.

On a more general interest note, Zachrich also gave us a glimpse as to how many orders the robots were running at Bowling Green before the pandemic. The robots debuted on campus on Feb. 20 and “Orders were quickly maxed out at over 750 per day,” the Sentinel-Tribune writes. Each of those came with $1.99 Starship delivery fee if you want to do the math on revenue generation.

That number has obviously dropped off as Bowling Green, like so many other colleges, has shifted to distance learning. Most restaurants on campus have closed, but the restaurants are still delivering to essential staff on campus and students who remained because they don’t have any other place to go.

This outbreak doesn’t seem to be subsiding anytime soon, especially in this country. With social distancing becoming the new norm, at least for the foreseeable future, perhaps more places will be like Bowling Green and get their own robots rolling across the social distance gap.

Madison, WI Regulators Aim to Limit Robot Food Delivery

Looks like Starship’s delivery robots may be blocked from roaming the city streets of Madison, WI. The Wisconsin State Journal reports that the local Transportation Policy and Planning Board there unanimously recommended a measure yesterday that would prohibit the delivery robots everywhere in the city except for the University of Wisconsin.

Starship robots have been running around the UW campus making food and drink deliveries since November of last year. Madison’s Assistant City Attorney told The State Journal that the purpose of the proposed rule is to prevent other companies from coming in and jamming up the city’s sidewalks with robots.

The new rule wouldn’t impact the robots that are currently making deliveries to students, faculty and staff at UW. It would just bar them from expanding outside of campus. The new rule would not prevent other robot delivery companies from also operating on the UW campus.

One of the most intriguing aspects of robot delivery is watching how cities around the country have to grapple with the issue in real time. How do you balance the convenience robot delivery with equity and accessibility issues, potential losses in city revenues and liability issues? This is all new territory and cities have to keep up with the rapid pace of innovation.

In 2017, San Francisco enacted tight restrictions around robot delivery, but recently relented a bit and gave Postmates a permit to test its Serve robot in the city. Cities like Scottsdale, AZ and Houston have been popular testing grounds for autonomous vehicles. In 2018, Dallas, TX allowed robot delivery on select sidewalks. Kiwi’s robots were allowed to roam the sidewalks of Berkeley, CA. And last year Washington state passed a law allowing robot deliveries (under certain conditions) statewide.

From a business perspective, Madison’s move probably won’t have too much of an impact on Starship. The company is focusing on college and corporate campuses, and has a growing number of delivery programs running on colleges around the country.

From a city perspective, I can’t really fault Madison for this move. I think delivery robots like Starship’s are inevitable as they can run all day and night and potentially make food delivery cheaper and more accessible to everyone. But there are real issues surrounding their deployment on public streets. It’s fine to put a pause on robots to figure things out, it just shouldn’t be a full stop on the issue.

As Starship Delivery Robots Hit Ole Miss, Where’s Kiwi?

Starship’s autonomous food delivery robots started rolling out across the University of Missisppi (Ole Miss) yesterday, reports the school’s newspaper. This, evidently, makes Ole Miss the first college in the Southeastern Conference to get autonomous robot delivery, which isn’t a huge deal to us, but is probably a jab at rival University of Alabama somehow.

Starship’s robots are cooler-sized, six-wheeled self-driving vehicles that automatically navigate around people and obstacles. Students and staff wanting food download the Starship app and place an order from participating eateries at that college. They then pay a $1.99 fee to have it delivered to wherever they are on campus.

Starship shows that it is not slowing down the rollout of its robotic services in the new year. The list of colleges using Starship’s robots is getting too long to mention each time we write about them. But in the past few months alone Starship’s bots have begun service at the University of Houston, the University of Wisconsin, and the company re-started service at the University of Pittsburgh.

As the litany of colleges using Starship continues to grow, one has to wonder what’s up with Kiwi, another startup that makes squat food delivery robots for college campuses. The company announced an updated version of its robot with new capabilities back in December, but hasn’t made much noise since then.

There are a lot of colleges out there, so there is still plenty of opportunity for Kiwi. But at the rate Starship is going, its solution looks like it’s becoming turnkey. The more miles and deliveries Starship runs, the more data it collects and the better its service will become, which will beget even more adoption by more schools.

If Kiwi doesn’t start ramping up, it’s going to miss out on more than just Ole Miss.

Starship Delivery Robots Officially Roll Out (Again) at University of Pittsburgh

As of this week, robot-powered food and drink delivery are fully a part of college life at the University of Pittsburgh (Pitt). After several months of testing (and stopping tests), Pitt now has a fleet of 30 Starship robots autonomously running around campus feeding hungry students and staff.

