RSG198: Delivering Food With Robots

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The food delivery industry has exploded over the last few years, but restaurants and customers have been complaining that fees are too high. In this episode, I chat with Zach Rash, the founder and CEO of Coco, a last-mile delivery service that deploys human-operated sidewalk robots to deliver items from merchants to customers. We talk about Coco, where they’re operating, use cases, and more.

Intro to Zach Rash

  • Co-Founder and CEO of Coco
  • Human operated sidewalk robots that deliver items from merchants to customers
  • At UCLA, came up with the idea for Coco
  • Targeting people where delivery is a core part of their business

Coco Delivery

  • Coco robots deliver food and groceries for merchants
  • Started in Santa Monica, then moved throughout California and now into Texas
  • Better delivery experience for merchants
  • Allows them to deliver more cost-effectively

Coco Merchants / Use Cases

  • What makes certain merchants successful at this?
  • Packaging, in-store operations
  • Merchants plug into Coco’s API
  • 1 mile every 12 minutes, roughly (depending on stop lights, people walking)

Human-Operated Robots

  • Human operators go through Pilot Academy!
  • People who are good at video games are typically pretty good at this
  • Hiring people everywhere
  • Eliminates all the waiting for delivery operators

Future for Coco

  • Build something that’s useful – learn from the merchant
  • Constantly improving the experience for the merchants
  • Expansion to other states, areas
  • Goal is not to expand to car-size vehicles

Outro

  • Big thanks to Zach for coming on the podcast and chatting about Coco with us!

Show Notes

  • cocodelivery.com
  • curbivore.co