UK’s Unilever Rolls out Hail-Able Ice Cream Truck

Typically, when consumers order an item for delivery, they expect to have the product delivered from the store to their door, not to have the store itself arrive outside their home. However, consumer packaged goods (CPG) giant Unilever is bringing the ice cream shop to consumers with its new initiative.

Robomart, a company that creates mobile stores that are hail-able in the style of Uber or Lyft, has announced in a press release emailed to PYMNTS a partnership with the CPG company to create The Ice Cream Shop, a mobile store offering Unilever ice cream brands, including Ben & Jerry’s, Talenti, Breyers and others.

The shop, available in Los Angeles, functions somewhat like an ice cream truck if consumers could hail an ice cream truck and could only purchase packaged products therein. Consumers order swipe in the app to open the vehicle and retrieve their items, and Robomart’s technology tracks which products consumers take and will automatically charge their card and deliver a receipt.

“Our pilot program with Robomart is revolutionizing ice cream delivery for consumers and making it even faster to get our beloved brands to our ice cream fans,” said Russel Lilly, general manager of Unilever North American Ice Cream, in a statement.

For Unilever, this model offers a way to meet consumers’ desire for items on demand without the cost of running a brick-and-mortar store. Still, the labor savings may not amount to much, given that, contrary to the store-hailing company’s name, the vehicles are operated by a human driver. However, as Robomart Co-Founder and CEO Ali Ahmed told PYMNTS in a September interview, the company intends to launch driverless vehicles in the future.

Read more: Robomart Combats Basket Fatigue by Bringing the Convenience Store to Consumer’s Door

In the interview, Ahmed said the main benefit to the model is its ability to eliminate consumers’ frustrations putting together their orders on online platforms.

“It gives consumers a way to get goods in the fastest possible way,” he said, noting the model eliminates the friction of putting together an online basket. “Customers tend to spend over 20 minutes creating a basket, some cases can take up to an hour, and a lot of customers get frustrated and just stop … That’s where you see the most drop-off — when customers are trying to put together a grocery basket.”

Unilever’s move comes at a time when consumers are growing reaccustomed to the hailing model. Uber’s supplemental data release from its first-quarter 2022 earnings revealed earlier this week that gross bookings in mobility surged by 62% year over year to $10.7 billion and were up relative to pre-pandemic. Additionally, management stated that booking activity remained above 2019 levels well into April.

See more: After Being Cut in Half, Uber and Lyft Need to Cross-Sell Their Way Back in Business