To get the robot, users order from seven participating campus eateries through the Starship deliveries app. For a $1.99 fee, a cooler-sized robot will wheel across campus to bring the food directly to the person.

Starship’s robots made their debut on Pitt’s campus last September, but the program was temporarily halted just a month later after two separate incidents of the self-driving robots reportedly blocking sidewalk access to people in wheelchairs.

Pitt pulled Starship’s robots off campus for further review. We reached out to Starship to see what adjustments the company made in response to the accessibility incidents and a company spokesperson responded with a terse “Starship reviewed the mapping of that intersection.”

The real world will bring about all sorts of issues for delivery robots that weren’t necessarily foreseeable, and they are issues that society will have to deal with and figure out in real time. But robots will become an increasingly common part of the college experience for students over the next couple of years. In addition to Pitt, Starship’s robots are making deliveries at George Mason University, Northern Arizona University, the University of Wisconsin, and other homes of higher education. Elsewhere, Chowbotics has been sending its Sally, the salad making robot, off to a number of different colleges to feed students around the clock.

Though autonomous robot delivery at colleges is very much still in its infancy, it has the power to be a real game changer. The ability to order food on demand and have it brought directly to you wherever you are on campus in undeniably convenient (post-party pizza, anyone?). But it’s also training an entire generation of early tech adopters (read: the youngs) to interact with robots, and perhaps, expect them once they leave school.

How Will Winter Affect Autonomous Delivery Robots? Snow Problem!

A lot of work in autonomous robots is done in places like Scottsdale, Houston and the Bay Area. What places like Scottsdale, Houston and the Bay Area have in common is that they have mild-to-nonexistant winters. But up north in Michigan and Wisconsin, where it’s already snowing, autonomous delivery bots from Refraction AI and Starship are being put to the test.

Refraction is based out of Ann Arbor, MI, and it’s three-wheeled REV-1 robot has been designed to travel in bad weather. As we wrote around the time of its launch:

…Refraction AI combines software and hardware to battle bad weather. First is the environmental scanning provided by a 12-camera setup as well as ultrasound and radar sensors on the REV-1. To make the robot less expensive, the REV-1 foregoes the LIDAR systems popular with other autonomous robots. And according to Johnson-Roberson, Refraction AI’s camera rig also allows the robot to track things not on the ground like buildings and cars to navigate even when road lines are not visible. The other way the REV-1 takes on bad weather is rather low tech. “We’re using fat bike tires a low PSI so they are squishy,” said Johnson-Roberson. “They can run in snow and rain.”

But it’s one thing to describe how a robot will work in inclement weather; it’s another to see it in action. Thankfully, the folks at Refraction shot a video of its robot on a snow-covered road a couple of weeks back and shared it with The Spoon. Check it out:

Refraction.AI’s REV-1 (Pity the cyclist following it)

While that video doesn’t show it taking turns or hills, or having to deal with traffic, it certainly looks like the REV-1 can handle slushy conditions. Which is actually good news all around. Barring the arrival of a blizzard, hungry folks can order meals for delivery guilt-free because they aren’t forcing someone to drive or ride in the snow, and restaurants can still earn delivery revenue when the weather turns.

Elsewhere in the midwest, the students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are just now learning whether or not that town’s snowy weather will keep the newly arrived Starship robots from making food deliveries. The Wisconsin State Journal’s Just Ask Us section fielded this question this week: Will UW-Madison’s food delivery robots get stuck in the snow?

The answer was pretty straightforward and filled with the type of common sense you’d expect from a Midwesterner:

On days when there are blizzards or icy conditions that would make the sidewalks unnavigable for people, the delivery robots will not operate. When students go on the app to order food, it would show that the marketplaces are closed

A spokesperson for the university goes on to say that since the robots were designed with a low-profile and traction tires that could handle Estonian weather, they should be able to handle a Wisconsin winter. (If you go to UWM, send us a photo or video of the robot in snowy action).

The weather outside may be frightful, but putting robots through these harsh weather paces means that they’ll be available in more places beyond Houston, Phoenix and the Bay Area in the near future.

Starship Robots Roll Out to University of Wisconsin-Madison, Can They Survive the Winter?

I’ve never been to Wisconsin, but people from there tell me that it gets cold about this time of year, I mean, it snowed there on Halloween last week, with more expected tomorrow and Wednesday. This type of inclement weather was actually the first thing I thought about when Starship sent me a press release today announcing that its robots are now rolling around the University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW-M), delivering food.

