Rolling food delivery bots powered by Coco Robotics will now transport essential items and groceries to customers in Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, the company announced Thursday.
The bots are already a common sight in LA, where they have been delivering hot meals from restaurants since April through a partnership with DoorDash. The pink and orange machines, about the size of a large cooler, roam the sidewalks from Santa Monica to Silver Lake.
The company's latest expansion is in collaboration with DoorDash's delivery-only online store, DashMart. Coco robots will fulfill select DashMart orders, including fresh groceries, cleaning products and electronics.
The DashMart partnership could dramatically expand the role of delivery bots in everyday purchases. Instead of being limited to restaurant deliveries, the bots can now carry goods from Target, Lowe's and Petco.
“We built it to be the best possible autonomous vehicle for delivering goods,” Coco co-founder and chief executive Zach Rash said in an interview.
Coco Robotics operates hundreds of robots in Los Angeles and plans to deploy another 10,000 across the country in 2026. The company has made more than 500,000 zero-emission deliveries and its bots have collectively traveled around 1 million miles.
The delivery service started as a dorm project in 2020 when Rash was a student at UCLA. The bots caused a stir as their numbers increased over the years, inspiring both affection and anger.
Some Los Angeles residents find the bots cute and adorable. Others have done everything they can to destroy the bots or hinder their journey.
Rash said demand for delivery services is so high that the company's bots aren't taking jobs away from human drivers.
The bots help make deliveries more cost-effective, he said.
“Grocery delivery is an amazing convenience for many reasons,” Rash said. “If we can use our technology to make this much more affordable for people, I think volumes will absolutely increase.”
The company couldn't provide specific expansion plans for Los Angeles, but said it expects the number of delivery bots to grow in several markets.
Coco Robotics' deliveries are already available across much of the city, including Hollywood, Echo Park, Koreatown and downtown.
“We operate in many core areas of the city, so I think there are many opportunities to continue to expand throughout Los Angeles County,” Rash said.
The company makes money through platforms such as Uber Eats for order fulfillment, direct payments from retailers for deliveries, and by renting out parts of its fleet to restaurants and advertising services.
Although many of Coco Robotics' bots were originally controlled remotely by a human, they now operate autonomously using artificial intelligence.
The company faces competition in the race to perfect autonomous deliveries, including from San Francisco Bay Area-based Serve Robotics. Rash said the young company has plenty of room to grow.
“We will be opening up many new markets to meet the growing demand,” he said. “We’re going to need more robots.”
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