Grubhub and Yandex SDG are teaming up to bring robot delivery to university campuses, even to places that are largely reachable only on foot.
“Together with Yandex, we’re changing the way college students experience food delivery,” Brian Madigan, vice president of corporate and campus partners at Grubhub, said in a company press release on Tuesday (July 6).
“While college campuses are notoriously difficult for cars to navigate, specifically as it relates to food delivery, Yandex robots easily access parts of campuses that vehicles cannot — effectively removing a major hurdle universities face when implementing new technology,” he said.
Madigan added that the new capability is an efficient and scalable method of bringing fast delivery to colleges and universities across the country. The new robot service with Yandex adds to the other capabilities Grubhub employs that are made for college and university delivery.
This is the first time Yandex is bringing its delivery robots to the U.S. The company’s robots are self-driving and have navigation capabilities that can pilot across the pavement and around hard-to-reach areas. The robots can make deliveries without any human interaction and can provide automation for last-mile logistics.
Grubhub currently has in excess of 250 partnerships with colleges across the U.S. and the new solution enables students to integrate meal plans with their Grubhub app. The tools give students a way to order from on-campus and off-campus eateries for delivery or pickup.
“We chose to partner with Grubhub for campus delivery because of Grubhub’s unparalleled reach into college campuses across the United States, as well as the flexibility and strength of their ordering platform,” said Dmitry Polishchuk, CEO of Yandex Self-Driving Group.
Yandex is planning to use “dozens of our rovers” as the company makes moves to bring its technology to more commercial enterprises in “different markets across the globe.”
Grubhub now has an active user base of 33 million as of the first quarter of this year, reflecting a 30 percent year-over-year increase over 2020.
Russia’s biggest tech company, Yandex, also known as Russia’s Google, launched Lavka in January of last year to offer 15-minute grocery delivery to residents in Moscow. Launched as a digital convenience store, Lavka offers about 2,000 everyday items like toothpaste. Grubhub’s brands include Seamless, MenuPages, AllMenus and LevelUp.
Food delivery to college campuses isn’t a new concept, with Sodexo and robotics firm Starship Technologies teaming up in 2019 to bring food delivery to George Mason University in Virginia.
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