Starship makes six-wheeled, cooler-sized robots that can carry 20 pounds worth of cargo. UW-M has 66,000 students, staff and faculty, and is getting 30 Starship robots those people can use by downloading the Starship app, ordering from three different markets at the school and dropping a pin on the campus map to set the delivery point. There is a $1.99 delivery fee and at first, the delivery area will be limited to a specific area before expanding across campus.

This is the latest school to adopt Starship’s delivery robots, following George Mason University, Northern Arizona University, Purdue, University of Houston and the University Pittsburgh.

Pitt, however, recently suspended its robot delivery program after running into issues with the autonomous robots allegedly blocking sidewalk access to people in wheelchairs.

That type of real-world complication makes me wonder how the robots will do when truly nasty Wisconsin weather strikes. On the one hand, I’m sure that Starship and the UW-M have thought about this and come up with solutions. One advantage to delivering on campuses is that they are smaller geographic areas with lots of walkways and dedicated maintenance staffs to keep those walkways safe and clear.

But still, snow and ice could be big obstacles for a robot with little wheels. That’s one of the reasons Refraction.ai is using fat bike tires for its autonomous robots. Not to mention that the performance of lithium-ion batteries, like those in Starship robots, degrades in cold temperatures. We reached out to Starship to see how they will address the cold, and will update when we hear back.

UPDATE: Starship sent us the following statement: “The robots are designed to work in a variety of conditions including snow and rain. There is negligible battery degradation in the extreme cold.”

In the meantime, there are now 66,000 people at UW-M who are more likely to avoid the bitter cold and can stay in and order food thanks to Starship’s robots.

Starship’s Robots Pulled From University of Pittsburgh After Accessibility Incident

The University of Pittsburgh has paused its recently launched robot delivery program with Starship after the autonomous rovers impeded the movement of people in wheelchairs.

According to WESA in Pittsburgh:

Pitt doctoral student and wheelchair user Emily Ackerman said on Monday that she got trapped on Forbes Avenue as traffic approached because a Starship Technologies robot was blocking the only accessible entrance to the sidewalk.

WESA also wrote that this follows another incident earlier this month at Pitt when Alisa Grishman, who is also in a wheelchair, said she was blocked on a sidewalk by one of Starship’s robots.

In response, the school and Starship have pulled the robots from the street for further review. After the publication of this post, Starship sent us the following statement: “Starship reviewed the footage and confirmed that Emily was able to access passage onto the sidewalk.”

In addition to the University of Pittsburgh, Starship’s robots are now roaming around the University of Houston, Purdue, George Mason University and Northern Arizona University. We have not heard of any other similar incidents at this time. George Mason, in fact, more than doubled its robot fleet earlier this year.

Starship incorporates different design features and technology to make its robot/human interactions safe. The robots are designed to be the width of the average person’s shoulders, so they don’t take up too much room, they move at a walking pace, and live human teleoperators can take over and drive the robot should it get stuck.

But as this incident at Pitt highlights, more real world testing needs to be conducted before we see a bunch of robots scurrying around outside of campuses and on packed city streets. Let’s not forget that last year Starship rival, Kiwi, had one of robots accidentally catch fire on a street near the University of California at Berkeley.

Ironically, autonomous robots have great promise to make delivery more accessible to everyone, especially those who are infirmed or otherwise housebound. Starship and other delivery robot companies now need to make sure that they can disrupt the delivery industry without dangerously disrupting the lives of others.

UPDATE: The original story used a statement provided to WESA. We replaed it with the statement sent directly to The Spoon.

Starship Delivery Robots Heading for the University of Houston

You can add the University of Houston to the growing list of colleges and universities that will have Starship‘s small delivery robots scurrying around its campus this coming school year. According to ABC 13 University of Houston (UH) president Renu Khator made the announcement during her fall address.

Starting this fall, students will be able to order and have food delivered to their location on the UH campus via Starship’s squat, six-wheeled, cooler sized robots. We don’t have a ton of details about the program, such as whether Starship has partnered with a foodservice operator like Sodexo to enable meal delivery from campus restaurants that ties into student meal plans. We reached out to Starship for more information.

News of the UH expansion comes after Starship raised a $40 million Series A round of funding this summer. Starship has also been accelerating it college campus program in the back half of this year. The company kicked off 2019 by making deliveries at George Mason University in January. It then added Northern Arizona University in March and the University of Pittsburgh and Purdue University in August. In September The Harvard Crimson reported that students there were working to bring Starship robots to its campus, too.

