DoorDash Doubles Down on Robot Couriers

Legendary sci-fi author Philip K. Dick once asked, “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” These days, the more pertinent question seems to be: Do robots dream of stealing a French fry?

Last week, DoorDash announced that it would team with Serve Robotics to add the company’s delivery robots to its fleet of food couriers, with robot delivery soon coming to LA.

At Your Service

You may have already noticed Serve’s delivery robots zipping around your city (or, at least, hanging around with celebrities on John Mulaney’s Netflix talk show). That’s because Serve robots are already hard at work in LA, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and Miami, operating as couriers for Uber Eats. That partnership followed Serve’s spin-off from the Uber-owned delivery service Postmates in 2021. 

Its partnership with DoorDash is not exclusive, meaning both sides can continue to expand their robot operations apart from each other. It’s why robot-deliverers, like Waymos and robotaxis before them, may soon feel like an ubiquitous part of daily urban life:

• Serve said last week that it’s aiming to expand its US fleet to 2,000 robots by the end of the year. The company is not yet profitable, but CFO Brian Read has told Bloomberg that a bigger fleet can increase its revenue and operating leverage; shares of Serve climbed 8% last week.
• DoorDash, meanwhile, has already employed robot deliverers in LA and Chicago courtesy of rival firm CoCo Robotics. In September, the company also unveiled a fleet of robot deliverers developed in-house, which are designed to travel on bike paths and roads as well as sidewalks, and are capable of reaching speeds of up to 20 miles per hour.

Nice Gig: Serve’s robots, which operate primarily on sidewalks, will be capable of juggling orders from both DoorDash and Uber, just as regular human couriers work on multiple apps at once (robots … they’re just like us). So far, the company has said that its robot’s average delivery range is under a mile, with a time of under 18 minutes, making it a useful complement to human couriers who can handle longer and more complicated deliveries. Here’s a friendly reminder to tip your human couriers.