Chick-fil-A Turns to Conveyor Belts to Speed Pickups
Chick-fil-A Turns to Conveyor Belts to Speed Pickups
Grubhub adds 60 universities, Waymo doubles trip volume, retail vacancies fall
There’s a whole lot of innovation happening in today’s round up: higher-throughput architecture, new self-driving robotaxis and even one 3PD headed back to school. But if you want to see something really innovative, check out our deep dive on the Hyphen automated Makeline, just published over at Ottomate.
Have you been enjoying your summer? Well it’s time for Modern Delivery to get its own li’l summer break — we’ll be back in a few weeks!
Today:
CfA Debuts Double Mobile Thru Lanes
Grubhub Heads to 60 New Universities
Chart Time | Death of Retail Greatly Exaggerated
Waymo Doubles Trip Volume with New Vehicles
OPS | Chick-fil-A Debuts New Mega Drive-Thru
If successful QSR operations are all about efficiency, delivery and pickup are doubly so. And if there’s one brand that knows that, it’s Chick-fil-A, which does a whopping $9.4 million in sales per store, way more than any competitor. To keep up with all that demand, CfA just debuted a new store typology near Atlanta, featuring four drive-thru lanes. Powering all that drive-up action is a double-sized kitchen, as well as a series of conveyor belts that allows workers to finalize a meal every six seconds. And of course the setup includes multiple dedicated Mobile Thru lanes, where guests and couriers can grab pre-ordered meals, speeding things up further.
The Big Picture: Chick-fil-A has been working on upping its Mobile Thru game for some time now. Some of its innovations aren’t quite as antagonistic to urbanism as this Georgia whopper: a new store prototype in NYC is in fact pedestrian only. Speeding up drive-thrus and pickups isn’t just a matter of keeping guests happy, the chain is known for causing backups so bad that cities declare them a public nuisance.
3PD | Grubhub Goes Back for 60 More College Degrees
It’s back to school season for kids as well as corporates; Grubhub is off to college in a big way, expanding its Campus Dining program to sixty more schools across the United States. New schools include the University of Alabama at Birmingham, University of Tampa, University of Missouri, Howard University and Tulane. Grubhub now works with 360 universities and colleges, up 21% YoY. Grubhub’s college offering is integrated with a number of partners: Cartken, Kiwbot and Starship help bring robotic delivery to 20+ campuses; Amazon Just Walk Out eases shopping at schools like Loyola University Maryland; and Topanga.io improves packaging sustainability at Virginia Tech.
The Big Picture: Grubhub sees campuses as a big growth market, with its 4.5 million student population helping it grow mobile orders 16% last year; the 3PD is hoping to see double digit growth this year as well. As Grubhub starts to grow out its offerings, so too do a number of its partners. While GH notes it now offers kiosk ordering at 55 new deployments, robo-deliverer Starship also just announced its own kiosk offering: Starship Marketplace. Things can get awfully messy when partners turn into competitors!
CHART TIME | Retail Vacancies Hit Five Year Low
Perhaps retailers and restaurateurs need to borrow an old Mark Twain adage, “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.” As new Brookings data shows, retail vacancies have hit a five year low: 4.08%. So while that should be encouraging news for the future of shopping and eating, there are some markets that are suffering more than others: in some parts of NYC, the retail vacancy rate is 32%.
AV | Waymo Debuts New Sixth-Generation Vehicle
Waymo is rolling out new autonomous driving hardware, teaming up with Geely’s Zeekr to build its sixth-gen vehicles. The van-like new vehicles promise to be cheaper than the retiring fleet of Jaguars, despite being equipped with 13 cameras, 4 lidar, 6 radar, and external audio receivers. Getting the cost down on the hardware is critical for Waymo as it quickly scales up its operations: the company is now doing 100,000 paid trips per week, double the number it was doing back in May.
The Big Picture: Waymo’s current fleet is 700 vehicles strong, which have taken the Alphabet-backed firm to 14.8 million+ rider-only miles. Deepening its fleet options, especially at cheaper price points, is critical for Waymo as it moves into adjacent markets like food delivery, which it launched in Phoenix back in April. After all, when’s the last time you saw a human courier bring you a burrito in a Jaguar? That said, will these cheap Zeekrs really stay viable? The Chinese company just reported a $249 million loss on $1.85 billion in quarterly sales, with profitability likely to be even more elusive if the Feds keep cracking down on overseas automotive suppliers.
A Few Good Links
Instacart intros $0 delivery fees for next day grocery orders over $10. Starbucks brings back PSL flavors early. Paccar lowers sales projections. Pitney Bowes Global Ecommerce shutdown impacts cheapo shippers. Fulfillment by Amazon lets sellers nix returns. UPS adds surge fees for Chinese imports. Amazon adds $99/yr option for free grocery delivery on $35+ orders. Adaverse invests in Mithu. Local Kitchens partners with Bay Club. Meet Einrided’s first remote electric truck operator. ChainFest returns Oct 5th. Replenium sues Albertsons for theft of trade secrets. Just Eat Takeaway.com and Skip The Dishes cut 800 employees. The Rounds raises $24M for sustainable grocery + CPG delivery. Bollinger starts production of B4 EV chassis. UPS Teamsters rally for heat safety. Delivery Mates hits 1.2 million sustainable deliveries in the UK. Payment platform Bolt plots crazy cramdown round. Zomato buys Paytm’s ticketing biz to bolster “going out” platform. Openmart aims to ease selling to local biz. Ford plans low cost EV pickup. India’s trade minister calls Amazon pricing predatory. Love’s Travel Stops pushes for EV chargers. Rivian production head rolls to Stellantis. Ex-Tesla charging exec heads to Uber. Gopuff turns to Future Health to offer workers virtual doctor visits + generic scrips. Toast named great place to work. Grubhub lists meals for new moms. DoorDash touts accessibility. Beloved LA rotisserie chain Koo Koo Roo announces comeback.
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