1 15
1 15
At the very start of 2020, before COVID became a thing, we ran a story about an autonomous food robot called Chef B from vendor Blendid that takes onsite and mobile orders for standard and customized smoothies in the Charlie Brown’s Café on the campus of Sonoma State University.
Later in January came a story about the pizza-making robot deployed by concessionaire Centerplate that could turn out up to 300 pies an hour to feed and dazzle attendees of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.
Early in the COVID crisis, BGSU Dining by Chartwells expanded on its robot-based meal delivery project with vendor Starship Technologies to include members of the surrounding community coping with Ohio’s stay-at-home order. The initiative earned an FM Best Concept Award later in the year.
Here’s how foodservice management company Fresh Ideas Food Service Management deployed a variety of technology solutions to streamline menus and implement mobile order and delivery on college campuses before COVID that would come in handy once the pandemic hit. We augmented this story with a podcast interview with the company’s Chief Technology Officer Bob Love, who talked about how the various high-tech solutions facilitate dining services on college campuses while accommodating COVID-imposed restrictions.
Here’s how gated senior living community Paradise Valley Estates adapted automated vehicles originally intended as a point-to-point mobility service to providing home delivery of meals and packages to its more than 500 residents.
Fresh Food Robots made a big splash throughout Mayo Clinic Hospital, especially for late-night workers and those really missing the retail café’s old salad bar. It includes a conversation about how the technology expands the reach of a foodservice operation with Morrison Healthcare’s robot project lead John Matis.
With businesses forced to adjust to COVID-forced restriction, online meal order/delivery firm Freshly launched a service designed to help employers serve staff working either at the office or at home.
At Auburn University, students can preorder food through GrubHub and then pick up the orders up from high-tech lockers only they can access using personalized codes.
Here’s how American Express uses its 38 Express micro market concept to provide employees working at the office with a meal service offering quality, variety, convenience—and safety!
Here’s how the University of Houston and Chartwells Higher Education partnered with autonomous checkout technology firm Standard to transform the on-campus c-store into the nation’s first retrofitted, completely touchless, cashier-less retail outlet.
Aramark won an FM Best Concept Award this year for QuickEats, a contactless, automated retail outlet that debuted in an apartment complex but is adaptable to multiple environments.
Here’s how Cornell is leveraging technology solutions to provide an efficient and safe dining service for students in the 2020-2021 academic year.
Morrison Living’s Phillip Dopson talks about what robots are doing now in senior living situations and where they might be headed in the future.
Here’s how mobile meal order/delivery service ChoiceLunch is providing the Del Mar K-6 public school district in California with daily in-school and five-day remote learner preordered, customized school meals that conform to National School Lunch Program requirements.
Airports have been hard hit with COVID-forced restrictions and business curtailments, forcing airport concessionaires to make radical changes to the way they operate in order to remain viable. Here’s how one such company, Delaware North, leveraged technologies such as touchless and mobile ordering and payment and virtual kiosks to adapt to the new realities.
