CloudKitchens Turns to Automation as Facilities Sit Idle
CloudKitchens Turns to Automation as Facilities Sit Idle
Instacart & Kroger expand SNAP, Deliverect & Delivers.AI, BFCM market share
Progress means different things to different people. Some may celebrate Instacart and Kroger’s SNAP expansion as a sign that more Americans will have affordable access to healthy foods. Others may instead cheer on CloudKitchens and Deliverect turning towards robotics as a sign that our Jetsons-esque future is finally arriving. And other still might look at the latest data that showed Walmart won Black Friday as a sign that… not much has changed.
This week’s edition is brought to you by RestoGPT.
Today:
Instacart & Kroger Expand SNAP Partnership
Deliverect Dispatches Delivers.AI Robots
Chart Time | Black Friday Market Share
CloudKitchens Idles Facilities, Favors Automation
3PD | Instacart Expands Kroger SNAP Partnership
Instacart continues to broaden its acceptance of SNAP / EBT (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program / Electronic Benefits Transfer) payments, as its expanding a partnership with Kroger to cover 1,200 more grocery stores nationwide. The two are now accepting SNAP at 180 Ralphs (SoCal,) 120 Frys (AZ,) 20 Foods Co (NorCal,) 20+ Jay C (IN,) 9 Pay Less (IN,) and 100+ Food 4 Less (SoCal) locations. Kroger is the nation’s largest supermarket chain, with over 2,700 locations.
The Big Picture: With this expansion, Instacart is now within reach of 95% of the country’s SNAP users. To further sweeten the deal, the company is slashing the price of its Instacart+ loyalty service to $4.99, meaning EBT users will pay half the prevailing rate for free deliveries and other perks. As we’ve seen competitors Uber Eats and DoorDash also increase their options for SNAP beneficiaries, Instacart’s looking to stay one step ahead…
PARTNER | RestoGPT’s Instant AI-Powered Ordering for SMBs
RestoGPT lets SMB restaurants convert their third-party apps to direct ordering in minutes, using AI to generate orders, process payments and deliver to customers on autopilot. There are no setup fees, no commission fees and no monthly subscription fees. Give it a try now, risk free!
AUTONOMY | Deliverect Partners with Delivers.AI for Robots
Delivery robotics startup Delivers.AI just announced a new partnership with ordering management player Deliverect, allowing the latter company’s customers to easily opt to have a delivery robot pick up and drop off food orders. Not only does this mean delivery bots are now just the push of a button away, the API integration offers users new insights into delivery routes, performance optimization and overall logistics management. While Deliverect supports 45,000 businesses (including Burger King and Popeyes) in 42 markets, this initial deployment will start in the U.K., Belgium and the Netherlands.
The Big Picture: Given that working with robots is a bit different than working with human couriers, most delivery bot companies require restaurateurs (or multi unit operators) to sign up for the technology. Delivers.AI is certainly lowering the threshold here; hopefully FoH staff know they’ll need to bring the food out to bot when it arrives. In general, Delivers.AI has taken a different approach from many of its competitors. While Serve, Coco, Kiwi, Cartken and their ilk have largely focused on North America, Delivers.AI is sticking to the streets of Europe, Turkey and the United Kingdom. The company has been teasing an entrance to the U.S. market via a team up with Atlanta-based high-tech grocer Nourish + Bloom, but it hasn’t announced any updates to that since the news first broke in Q2.
CHART TIME | BFCM — Walmart Wins, Best Buy Loses
Black Friday feels like a distant dream, unless of course you’re trying to return that lousy Roomba you ordered while drunk off too much turkey. Second Measure wants you to return to the heady days of late November, as it has some new stats on which retailers “won” that week. Amazon and Walmart continued to over-perform, while Target faltered and Best Buy continued a long slide downward. Of those four, Walmart achieved a 50% market share, Amazon hit 40%, Target sat at 7% and Best Buy a lowly 3%.
GHOST KITCHENS | CloudKitchens Hibernating Facilities
Travis Kalanick’s ghost kitchen empire is in a bit of trouble, as the company struggles with labor turnover and idle facilities at the 80+ new locations it snapped up during the pandemic. Business Insider reports that CloudKitchens has idled locations in Chicago, Memphis, Tucson and Buffalo. A location in Cedar Rapids has been closed entirely, while facilities in cities like Miami have been listed for sale.
The Big Picture: It’s a period of retrenchment for the ghost kitchen space, with Kitchen United retreating to software, Nextbite sold for scrap, REEF shuttered, VDC fighting with its star and even overseas players like Britain’s Kbox imploding. While CloudKitchens has seen some minor layoffs, its troubles are relatively minor, thanks to a huge war chest and its foresight in having secured kitchen real estate during a period of record low interest rates. Much of its troubles are the same seen all over the food industry: poorly paid workers don’t last long and aren’t motivated to make a consistent, high quality product. Instead of raising pay, Travis’ solution appears to be automation, with his company recently revealing a Bowl Builder robot. Debuting the new machine, Kalanick highlighted that the machine won’t unionize, call out or quit — not too unexpected for a man who built his earlier fortune off millions of drivers while simultaneously hoping to replace them with autonomous vehicles.
A Few Good Links
COP28 concludes with a deal to “move away” from fossil fuels — will it speed up the transition to electric-powered deliveries? Boston Market owner files for personal bankruptcy. DoorDash partners with PAR Technologies and its Brink POS. Waffle House deploying Olo to 1,950 restaurants. Google Pay tests BNPL. Inflation cools but resturant prices continue to rise. GreenPower ramps up West Virginia EV facilities. AI voice ordering turns to celebrity audio clones.
Got a tip, feedback, or just want to say hi? Reply back to this email.