AI Comes for the Curb & Kitchen
AI Comes for the Curb & Kitchen
Uber carshare, Venice happy hour
Just a few hours left to register - join us tonight in Venice! RSVP now for our Mobility & Delivery Happy Hour, from 5:30 to 8 PM. With over 250 folks registered, we encourage you to show up promptly - snacks and the first round of drinks are on us!
Last month a viral Twitter thread noted that in the past few months, hundreds of startups have “pivoted” to AI, as they seek to chase the media and investor attention that’s shined on the likes of OpenAI and Stable Diffusion. Suddenly a rash of YC-backed companies were doing “AI-powered people search and discovery” or “AI automate[d] cloud savings.” No matter how nebulous the connection, whether it meant a pure marketing update or gluing the GPT API into your product for no meaningful benefit, startups left and right have jumped all in.
The world of the curb has been no exception. Last week we saw Instacart launch a ChatGPT powered AI search tool. Can anyone say why you need a large language model to “figure out” that corn is a good food for summer BBQs? We’ve also seen beleaguered micromobility and ghost kitchen (and soccer streaming??) operator Helbiz put out an entire press release merely announcing “the incorporation of OpenAI's advanced technology, ChatGPT, into multiple departments of the company.” 🎉🎉🎉
The technology hype cycle is nothing new, it just needs a new topic to glom on to every few years; in 2021 and early ‘22 it was Web3 and NFTs. Has anyone actually been served a meal at the “NFT restaurant” that was set to open in Lower Manhattan? Did Web3 disrupt the driving experience? Are people riding public transit in the metaverse?
This isn’t to be entirely dismissive of AI with regards to its potential to have transformative effects on the economy (much less so the need to consider the implications of those effects from a regulatory perspective.) Focusing on the recent advancements in artificial technology — deep learning and transforming — the tools work best for applications that involve text generation, image creation, and contextual decision making.
Let’s apply those abilities from a delivery perspective… What if a restaurateur or small business owner could snap a photo of their old menu and instantly generate an online ordering page, with products properly categorized and pricing assigned. What if you could generate imagery for missing menu items, or get the promo material for a special up on the boards with the push of a button? What if you could even have AI augment overworked staff to help dispatch deliveries optimally, or prioritize a given order based on back-of-house resources?
I’m excited to be advising the team at Orderbyte, as they tackle those very challenges. Coming at it from a restaurateur’s perspective, as opposed to using technology for technology’s sake, I think there’s still a lot of room to create tools that let every day small businesses and workers stay competitive with larger, better resourced players. For anyone that feels like kicking the tires - give their new RestoGPT tool a try.
HOT INDUSTRY NEWS & GOSSIP
The black car goes green: Uber announced a slew of new initiatives at this morning’s “Go Get Green” event. As the name implies, Dara and company are rolling out more EV chargers for drivers, increased GHG tracking tools for riders, and reduced packaging on delivery orders. More interesting is the North American launch of Uber Carshare, going live in Boston and Toronto. Notably its a peer-to-peer model, a la Turo, not a Zipcar-style owned and operated fleet.
In some ways, Uber’s telegraphed this move for a bit: the 2022 acquisition of Australia’s Car Next Door, some key hires in the company’s Toronto office, an earlier inadvertent hint at expansion by Dara. While Toronto makes sense from both executive staffing reasons and for the same underlying traits that made it Turo’s first Canadian market, the Boston choice is worth dissecting. It’s quietly been the old heart of American carsharing; it’s where Robin Chase and Antje Danielson founded Zipcar in 2000, and it’s also where we first launched Turo (née RelayRides) a decade after that.
In some ways it’s the perfect market for carsharing: relatively low car ownership compared to incomes, a good but not great transit system, surprisingly decent parking availability, lots of college kids who left their cars at home, strong density and walkability, etc. Even in its current diminished state, Zipcar maintains a formidable presence in region. Interestingly, it’s not quite as important a market any more for Turo, as the company’s later shift towards longer trips, vacation travel, and higher end vehicles changed the ideal target demographics. With that in mind, the jury’s still out on what kind of carsharing experience Uber is going for. Are these cars meant to be slightly worn Priuses and pickups so you can spend two hours at Costco, or an electric Porsche for an aspirational weekend abroad?
