Craving a late night slider? Forget the “Harold & Kumar” road trip quest and let a robot deliver White Castle to your door.
Coco Robotics, a California-based startup that hit Chicago sidewalks last winter with a fleet of autonomous personal delivery carts, has signed up White Castle for a pilot program using its mobile robots to make slider runs.
Last week, a White Castle on Chicago’s Near West Side became the chain’s first to offer robotic delivery through the Uber Eats app. Coco could soon be slinging sliders across Chicago and other markets as the nation’s oldest hamburger chain explores the Jetsonian future of fast food.
“I think this is the wave for the future in terms of ways that make ordering and getting food easier,” said Jamie Richardson, vice president at Columbus, Ohio-based White Castle. “It’s going to be even hotter and tastier if it’s delivered faster and with fewer hurdles. And this seems like a natural progression from where we’ve been.”
From carhops to drive-thru lanes to delivery apps, ordering fast food to-go has certainly seen technological advancement over the years. Coco may be on the cusp of a brave new world, where robots transport your meal from restaurant-to-kitchen table at the click of a button.
Launched in 2020, Coco’s AI-driven delivery robot was developed by co-founders Zach Rash and Brad Squicciarini while they were students at UCLA, and has quickly gained traction, as well as some prominent investors.
Starting in its home market of Los Angeles, Coco has since added service in Miami, Helsinki, Finland and Chicago, where it began operating in December. There are about 1,000 Coco units on the road worldwide, with plans to expand the fleet to 10,000 robots and add a dozen new markets by 2026, said Rash, 28, the company’s CEO.
Looking like a colorful cooler on wheels, topped by a highly visible flag, the autonomous robot was designed to travel the last mile between restaurants and other retailers to deliver everything from pizzas to groceries, and now White Castle sliders. Employees put the food inside a locking cooler and Coco sets off on its solo journey to the customer’s door.
It is a better and more consistent way to deliver food than in the back of a teenager’s Toyota — at least for short hauls, Rash said.
“When White Castle is putting their burger in one of the robots, exactly how they put it in the robot is exactly how it’s going to arrive to their guests,” Rash said. “There’s the temperature controlled angle and all that, but there’s no tampering, and no stops along the way, so there’s less room for error.”
Rolling like a “Star Wars” droid down busy sidewalks, Coco deftly navigates pedestrians, bicyclists, crosswalks and other obstacles using cameras, artificial intelligence and a preprogrammed destination.
Human operators monitor the robot’s progress, ready to step in and grab a joystick to steer around stickier situations such as construction or traffic issues.
The remote team is made up primarily of “college kids who are good at video games,” Rash said. Their skillset is also helping Coco’s NVIDIA-powered AI brain learn how to better address urban traffic situations, he said.
The robot is capable of speeds of 15 to 20 mph on the open road, but travels at about 5 mph on city sidewalks, its primary pathway in Chicago.
Rash said the technology of his autonomous delivery carts is similar to Waymo, the driverless taxis that have rolled out in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Phoenix and Austin. But the much smaller Coco units make more sense — environmentally, logistically and economically — for urban food delivery than driverless cars, he said.
The 100-pound electric vehicles feature all-day battery life, a storage compartment capable of holding six extra large pizzas and an all-wheel drive system, which proved adept at plying Chicago’s slushy streetscape last winter, Rash said.
“We were spoiled starting in California, but we operated all last winter in Chicago,” said Rash. “We have snow tires and make sure the batteries can stay warm enough in the coldest conditions.”
Working with food delivery services, restaurants and retailers, the units are dispatched and programmed by Coco to pick up the orders, which are placed in the cooler by store employees. The lid will then shut and lock, and the robot will set off on its delivery journey of up to 2 miles. Unlike delivery drivers, there’s one order per Coco, traveling straight from the restaurant to its sole destination.
Once it arrives, the lid is unlocked by the recipient through an app, and if all goes well, the order is intact, hot and not missing any french fries or your chocolate shake.
Another bonus for choosing Coco over a human delivery driver — there’s no tipping the robot.
Coco’s revenue model is based on charging restaurants or platforms such as Uber Eats and DoorDash a delivery fee per order. In some cases, Coco leases the vehicles to a restaurant that wants a dedicated fleet.
The company declined to disclose its current or projected revenue.
There may be plenty of upside for Coco as autonomous food delivery service ramps up. The global delivery robots market is expected to grow from $796 million this year to more than $3.2 billion by 2030, according to a report by research firm MarketsandMarkets.
The Coco robots, which are made in Los Angeles, cost in the “low single-digit thousands” to build, Rash said. The company, which has raised over $110 million since inception, completed an $80 million funding round in June which will be used to grow the fleet and expand to new markets.
Investors include OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and former Uber executive Ryan Graves.
In Chicago, Coco is working with about 100 restaurants and retailers, including a couple of larger chains such as Shake Shack, Little Caesars and now White Castle. Hotspot neighborhoods for Coco sightings include River West, West Loop, Fulton Market and Lincoln Park.
When not queued up at a restaurant or on a delivery run, the Coco units return home each day to one of three stations in Chicago to recharge, get cleaned or have any needed service work done, Rash said.
With the July 21 launch at the busy White Castle at 2356 West Roosevelt Road, the red-colored Coco units have begun popping up along the sidewalks of the Tri-Taylor neighborhood as well.
Founded in 1921, White Castle has 340 restaurants in 14 states, including 63 in the Chicago area, all of which are company owned. The Roosevelt Road location is smaller than many at about 1,800 square feet, and does a lot of drive-thru and delivery business, Richardson said.
The Coco robots are off to a promising start with White Castle customers and employees, cutting down on parking lot congestion and expediting delivery orders to the neighborhood, he said.
Tasha Speight, a 22-year White Castle veteran and supervisor at the Roosevelt Road restaurant, said the robots show up early for work, lining up outside the door in the morning, waiting for their marching orders. Since the service launched, they are averaging three or four robotic deliveries per day, and they have yet to receive a complaint from customers or co-workers.
“It’s very convenient,” Speight said. “They’re very easy to deal with.”
For family-owned White Castle, which has been in Chicago for nearly a century, the Roosevelt Road rollout will likely determine if robotic delivery can work across the fast food chain.
While White Castle will be on the lookout for any “mini-glitches,” if Chicagoans are receptive to using the robots to get their sliders delivered, the chain will potentially expand the service to other markets along with Coco, Richardson said.
“It’s a test and it’s a great chance to learn how it goes and how we apply it in other places as we go forward,” Richardson said.
Coco robots have already traveled millions of miles and delivered more than 500,000 food orders in the company’s inaugural markets, undeterred by weather, traffic or other urban challenges.
They have also managed to avoid hijackers looking to divert the robots for a potential free meal or spare parts, Rash said.
“People are usually surprised at how little that happens,” Rash said. “The community actually takes really good care of them.”
Down the road, Rash said Coco may build a bigger, faster autonomous vehicle to hit the streets and deliver food to suburban customers and beyond.
But keeping the Coco fleet and its delivery costs affordable will be the key to widespread adoption by restaurants and customers, he said.
“A lot of companies in the robotics and the autonomous vehicle space will make vehicles that are hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then the promise is one day that cost will come down, and it will make sense,” Rash said. “But there’s just no way to profitably deliver somebody’s burrito with a $300,000 car.”
rchannick@chicagotribune.com
