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Ole Miss goes new tech with fast-food robots

Photo: Starship Technologies

January 23, 2020

The University of Mississippi, or Ole Miss, has gotten decidedly new tech with the launch of the northern Mississippi school's first fast food and pizza-delivering robots around its Oxford main campus, according to the school's Ole Miss News.

In late August the autonomous delivery service company Starship announced a 100-university expansion plan for the robots after it closed $40 million in Series A funding. The college campus rollout is expected to take place over the next two years.

At Ole Miss, the robots became dispatchable yesterday when Starship's app was first available for download. That allows students and staff to dispatch one of a troop of more than two dozen robots to wherever they may be with edibles from places like Papa John's and Chick-fil-A. 

Starship has now raised a total of $85 million, which it will use to ramp up rollouts from the zero-emission robots that the company said have already logged more than 350,000 miles to make more than 100,000 autonomous deliveries, which the company said makes it the first self-driving robotics concern to reach that number. 

"I've used Starship over 100 times in just a few months," second-year George Mason University student Kevin House said in the release. "It's really saved me so much time and reduced my stress, especially around finals. I love getting food delivered by a robot, it just makes life so much easier."

"This new investment will see Starship expand onto more campuses as we head towards a goal of offering our service to over 1 million students," said Lex Bayer, CEO of Starship Technologies, in the release. "An entire generation of university students are growing up in a world where they expect to receive a delivery from a robot after a few taps on their smartphone. The reception to our service both on campuses and in neighborhoods has been phenomenal. Our customers appreciate how we make their lives easier and give them back the gift of time."

Starship rolled out robot delivery to university campuses this year in partnership with foodservice management company Sodexo, Inc., starting with George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, where it launched with what was then the world's largest robotic delivery fleet, and later to Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona. Since the launches, both campuses have increased the number of robots, dining options and hours of operation to meet the demand for the service.