For sale: hydrogen trucks, never used
DoorDash sunsets voice ordering, restaurant tech funding, Gopuff + Starbucks
Your usual Monday newsletter is coming a day late, since yesterday we were all of ‘membering things as part of Memorial Day. (And for you non-American readers, sorry about everything as of late!) But let’s get back into the thick of things: we’ve got DoorDash sunsetting a product, an H2-truck fire sale, big funding news and a very caffeinated partnership!
Today:
DoorDash Deep Sixes Voice Ordering
Who Wants 103 Hydrogen Trucks?
Chart Time | Signs of Life for Restaurant Tech Funding
Gopuff & Starbucks Expand Partnership
PRODUCT | DoorDash Kills Voice Ordering
DoorDash is ending its pilot of automated voice-powered ordering, just one year after a splashy acquisition meant to turbocharge the product. DD confirmed the move after Donatos leaked that the product was “sunsetting” as the pizza chain revealed it had switched to a competing vendor, Revmo AI. DoorDash launched voice ordering in August 2023, and then poached top talent from Standard AI to strengthen the product in March of last year. Most of those Standard AI employees will now stay on at the 3PD to work on “AI-related experiments.”
The Big Picture: DoorDash doesn’t have the smoothest track record when it comes to its splashiest acquisitions. It shut down robotics-maker Chowbotics one year after buying the startup. It let upscale delivery brand Caviar wither on the vine after gobbling it up in 2019. And when’s the last time you saw a new Bbot deployment? Its track record with buyouts of more closely related firms seems better — obviously Wolt is still going strong in Europe — which bodes well for its Deliveroo acquisition. The real wildcard is SevenRooms; are reservations close enough to delivery that DoorDash can make that purchase stick?
VEHICLES | End of the Road for Nikola’s Hydrogen Trucks
With apologies to all those Hemingway pretenders, the new saddest piece of short fiction may be the brief and inglorious life of these 103 never-used, Nikola hydrogen fuel-cell powered trucks. They, alongside hydrogen storage, refueling, raw material, sub-assemblies, and testing equipment, are now up for auction, with an estimated value of $114 million. While Lucid Motors recently snapped up Nikola’s manufacturing plant and 300 of its employees, these trucks may struggle to find a buyer: the already weak market for H2-trucking is being further undermined by the Trump Administration’s plans to undo the U.S. Hydrogen Tax Credit, as part of their larger assault on the environment and infrastructure.
The Big Picture: Nikola hit a very rocky road over its roughly decade-long existence. Founder Trevor Milton talked a big game about electric and hydrogen-powered logistics, eventually taking his company public via a SPAC and peaking at a valuation of around $30 billion (more than Ford at the time.) But it all came crashing down when it was revealed that Milton had misled investors, including an instance where the company pretended a truck worked by filming it rolling down a hill. Milton was charged with fraud in 2021, the company’s valuation plummeted as sales never took off, and now it’s reached the end of the line…
See previous Nikola coverage here.
CHART TIME | Restaurant Tech Investment Flatlines
New data from PitchBook shows potential signs of life for the restaurant tech industry. As of Q1, the new funding for the segment sits at ~$300 million, about on pace with 2024’s $1.3B haul for the entire year. But exits are heating up, thanks to big buy-outs from the likes of Uber and DoorDash. And as we can see in the chart above, deal count has remained relatively steady even as value cratered, suggesting more investments flowed into earlier stage companies. If the exit pipeline truly gets active, expect to see the money get pumping once more.
PARTNERSHIPS | Gopuff & Starbucks Expand Pilot
Gopuff and Starbucks are giving their partnership a new double shot of espresso — relaunching their integrated offering across metro Philadelphia. To celebrate the launch, which gets Starbucks drinks into customers’ hands in as little as 15-minutes, the two groups are giving away free iced coffee. Philly’s mayor even chimed in, noting, “Gopuff is a Philadelphia success story.” (No bigger political issues to comment on these days in the City of Brotherly Love, eh?)
The Big Picture: Per the partnership, Starbucks-trained baristas prepare drinks inside of Gopuff’s micro-fulfillment centers, 24-hours per day. The two companies first piloted the concept in early 2024, with the coffee chain seeing sales double in the overnight hours, when most of its coffeehouses are usually closed. The level of training and integration makes this more than a mere ghost kitchen, and could be a path forward for other familiar brands that want to extend their late-night business. We could see this working well for a concept like McDonald’s CosMc’s. While the burger giant is closing down its brief experiment with a beverage chain, might it not work better if it was co-hosted inside of an MFC?
A Few Good Links
DoorDash adds Northeast Grocery’s 260 markets. Grubhub+ and Amazon celebrate one year of partnership. Now this is backwards — FreshDirect to open physical grocery store. Get to know Fidji Simo. Meituan revenue climbs 18%. EatClub raises $18.2M. ezCater scores new leadership. HungerRush integrates POS into Grubhub. Uber Eats adds heatmap view for couriers. Customers in Korea use Starbucks’ “call my name” option to have baristas shout out political opinions. Uber rolls out Taxi TV-style JourneyTV. Shipt launches Summer of Savings. Judge temporarily blocks White House from killing NYC congestion pricing. Pallet raises $27M. TuSimple sent sensitive data to China. Brazil’s iFood makes investments. Reliance struggles to make Shein work in India. Wolt signs collective bargaining agreement with Greece’s SADTH union. Curbivore and Zag launch Zag Talk podcast.
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