Hungry Chicagoans can now get White Castle delivered by a robot

The next time you order a sack of White Castle sliders, a robot might come rolling up to you.

The restaurant chain, a Midwestern fast-food staple, is partnering with Coco Robotics and Uber Eats to bring robotic delivery to the Chicago area.

The partnership, announced today, will allow customers ordering from White Castle’s first participating location to order directly from the Uber Eats app and receive a robotic delivery with no additional steps or fees. And in a dense urban area like Chicago, having more robots and fewer cars on the road could help ease traffic and emissions issues related to delivery.

“We’re always open to what’s new and what’s next,” Jamie Richardson, White Castle’s vice president of marketing, tells Fast Company. “If there’s a way to do something a little bit better, we want to find out what that is and try it.”

A fast food innovator looks ahead

For White Castle, which innovated the concept of a fast-food restaurant in 1921, this is the next step in a shift toward an autonomous experience.

The chain first deployed Flippy, the robotic fry cook, to a Chicago restaurant in 2020 before expanding its use to over 100 locations. The restaurant chain considers these shifts toward new technology a reflection of its core value of “continuous crave,” or continuous innovation, Richardson says.

The robots used in the new partnership were developed by Coco Robotics, a last-mile delivery startup that was named one of Fast Company’s most innovative robotics companies in 2022. More recently, it announced significant venture capital funding and partnerships with large companies like OpenAI, Uber Eats, and DoorDash.

Part of the force propelling Coco’s little red robots is their capacity for moving large amounts of goods while keeping costs low and carbon emissions at zero. They accomplish it with a 100-pound vehicle that uses artificial intelligence—and remote human operators—to drive safely over unpredictable city terrain.

“We built these purpose-built autonomous vehicles that are designed to be the best way to move goods around a city,” Zach Rash, Coco Robotics cofounder and CEO, tells Fast Company. “They’re lightweight, they’re compact, they’re super energy efficient, and they’re big enough to fit six extra large pizzas and two liter bottle sodas and four grocery bags—most of the types of things you would get delivered on demand.”

Bots and the city

First launched in Santa Monica, California, the robots are now in several cities around the world, as far afield as Helsinki. The robots work best where there is a “vibrant local economy of delivery,” Rash says, but where congestion or other barriers add cost and hassle to traditional delivery.

Chicago, in particular, fits the bill because it is a dense city where difficult winters can drive disparity between demand for delivery and supply of available drivers, Rash says, adding that they’ve been successful in the Chicago market so far and are looking forward to launching the robots in new cities with similar characteristics later this year.

For Uber Eats, also looking to expand its autonomous services and its reach in the Midwest market, the new partnership with White Castle offers an important opportunity.

“First launching in Chicago, this partnership with Coco Robotics and White Castle marks an important step in bringing zero-emission, sidewalk delivery to one of our most dynamic and operationally complex markets,” Megan Jensen, Uber Eats’ global head of autonomous delivery operations, said in a statement to Fast Company.

The robots, which started picking up burgers in Chicago a couple weeks ahead of the partnership’s official launch, are already finding success in what Richardson considers White Castle’s “second home town.”