Delivery bots can now bring you groceries in these L.A. neighborhoods
Rolling food delivery robots powered by Coco Robotics will now transport everyday essentials and groceries to customers in Los Angeles, Chicago and Miami, the company announced Thursday.
Robots are already commonplace in Los Angeles, where they have been delivering hot meals to restaurants since April through a partnership with DoorDash. The pink and orange machines, the size of a large cooler, roam the sidewalks from Santa Monica to Silver Lake.
The company’s latest expansion comes in collaboration with DoorDash’s delivery-only online store, DashMart. Coco bots will fulfill select DashMart orders, which may include fresh groceries, cleaning supplies and electronics.
The DashMart partnership could significantly expand the role of delivery robots in everyday shopping. Instead of being limited to restaurant deliveries, robots can now carry goods from Target, Lowe’s and Petco.
“We built this vehicle to be the best possible autonomous vehicle for delivering goods,” Coco co-founder and CEO Zach Rash said in an interview.
Coco Robotics operates hundreds of robots in Los Angeles and plans to deploy an additional 10,000 across the country in 2026. The company has made more than 500,000 zero-emission deliveries and its robots have collectively traveled approximately 1 million miles.
The delivery service started as a dorm project in 2020, when Rash was a student at UCLA. Robots have turned heads as their numbers have grown over the years, sparking both affection and annoyance.
Some Los Angeles residents find robots cute and endearing. Others went out of their way to vandalize the robots or hinder their movement.
Rash said there was such demand for delivery services that the company’s robots were not taking away jobs from human drivers.
Robots help make deliveries less expensive, he said.
“Having your groceries delivered is an incredible convenience for many reasons,” Rash said. “If we can use our technology to make this much more affordable for people, I think the volumes will absolutely increase.”
The company couldn’t share specific expansion plans for Los Angeles, but said it expects the number of delivery robots to increase in several markets.
Coco Robotics deliveries are already available in much of the city, including Hollywood, Echo Park, Koreatown and Downtown.
“We operate in a lot of central parts of the city, so I think there are a lot of opportunities to expand across Los Angeles County,” Rash said.
The company makes money through platforms such as Uber Eats for order fulfillment, direct merchant payments for deliveries as well as by leasing part of the fleet to restaurants and advertising services.
Although initially controlled remotely by a human, many of Coco Robotics’ robots now operate autonomously thanks to 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 still has plenty of room to grow.
“We will open many new markets to meet the growing demand,” he said. “We’re going to need more robots.”
