DoorDash is offering robot delivery for its DashMart fulfillment platform and stores, the third-party delivery program's convenience category, which is powered by partnerships with 7-Eleven, Walgreens, CVS, Wawa and more. The San Francisco-based company has partnered with Santa Monica, California-based Coco Robotics for robot delivery in Chicago and Los Angeles.
The bots travel on public sidewalks, and the service is available for grocery and convenience orders but is currently limited to products available from DoorDash’s DashMart fulfillment platform and stores, according to a DoorDash spokesperson. DashMart offers both household essentials from convenience and grocery stores and local restaurant items.
DoorDash completed more than 100,000 deliveries with Coco Robotics during the pilot phase. DoorDash said it is “advancing last-mile logistics by building the most efficient, sustainable and scalable multi-modal delivery platform.”
That includes San Francisco-based DoorDash’s most popular items such as bananas, chicken sandwiches, mac and cheese, and more, the DoorDash spokesperson said in an email to CSP's sister publication Supermarket News.
“Coco robots are assigned to orders based on a number of variables aimed at optimizing the customer experience, but the typical delivery distance is between one to two miles. Orders within this distance will have a higher likelihood of being assigned to a robot,” the DoorDash spokesperson said.
Robot delivery is part of DoorDash’s broader global multi-modal delivery platform strategy—integrating Dashers, drones, and autonomous robots to meet increasing demand while lowering costs and emissions, the company said. DoorDash has already deployed the delivery bots in Helsinki, Finland, through its international arm, Wolt, and Coco has been making deliveries in Los Angeles—independently from DoorDash—since 2020.
“Not every delivery needs a two-ton car just to deliver two chicken sandwiches,” said Senior Director of DoorDash Labs Harrison Shih in announcing the service. “We believe the future of delivery will be multi-modal, and we’re thrilled to partner with Coco to expand sidewalk robot deliveries that complement the Dasher network as we continue to enhance the DoorDash experience for customers and merchants.”
DoorDash said it also plans to integrate drones into its delivery platform through its partnership with Wing, a drone delivery company owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet.
Wing drones are already making deliveries in the Dallas-Fort Worth metro area through a partnership with Walmart. Walmart added the drone delivery function to its smartphone app in June, noting at the time that it has expanded drone delivery to 75% of the Dallas-Fort Worth population.
The new tech innovations are via DoorDash Labs, which DoorDash said aims to “ensure the most effective fulfillment method for every order while driving increased demand for local merchants and creating more earning opportunities for Dashers.”
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