Robots Play a Starring Role In-House Delivery Model

Robots are giving restaurants a helping hand with in-house delivery.  

This AP article details how Miss Kim’s, an award-winning, modern Korean restaurant in Ann Arbor, Mich., Domino’s Pizza, and a growing number of college campuses are using robots to deliver food hot and somewhat fast, one order at a time.   

There's a misconception that robots are taking jobs away from people.  That's not always the case.  When Starship's fleet of robots began delivering at Bowling Green State University, delivery was not offered before the autonomous vehicles arrived on campus.  Since then, the company has hired more than 30 people to serve as runners between kitchens and robots, Bowling Green dining spokesman Jon Zachrich said in an interview with AP. Read the full AP article here.

Rise of the Delivery Robots

HT has been following the rise of the delivery robots. College students around the country are seeing delivery robots making the rounds on campus from a variety of players. Starship, which started delivering food to Purdue students back in 2019, now has 1000+ robots in its fleet worldwide. Yandex  SDG and Grubhub teamed up to launch robot delivery at Ohio State starting with the 2021 school year. Recently, Kiwibot and Sodexo teamed up on robotic food delivery at select universities.
 

Not to be outdone, QSR Chick-fil-A is testing robotic delivery in California, Domino’s is teaming up with Nuro to launch autonomous pizza delivery with on-road robot in Houston. Nuro, by the way, was approved for Autonomous Delivery in California in late December. And in March, Chipotle invested in the autonomous delivery company.