US-based food delivery company DoorDash is reportedly closing its robotic salad-maker arm, Chowbotics, roughly 18 months after acquiring it.
Chowbotics will cease operations on 31 August as part of DoorDash’s investment strategy, a DoorDash spokesperson stated in an email to Restaurant Dive.
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Food robotics substack OttOmate author Christopher Albrecht first reported the news, which was later confirmed to Restaurant Dive.
According to Albrecht’s report, the robots were not able to meet the benchmark of the American food delivery company.
DoorDash acquired Chowbotics for an undisclosed sum last February.
Chowbotics’s fresh food robot, Sally, is designed to make made-to-order fresh meals such as customisable salads, parfaits, grain and poke bowls, cereals, and snacks.
DoorDash did not reveal the exact number of Chowbotics ‘Sally’ robots currently in operation.
Chowbotics mostly offers its services to hospitals and universities.
The company’s spokesperson said that DoorDash will still be exploring opportunities for automated food preparation.
During the company’s first-quarter 2022 earnings call, DoorDash co-founder and CEO Tony Xu said: “We always start by first making sure that we build the best product possible, especially measured in terms of retention and order frequency.
“We have a maniacal focus on the unit map to get the unit economics to work, and then we start considering efficient ways to actually scale that business.”
Last month, DoorDash concluded an $8.1bn acquisition of multinational food delivery platform Wolt.