In suburban transit news: Starting with the good, Caltrain finished the electrification of its 160-year old SF to SJ corridor this week, meaning faster, more frequent trains will soon provide the region’s leafy burbs with rapid transit-like frequency. (That is if the state can keep funding intact.) It’s a sorrier story on the East Coast, where new ridership data suggests the MTA’s misguided, $11 billion, 15 story deep new train terminal for Long Island commuters has actually depressed ridership. You can’t rethink the curbs in the burbs if everyone is stuck in their cars!
Last mile logistics: LA-based Curri hauled in a fresh $42 million in funding for its delivery platform focused on construction material and industrial supplies. Evidently VCs are still feeling bullish about delivery!
Bike lanes are just a state of mind? Los Angeles County legalized bike riding on the sidewalk, in a move motivated by the racially disparate enforcement of the previous law. Notably, this brings the unincorporated parts of the county’s rules in line with LA City. But given the patchwork of smaller cities throughout the region, a bike rider is still liable to cross an invisible border from say Del Aire to Hawthorne without realizing the laws have changed. Perhaps it would be better to just build roads that are safe to bike on?
One restaurant, multiple ways to order, four very different results! The Washington Post compared 3PD and pickup at one San Francisco restaurant, and the discrepancies are pretty wild. Now we're just left wondering, how would that differ at different restaurants, and in different cities? New data also suggests that an increasing number of diners are turning to pickup, as consumers rebel against increased fees.
While the world burns… Speaking of delivery, couriers and delivery workers are once again showing how indispensable they are, as they continue to work throughout the East Coast and Midwest despite the dangerous and tragic air quality issues. Fingers crossed that tipping amounts have tripled this week!
Puff, puff, past? Growth is slowing at Instacart and Gopuff, with the former reporting a mild YoY decline in grocery orders. The companies seem to hope a push towards lower prices and fewer SKUs will reverse the trend, as a recent Instacart + ALDI ”virtual convenience store” launch implies.
Fresh federal cash: FHWA just doled out $52 million in grants, with much of the ATTAIN funding going towards ITS systems like traffic signal controls and highway message boards. On the more interesting side, Caltrans won $7.7M for a mobility wallet focused on disadvantaged communities.
Ahh, running water: Despite all the positives about street vending, the laissez-faire approach of benign neglect in America often means food preppers are working in less than stellar sanitary conditions. While governments in other parts of the world often solve this by adding sinks to popular areas, or moving vendors to hawking centers, we seem to be leaving that to the free market. So it’s encouraging to see Chef Juan Sanjuan working to convert a privately-owned alley into a space that will properly support vendors and diners with the basic infrastructure we often take for granted.
In EV news, from smallest to largest: Arcimoto is rolling out a new three-wheeled modular utility vehicle, which could be great for urban deliveries. Volvo is rolling out a tiny crossover SUV, but it’d be nice to see the company get back to station wagons (safer for pedestrians.) Ford is striking a blow at middlemen car dealers by offering flexible EV leasing. And diesel might finally be dead, as even bus manufacturers eschew the dirty fuel, as seen by recent product announcements.
A couple of cool jobs: Our friends at the Open Mobility Foundation have a number of interesting job openings. Could you be their next Director of Partnerships and Development, SMART Collaborative Program Manager, or Tech Development Specialist?
A few more links before tonight’s mixer: LA Metro rolls out capped fares in a win for low-income riders. Delivery and dine-in continue to merge in Singapore. Not quite driverless… Two eagle-eyed gig workers won big. Watch this fun machine plunk down fresh bike medians. Bay Area town scales back parklets program - boo! New hardware solution could mean more cameras on delivery robots. Expect to see this at an annoying restaurant near you: QR codes with “art” embedded inside.
We’re already planning our next special event - reach out if you’re interested in learning more about a delivery and gig worker conference in the Rocky Mountains!
- Jonah Bliss & The Curbivore Crew