Just Eat and robot company Starship have launched a joint hot takeaway delivery service in Sunderland.
From today, customers using the Just Eat app to order from select restaurants in the city will be able to select an option to have their meal delivered by Starship’s autonomous robots.
The companies plan to expand the service to other towns and cities “in line with demand”.
“We’re always innovating to improve the delivery experience for our customers and we’re excited to have kick-started our ground robotics trial in the northeast with Starship,” said Mert Öztekin, chief technology officer at Just Eat.
“We’ve teamed up with a diverse range of local independent restaurants to trial the Starship robots and we’ll be listening to their feedback closely, as well as that of our customers,” he added.
It marks Starship’s first foray into the region. The company has been operating in the UK since 2018 and already serves customers in Wakefield, Greater Manchester, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire and Milton Keynes, delivering groceries for Co-op and other retailers.
The company’s (mostly) self-driving robots have made more than nine million deliveries of takeaway orders and groceries, it said.
While the Just Eat liveried robots will initially make deliveries of orders made on the aggregator app, Starship said it hopes the rollout will prompt further partnerships with retailers and outlets in the city.
In November, Starship – which claims to operate “the world’s largest autonomous delivery network” with a fleet of more than 2,700 robots operating across 270 locations – partnered with Uber to offer customers autonomous food deliveries in the UK, Europe and US.
That partnership began in Leeds, before rolling out to Sheffield. The robots will be delivering Uber Eats orders in multiple European regions later this year and in the US by 2027. Uber said it “plans to expand the [UK] operating territory in the future”.
“The key to a scaled, loved delivery service is high-level autonomy,” said Ahti Heinla, founder and chief executive at Starship Technologies. “Our robots are trained to think for themselves and learn their way around the local area with ease. The economics of robot delivery only work when the robots are truly smart: robots learn with every journey, and Starship robots have completed millions of journeys.
“But it’s more than that. The autonomy level of our robots means they integrate well into the community. They’re not just able to operate safely. They’re polite – and that’s what builds a genuine connection in the community. That’s why tens of thousands of people across the country now get their Friday night takeaways delivered by robots,” Heinla added.
The Starship deal is the latest in a series of ground robotics initiatives being pursued by Just Eat. Earlier this month, it launched a trial of four-legged delivery robots in Milton Keynes, as well as a concurrent trial of wheeled delivery robots in Bristol.
The Milton Keynes trial is using Rivr One ‘robo-dogs’ which can bound up staircases, reach speeds of 14km an hour, open gates, dodge (actual) dogs, carry 30kg of food, cover 30km on a single charge and cross the road safely.
The robots launched in Bristol come from UK robotics company Delivers.AI and are more similar in form to the Starship delivery robots.
Just Eat relocated its customer services hub to Sunderland in 2021, and in January signed a 10-year lease for new premises in the city’s developing Riverside commercial area.
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