The companies announced Monday that DoorDash Chowbotics, the sleep production company, is starting. Financial terms for the agreement have not been announced, 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,” StanDay Tang, co-founder of DoorDash, said in a statement to The edge. “With the Chowbotics team on board, we can explore new uses and customers and provide a different service to grow our merchants.”
Chowbotics was founded in 2014 and its fresh food robot Sally – a rectangular machine that is actually a salad vending machine – can customize salads, cereal and pottery, parfaits, cereals and snacks, all within a small space. According to a blog post by DoorDash general manager Penn Daniel, the robot is used by companies such as universities, hospitals and grocery stores.
DoorDash currently has the largest share in the US food delivery market, about 48 percent, above competitors such as UberEats and Grubhub. Its revenue skyrocketed in 2020 when restaurants closed in person due to the pandemic and customers relied on delivery services. But when DoorDash became known late last year, the stock market was criticized by some analysts as a lack of value; they asked how DoorDash would be able to continue to grow if demand for food delivery declined once the pandemic was over.
New Constructs analyst David Trainer said at the time: “We think this proposed public equity offering has no value, more than $ 0, except to benefit private investors before unsuspecting public investors realize that the company is not viable in its current form. is not.”
But the acquisition of Chowbotics raises interesting questions about DoorDash’s plans after the pandemic. Daniel writes in the blog post that Chowbotics will allow through Dash to help the restaurants that use the delivery platform expand their offering. It seems likely that Chowbotics’ vending machines fit in with the haunted kitchen model, which are just delivery restaurants that some in the industry consider considerate. DoorDash has a haunted kitchen facility in California and announced last year that it was working with Chicago restaurant Krazy Hog – who ate in person during the pandemic – as part of its Reopen for Delivery initiative.
If you order for delivery, chances are you will never know if your salad was made by a Chowbotics robot or a human unless the restaurant tells you to. It’s not uncommon for restaurants to brand their delivery operations under a different name, as when some eaters discovered the pizzas they ordered at ‘Pasqually’s’ actually come from the Chuck E. Cheese dining room for kids.