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DoorDash has acquired robotic salad-making start-up Chowbotics, the companies said on Monday. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the Chowbotics team have become employees of DoorDash and the company will operate independently within DoorDash.
“We have long admired the work Chowbotics has done to improve access to fresh meals, with its revolutionary robotic product and vision,” said Stanley Tang, co-founder of DoorDash, in an emailed statement to The edge. “With the Chowbotics team on board, we can explore new use cases and customers, providing another service to help our merchants grow.”
Chowbotics was founded in 2014 and its Sally Fresh Food Processor – a rectangular machine that’s essentially a salad vending machine – can create customizable salads, grain and poke bowls, parfaits, cereals and snacks in one small space. The robot is used by businesses such as universities, hospitals and grocery stores, according to a blog post from DoorDash chief executive Penn Daniel.
DoorDash currently has the largest share of the US food delivery market, around 48 percent, ahead of competitors like UberEats and Grubhub. Its revenue skyrocketed in 2020 as restaurants shut down in-person meals due to the pandemic and customers depended on delivery services. But when DoorDash went public at the end of last year, its IPO was criticized by some analysts as lacking in value; they wondered how DoorDash could continue to grow if the demand for food delivery declines after the pandemic is over.
New Constructs analyst David Trainer said at the time: “We believe that this proposed public share offering has no value, $ 0, beyond the bailout of private investors before public investors. unsuspecting only realize that the business is not viable in its current form.
But the acquisition of Chowbotics raises interesting questions about DoorDash’s post-pandemic plans. Daniel wrote in the blog post that Chowbotics will allow DoorDash to help restaurants that use its delivery platform expand their offerings. It seems likely that Chowbotics’ vending machines fit into the ghost kitchen model, which are delivery-only restaurants that some in the industry view with suspicion. DoorDash owns a ghost kitchen in California and announced last year that it was working with Chicago restaurant Krazy Hog – which closed its in-person meals during the pandemic – as part of its Reopen for Delivery initiative.
If you’re ordering for delivery, there’s a good chance you’ll never know if your salad was made by a Chowbotics robot or a human unless the restaurant tells you to. It is not uncommon for restaurants to brand their delivery operations under a different name – such as when some diners discovered that the pizzas ordered at “Pasqually’s” actually came from the Chuck E. Cheese children’s restaurant.
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