Uber Eats quietly expands its robot delivery in Center City, restaurants say
People ordering on the Uber Eats app can opt out of being matched with an autonomous delivery robot.
Uber Eats has expanded its autonomous robot delivery service to all restaurants within its designated operation zone in Center City, six restaurants on the platform told The Inquirer.
The food delivery service rolled out a small fleet of battery-powered bots in March, with about two dozen restaurants signing up for the pilot. But in recent weeks, restaurateurs who, like Seorabol owner Eunice Cho, do not remember signing up for the program have been instructed by the Uber Eats app to go outside and place orders inside a blinking bot.
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“Looking at videos, I thought it was so slow and I was wondering how it works, but [the robot] is pretty huge,” she said Wednesday, taking a photo and sending her first autonomous delivery on its way.
Alex Lin, chef at Chinese and Japanese restaurant Green Garden, said he started seeing bots picking up orders as early as April despite not having opted in to any programs. Mira Kim, owner of Koreana, said the same, noting sometimes she would see one bot pickup in a day or as many as five.
Uber did not immediately respond to a request for comment or questions about future expansion plans.
The restaurant owners The Inquirer spoke to were intrigued by the new technology, their storefronts drawing curious onlookers snapping videos of workers placing meals in the robot’s temperature-controlled compartment. Two employees at other popular Center City restaurants, who declined to give their names in order to speak freely, groused about having to juggle delivery pickups inside and rushing outside to load up bots.
Uber Eats said as part of its pilot, the fleet of autonomous delivery robots would operate within the area bound by Race, Spruce, 18th, and Front Streets. The plan was to eventually add more restaurants in coming months, though the expansion appears to have taken place in a matter of weeks, according to restaurants.
Whether a consumer’s meal is delivered by a bot or a traditional courier depends on availability, according to the Uber Eats app, which allows users to opt out of automated delivery. If consumers get matched with a bot, Uber says, they do not have to leave a tip.
The company has emphasized in previous statements that the robots, manufactured by Avride, are not meant to replace humans. The robots can operate up to a two-mile radius, keeping a charge for up to 12 hours. In Philadelphia, the 12th city where the Uber Eats bots have been deployed, they are allowed to operate from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m.
Still, some Philadelphia residents have raised concerns about what the robots could mean for the workforce and safety issues that might arise from deploying the bots in already crowded and often narrow streets.
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The exact number of bots on the streets remains undisclosed.
Yet as more of the bots reach restaurants, workers and owners are quickly learning how to work them.
“It was confusing at first. I’d only seen them online,” said Kenneth Huang, a Hangry Joe’s Hot Chicken employee, as he prepped a piping-hot order Wednesday going to a blinking robot outside the South 20th Street store.
Amid a flurry of people stopping to take videos of the load and one individual giving it the middle finger, the bot took its load and went on its way.
