My wife dropped our son off at college this past week. His university experience has been quite different than ours was back in the day, due to the vast changes in technology and political landscapes, as well as COVID-19 having forced him to attend the majority of his freshman classes from his home bedroom last year. But there’s one thing that hasn’t changed from the 1980s to the present: college students like to order food.
Of course, that doesn’t just apply to college students. Who doesn’t enjoy the convenience of calling up a restaurant to place an order—or, better yet, ordering food via a website or phone app and simply choosing items in an online basket—and then having food delivered to the front door? It’s easy, it’s relatively quick and during the pandemic it’s a lot safer than journeying out into crowds at restaurants or stores to dine in or pick up food for takeout. There’s an endless array of apps for this, ranging from DoorDash, GrubHub and UberEats to HelloFresh, Instacart, Sunbasket, Seamless and more.
A company called Robomart has upped the ante, however, with a service that employs radio frequency identification and a phone-based app to make deliveries within a fraction of the time. Convenience is at the core of the company’s approach, for rather than delivering just a requested meal order, its drivers bring a small mobile convenience store to a person’s home or place of business—or, really, wherever else they might be when the food mood strikes—in the form of a van stocked with edible items or common pharmacy products.
Do you have a hankerin’ for chocolate that you just can’t ignore? Running out of basic toiletries? Need soda or coffee to satisfy your craving for caffeine? No judgment here—it happens to all of us. But what if you don’t feel like getting off the couch and driving to the local 7-11, Speedway or Wawa? What if you’ve already put on your pajamas or have decided to spend the day in bed? What if you’re too busy working and can’t spare the time to go out? What if you can’t leave your children alone and they tend to destroy things when you bring them with you? What if you’re right in the middle of a Game of Thrones season finale or an all-day videogaming marathon?
Well, then Robomart’s store-hailing system can help you. With the Robomart app, you can summon a van, which the company claims will show up and slide open its door within minutes. You can then simply remove whatever items you desire. The system will charge you automatically using a payment card stored on file, based on which items you remove, since each product’s packaging contains an RFID tag with a unique ID number associated with that specific item.
There’s no need to take out cash or a credit card, spend time creating an ordering basket, wait forever for the order to arrive, interact with the driver or even leave a tip. Plus, security cameras are in place to thwart theft and protect the driver, who could speed away at any sign of a robbery—and who could conceivably be removed from the equation entirely if autonomous driving becomes mainstream.
Image courtesy of Robomart
In 2019, our reporter Claire Swedberg wrote about how retailer Stop and Shop planned to roll out unmanned Robomart vehicles to deliver fresh produce and other products for purchase by Boston-area shoppers (see Driverless Mobile Store Leverages RFID to Bring Food to Customers). Later that year, we published an article discussing how Avery Dennison tags would be used on Robomart’s products (see Avery Dennison Targets Retail Deployments With Mobile Printer, Robomart Partnership). The company conducted a pilot last year in West Hollywood, Calif, and it’s now officially operating in that area, with plans to expand its service to other cities.
Robomart hasn’t yet reached where I live, or the town in which my son goes to college, but that could change and we might get to see the van in action. Maybe Robomart will roll into your neck of the woods, and you’ll be able to run outside during a commercial for potato chips, cola and a tootbrush without having to miss a minute of your favorite TV show, film or sports broadcast, or having to pause your first-person shooter game for more than a minute. Wouldn’t that be convenient?
Rich Handley has been the managing editor of RFID Journal since 2005. Outside the RFID world, Rich has authored, edited or contributed to numerous books about pop culture. You can contact Rich via email.