Who’s Winning Over the Customer of the Future? Introducing Our Digital Sales Index
Grubhub Multi-Store Ordering, Amazon's humanoids, no salad days for CloudKitchens' legal dept
With Q1 earnings season behind us, we thought we’d crank out a unique, new piece of data. Which brands are winning the race to move all their sales to digital / delivery platforms? But before we get to that, we've got a doubly big product update from Grubhub, some new Amazon robots to worry about, and then Travis Kalanick’s co. has found itself in an interesting new lawsuit.
P.S. — Join us in Brooklyn tomorrow for a lively Mobility & Delivery Tech Happy Hour.
Today:
More Grubhub With Your Grubhub?
Amazon Opts for Humanoid Delivery Bots
Chart Time | Modern Delivery’s Digital Sales Index
CloudKitchen in Legal Hot Water Over Warm Salads
PRODUCT | Grubhub Debuts Multi-Store Ordering
Pizza and a cold beer… McDonald’s and a Slurpee… flowers, a pint of grocery store ice cream, dog food and a handle of vodka….. some things just taste better together! Grubhub is finally taping into that innate consumer behavior with the launch of Multi-Store Ordering, live as of last Thursday nationwide (and available in NYC under the Seamless brand as well.) Shoppers can now bundle orders from multiple restaurants and retailers, while paying just one delivery fee. Emma Cai, the company’s Director of Product Management notes “We’re creating a more unified shopping and delivery experience that reflects how people actually live—combining everything from sushi to snacks to birthday bouquets in one order.”
The Big Picture: Grubhub’s a bit late to the party here: DoorDash introduced DoubleDash way back in 2021, while Uber Eats spun up its own version in 2023. Grubhub’s been catching up on a lot of core features as of late, adding groceries last year and now expanding its booze delivery options and adding on floral bouquets via FTD. Besides adding core features, the Wonder-owned 3PD has some fun promos up its sleeve as well: the company just teamed up with Max’s hit show And Just Like That to launch Hot Fellas Bakery Bundle in LA, Chicago and NYC.
EVENTS | NYC Happy Hour — Tuesday 6/10, 5 to 8 PM
It’s an East Coast — West Coast team-up for the ages! Curbivore and Electric Avenue are hosting a mobility & delivery tech happy hour. Join us TOMORROW Tuesday, June 10th, from 5 to 8 PM, at Threes Brewing in Brooklyn, NY.
As anyone that’s attended our mixers before can attest, these are always a fun way to meet your fellow technologists, entrepreneurs, investors, policymakers, and journalists shaping the future of urban movement.
We’ve got 125+ RSVPs — this is going to be a fun one!
ROBOTICS | Amazon Tests Humanoid Delivery “Workers”
Amazon is finishing up construction of its “humanoid park,” where the delivery giant will test scores of humanoid robots, in a quest to augment and replace mere mortal delivery workers. Formed under its Lab126 skunkworks division, the new group is currently testing existing humanoid models, including one from Chinese upstart Unitree. And in a particularly Bezos-ian sci-fi twist, the human-like machines may even ride inside of Rivian delivery vans. Roboticist Yesh Dattatreya said the goal is to speed up delivery times while supporting human employees during peak seasons: “These systems will be able to operate in tight spaces, handle heavy loads, and adapt quickly to changing warehouse conditions.”
The Big Picture: Amazon’s been making a number of robotic innovations as of late, including an inventive new arm that can sense the tactility, rigidity and texture of whatever it’s holding. This is the company’s first foray into human-like automatons, a burgeoning field that’s seen the entry of well-funded competitors like Figure, The Bot Company, Apptronik, Humanoid, Igus and of course Tesla’s Optimus. Milan Kovac, head of Tesla’s humanoid robotics division, just stepped down — might Amazon be poaching a power player?
CHART TIME | Who’s Winning The Digital + Delivery Race?
From quick serve to fast casual… restaurants all across the spectrum are racing to make more and more of their sales via digital channels. But while tech-forward companies now break out “digital sales mix” in their 10Qs, that can encompass a whole lot of different technology: in-store kiosks, third party delivery, websites, loyalty-focused first-party apps, and more. Not surprisingly, Domino’s is the current king, which makes sense since you can barely find a human inside their sparse storefronts. But who would have thought Chipotle and CAVA are so far behind not just Sweetgreen, but KFC and Taco Bell parent co. Yum! Brands? Stay tuned, we’ll keep broadening and updating this data as time goes on.
LEGAL | Mixt Sues CloudKitchens Over Misleading Customers
Nothing can ruin a nice salad like some legal hot water… veggie-forward lunch chain Mixt is suing CloudKitchens, claiming the Travis Kalanick-helmed company’s “Picnic” division distributed Mixt salads without the chain’s permission, leading to customer confusion and damage to the brand due to subpar customer experiences. Additionally, Mixt claims that CloudKitchens misrepresented the price of salads bought straight from the restaurant, giving the illusion that CloudKitchens was saving customers more money than it really was, while not keeping meals at optimal temperatures. The case, now moved to arbitration, is already getting spicy, with CK retorting, "We wanted to help Mixt with demand but unfortunately, we found most offices preferred Sweetgreen by a large margin.”
The Big Picture: CloudKitchens Picnic bundles up to 50 restaurants for each office building partner, placing lunch orders on a central shelf, similar to Sweetgreen’s Outpost concept. Working with restaurants that aren’t fully on-board with an intermediary is a familiar play in the delivery space, it’s famously the method that DoorDash used to bootstrap itself until it too got in a bit of legal trouble. CloudKitchens may be eager to grow, grow, grow, as its early financial backers at Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund are looking a bit less spendthrift these days.
A Few Good Links
Uber Advertising launches Creative Studio. DoorDash donates $200K to LA restaurants impacted by January fires. DD Canada fights back against Competition Bureaus claims about fees. Instacart lowers select prices to 1999 levels. Delivery Hero makes 11 million deliveries in one day. Owen Wilson pitches for Wolt+ worldwide. EU fines Glovo and Delivery Hero €329 million over antitrust violations. Grocery startup KiranaPro hacked. UNFI too. Klarna launches physical BNPL card. More chart time: consumers spending more on food away from than at home. Guess American soft power isn’t dead — Little Caesars heads to India. Uber Eats longtime head Pierre-Dimitri Gore-Coty steps down, as Andrew Macdonald named COO in bid to better cross-promo food and rides. Uber Copter & Boat head to Italy (but will they bring me a caprese salad on Capri?) DHL Express Canada strikes. Delivery Hero turns to Incognia to fight identity fraud. Walmart adds AI sales bot. JAB eyes Pret IPO. JET ups non-restaurant deliveries. Deliveroo and Manna partner on drones. XRobotics scales pizza bots. TechMagic brings stir-fry bot to US Daimler Truck, DHL, hylane partner on e-trucks. Bollinger scores new CEO. Tom Brady scores exclusive gummy deal with Gopuff. SoCal-based Dave’s Hot Chicken sells for $1B. Lunchbox partners with UrbanPiper. Gateway Fleets opens charging depot for LMD fleets. Online grocery sales outpace in-store. Wonder wants to use blood tests to create custom meal kits. Yelp ranks top donut shops — of course 3 of top 5 are CA-based. ;) Walmart and Wing expand drone delivery to five new regions.
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