Five Years of Delivery Robots on Campus
Pizza Hut's ramen pie, DoorDash employment data, Yelp's top restaurants
Man oh man do we have some yummy news for you today, including a Yelp dining data drop and Pizza Hut promo offering valuable lessons for any marketer. Plus, Starship celebrates five years at a certain school, and DoorDash makes the case that gig work is complementary.
Modern Delivery will be off on Wednesday, returning Thursday.
Today:
Starship Celebrates Five Years at GMU
Slurp Up Pizza Hut Japan’s Newest Creation
Chart Time | Dashing for Complementary Employment
Yelp’s 2024 Top 100 Places to Eat
AUTONOMY | Starship Celebrates Five Years at GMU
Starship Technologies just celebrated five years of operations at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia; by our calculations that means the food delivery bots are technically now “super seniors.” Since going live on Jan 22, 2019, the robots have completed 458,846 deliveries. Since launch, the local robot fleet has increased from 25 to 60, and the number of participating merchants has ballooned from 4 to 18. Starship celebrated the anniversary with surprise giveaways for lucky users.
The Big Picture: The libertarian-leaning university was the first in the United States to offer Starship’s autonomous deliveries; now the startup operates at more than 50 campuses in the U.S. alone, serving 1.1 million+ customers. In 2019, the company had completed 25,000 deliveries over 150,000 miles; today it’s done 5 million deliveries across 7 million miles. Going from six to 1.4 miles per order shows how much more efficient these operations become at scale. “Starship robots are an important part of daily campus life at Mason,” said Roshonda Alexander, retail general manager at Sodexo, the university’s food service provider. “We took a bit of a risk five years ago when we introduced the robots but we haven’t looked back since. The technology was embraced by our students and faculty as well as our merchants.”
PROMOS | Pizza Hut Japan Intros Ramen Pizza
Ok, we’ll admit we have a soft spot for pizza news; it’s the iconic delivery food after all! But who wouldn’t want to learn more about Pizza Hut Japan’s new culinary breakthrough: the Kotteri-fuu Ramen Pizza. The name means “thick style,” and this pie does indeed look, uhh, thiccccc… served with an extra packet of gelatinous sauce to really make it confusing to eat. While this unusual creation is meant to celebrate the chain’s 50th anniversary in Japan, it’s apparently been in the works for six months, borne out of a TikTok video stunt (some trends are truly universal.) Including delivery charges, the LTO costs 2,230 JPY ($15.)
The Big Picture: This innovative pizza was made in collaboration with ramen chain Tenkaippin, a legendary restaurant operator in Japan (RIP to their one U.S. outpost in Hawaii.) Pizza Hut JP has released some other novel pies to celebrate its golden anniversary: “too much coriander” and “wiener coffee pizza” certainly would turn heads in Naples or NYC. Neighboring Taiwan’s Pizza Hut is also known for innovative pies like the Ghost Rice Noodle Roll and Phoenix Claw Pizza. Company management explained that these promotional pizzas took the company from flatlining sales to double digit growth.
CHART TIME | DoorDashing Is Complementary
DoorDash just released some interesting new data, bolstering the case that gig work generally complementary to a traditional job, not something that people do for full time employment. People are more likely to Dash in states with low unemployment, and only 4% of Dashers surveyed said they worked with DD because they were “not able to get other kinds of work.” Workers whose main jobs pays ~$45k were more than twice as likely to do DoorDash than those who make around $95k, showing that gig work is usually done to help make ends meet when one’s first source of income is insufficient.
RESTAURANTS | Yelp’s Top 100 Places to Eat
Restaurant review aggregator Yelp just released its 2024 list of the top places to eat in the USA, compiling a year’s worth of user data plus input from trend experts. Topping the list are taqueria Tumerico, ramen slanger Menya Rui, sandwich artist Sunny Side Kitchen, injera injectin’ GS Cafe & Ethopian Cuisine, and Italian stallion Fratellino. The company also released a Canadian edition of the list, if you need to find 100 spots that serve poutine and maple syrup.
The Big Picture: There are some notable trends on the list; for starters, 85% of the winning restaurants are priced at $30 or less per diner. Korean and Mexican restaurants (and of course Korean-Mexican fusion) takes up a notable percent of the list as well. With that in mind, it should come as no surprise that restaurants from greater SoCal occupy five of the top 10 spot (although notably none of them are K-Mex fusion, despite the cuisine being invented locally way back in 1996.)
A Few Good Links
Indian quick commerce platforms promote special products to celebrate opening of controversial new temple. Instacart FY23 due Feb. 13. Delivery fee cap recap. Resy calls it quits in U.K. Applebee’s date night pass (details) sells out in under 24 hours. Potbelly expands loyalty program. UPS restores money-back guarantee for 2nd Day Air A.M. Amazon promotes transpo. exec. DispatchTrack launches customer notification tools for delivery providers. Why Walmart pays truckers six figures. Ryder partners with Kodiak. Paccar revenue tops $35B. Top eight regional grocers prioritize tech and customer experience. Walmart closes innovation unit. 20% of retail subscribers still prefer in-store shopping. Dollar General unveils discount home fragrance line. Vroom exits car sales. Ford unveils new connected car tools.
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