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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

underground

Talking Underground Delivery With Pipedream’s Garrett McCurrach

Food delivery through underground tubes?

Sounds crazy, but it’s already happening today, and Pipedream’s Garrett McCurrach thinks it just may be the future of delivery.

We catch up with Garrett just over a week after they announced their first pilot in the Atlanta suburbs, where they have built a system that delivers food and other items underground for nearly a mile.

During this podcast, we talk about how Garrett came up with the idea, what it was like to showcase the system to Jeff Bezos, how the company is working with fast-food restaurants to rethink drive-thru pickup, and what he sees for the future of underground delivery.

Listen to it on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or just click play below.

 

Pipedream Launches First Underground Delivery Network in Atlanta

Forget drone delivery. The cool kids are taking it underground.

That’s at least the vision of Pipedream, a startup building a system to enable delivery through underground pipes. The company, which is based in Austin Texas, has announced the launch of its first underground delivery network in partnership with Peachtree Corners, a smart city development in the broader Metro Atlanta region.

The new system in Peachtree Corners stretches nearly a mile, linking the development’s shopping center to Curiosity Lab’s 25,000-square-foot innovation hub. The Curiosity Hub is part office park, part event center, and now the employees who work there can order food and select (read smaller) items from local restaurants and stores and have them delivered via Pipedream’s underground delivery robots via the tube network.

With the announcement, Pipeline has released a video showcasing its first deployed delivery network, and it’s pretty cool to watch. As you can see below, the system basically looks like a small underground train network where robots pull the payloads through the pipes to their end destination.

First Ever Underground Delivery

Spoon readers will remember that we’ve covered Pipeline in the past, most recently after Amazon founder Jeff Bezos was spotted checking out a demo of Pipeline. At the time, Pipeline CEO mentioned that the company was targeting master-planned communities and was showing off an early system in the Atlanta area. Now, just six months later, their system has been launched in the Atlanta suburbs.

With the launch of the system, this looks to be what may be a first in terms of an actual automation-powered pipe delivery network, and now that it’s launched, it will be interesting to see if other master-planned communities embrace the idea. For its part, Pipeline is also working with brands to build out pilots for its underground delivery where it makes sense, such as with Wendy’s as a way to deliver food to drive-up customers.