DoorDash has acquired salad-making robot company Chowbotics
The food delivery platform says the deal will let it help restaurant clients expand their offerings
DoorDash has acquired salad-making robot startup Chowbotics, the companies announced Monday. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the Chowbotics team have all become DoorDash employees, and the company will operate independently within DoorDash.
“We have long admired the work that Chowbotics has done to increase access to fresh meals, with its groundbreaking robotics product and vision,” DoorDash co-founder Stanley Tang said in statement emailed to The Verge. “With the Chowbotics team on board, we can explore new use cases and customers, providing another service to help our merchants grow.”
DoorDash currently has the greatest share of the US food delivery market, around 48 percent, ahead of rivals like UberEats and Grubhub. Its revenue skyrocketed in 2020 as restaurants closed in-person dining due to the pandemic and customers relied on delivery services. But when DoorDash went public late last year, its IPO was criticized by some analysts as lacking in value; they questioned how DoorDash would be able to continue to grow if demand for food delivery subsides once the pandemic is over.
Analyst David Trainer of New Constructs said at the time, “We think this proposed public equity offering holds no value, $0, beyond bailing out private investors before unsuspecting public investors realize the business is not viable in its current form.”
But the Chowbotics acquisition raises interesting questions about DoorDash’s post-pandemic plans . . .It seems likely that Chowbotics’ vending machines would fit into the ghost kitchen model, which are delivery-only restaurants that some in the industry regard warily. DoorDash has a ghost kitchen facility in California, and last year announced it was working with Chicago restaurant Krazy Hog — which closed in-person dining during the pandemic — as part of its Reopen for Delivery initiative.
If you’re ordering for delivery, chances are you’d never know whether your salad was made by a Chowbotics robot or a human unless the restaurant tells you. . ."
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More > Press Release
By Penn Daniel, General Manager DoorDash
Welcoming Chowbotics to the DoorDash Team
Chowbotics, the creator of the Fresh Food Robot, has become part of the DoorDash team. Chowbotics makes healthy, custom meals accessible 24/7 with its flagship robot. This innovative and leading technology creates customizable salads, grain and poke bowls, parfaits, cereals and snacks all within a 3’X3’ space. There is tremendous complexity in accurately dispensing a wide variety of natural ingredients that exhibit an ever-changing range of physical properties (e.g., weight, size, shape, and consistency), and Chowbotics tackles this through sophisticated robotics.
While salad bars, vending machines, and even automats may sound familiar, Chowbotics has successfully built and commercialized a product that provides made-to-order fresh meals at the touch of a button. And it’s not just theoretical. Chowbotics has deployed its product to hundreds of locations, including universities, hospitals, and grocery stores. This has allowed students, front-line workers, and everyday shoppers access to healthy and hygienic meals with fresh ingredients. The level of autonomy, accessibility, and customization that Chowbotics provides to consumers is proven and unmatched.
What excites us most about Chowbotics is the team has developed a remarkable tool that will allow DoorDash merchants to grow. As part of the DoorDash platform, this tool can help merchants expand their current menu offerings as well as reach new customers in new markets without investing in an entirely new store. At DoorDash, we strive to become a merchant’s first call when they want to grow their business. The addition of Chowbotics’s capabilities allows us to enhance our broad array of merchant services — which include customer acquisition, on-demand delivery, insights and analytics, and white-label order fulfillment — and in a more cost-effective way. . . The added expertise of the Chowbotics team allows us to continue to create new ways to bring customers everything in their local neighborhoods. We believe the versatility of the DoorDash platform enables seamless integration and scaling of the Chowbotics offering.
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