College campuses are proving to be fertile ground for food robots. In addition to Starship, Kiwi makes its own delivery rover bots for colleges like the University of California at Berkeley. And Chowbotics has sent Sally, its salad-making robot, off to multiple colleges this year. Colleges make a lot of sense for robots, as they have concentrated populations of students, faculty and staff that are around at all hours and automated food systems can work around the clock to make or deliver food.

As robots enter more colleges and make more types of food available more often, sociologist departments on campus should watch how this automation changes an entire generation of students’ relationship with dining.

The Food Tech Show: Delivery Bots Head to College

This week the Spoon gang got together to talk about some of the most interesting food tech stories of the week.

On this week’s Food Tech Show we talk about:

As always, you can listen to the Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. You can also download direct to your phone or just click play below.

Audio Player

Enjoy the podcast!

Newsletter: Are Vertical Farms Ready to Grow More Than Lettuce?

Greetings from the South, ground zero for sweet tea, land of unrelenting humidity, future home of a massive new vertical farming operation.

This week, an Orlando, FL-based company called Kalera (formerly Eco Convergence Group), announced that it has broken ground on a semi-autonomous vertical farming facility that will produce 5 million heads of lettuce each year, supplying Orlando and central Florida restaurants, hotels, and grocery stores with fresh greens and underscoring the growing demand for locally grown produce.

As soon as I got the news, the usual question about vertical farming entered my brain: why is it always lettuce? From Kalera’s new operation to AeroFarms’ 70,000-square-foot New Jersey farm to IGS’ fully automated vertical farm, we hear lots of talk of leafy greens, herbs, and the occasional edible flower. But nobody’s yet growing eggplant, potato, or even carrots.

Kalera’s CEO and cofounder, Cristian Toma, had a lot to say about that when I asked him about this: Unlike lettuce — short plants that can be densely packed together to maximize volume — many other types of produce need lots of space to grow upwards and outwards. In some cases they require multiple harvests. Most of them need human hands to assist with things like pruning, and all of these needs add up to the kinds of space and labor costs vertical farms simply can’t sustain right now. Not at scale, anyway.

That doesn’t mean we won’t see more non-leafy greens in vertical farms at some point in the future. As I noted this morning:

Whether the day ever comes when we’ll see vertical farms growing, say, carrots, depends a lot on developments in plant science in the future. “The varieties we are working with right now over many many years evolved to meet the challenges for outdoor production,” says Toma. “We don’t have varieties bred specifically for indoor production yet. So that’s an area where the industry can develop.”

Image courtesy of Princeton University

Princeton Vertical Farming Project Shutters Its Doors — For Now

More data on growing methods might help. That’s been the credo of Paul P.G. Gauthier, former associate research scholar in plant physiology and environmental plant metabolism at Princeton University and the founder of the Princeton Vertical Farming Project.

Unfortunately, word got out late last week that PVFP has closed its doors following Gauthier’s departure from the university. We shouldn’t shutter the conversation on his ideas, however, especially those around the use of data in vertical farms. Back in January, Gauthier told The Spoon that the vertical farming industry needs more data on best practices for growing plants that can be shared around the industry in a kind of open-source framework. More data on what’s working and what isn’t could give us a more realistic idea of whether, say, tomatoes are a realistic crop to grow at large scale or if they’re better off in a greenhouse setting.

Gauthier has taken a job as Professor of Plant Science at Delaware Valley University and said he hopes to reproduce the vertical farm model from Princeton on a larger scale, and that there’s a possibility of even reviving the PVFP at Princeton in the future.

Starship’s Autonomous Delivery Bots Land on Another Campus

While vertical farms move closer to automation, more automated delivery bots are also moving onto college campuses. Starship upped the number of food delivery robots this week by announcing that its bots have landed at the University of Pittsburgh and Purdue University, joining campuses like George Mason University and Northern Arizona University, both of whom launched delivery programs with Starship earlier this year.

Starship is one of a few companies testing delivery programs with these small, wheeled bots. Kiwi, too, has bots on a number of campuses — including, possibly Purdue, a potential overlap that suggests campus is the next battleground for autonomous delivery. It is, after all, the perfect testing ground: as my colleague Chris Albrecht noted when he tested out a Kiwi earlier this year, college campuses are an ideal piloting ground for these companies: “Colleges are contained geographic areas with lots of hungry people ordering food from on-campus or nearby establishments well into the night,” he wrote.

Personally, I’m waiting for the day a six-wheeled autonomous bot can deliver a hydroponically grown baked potato to my doorstep, but if the economics of vertical potato farms don’t pan out, I’d always settle for lettuce.

Stay cool,
Jenn