Robot Delivery Just Hit White Castle. What Do Customers Think?

White Castle faced a problem novel to quick-service restaurants. During the dinner hour rush, delivery drivers were clogging up the parking lot while waiting for orders to be fulfilled. Meanwhile, White Castle customers, the ones there to get their food in-person, were left struggling to find spots. 

To make matters worse, fulfilling mobile orders was taking too long. Once orders made it out the door, customers ended up with lukewarm burgers that weren’t worth the delivery fee.

White Castle began working on a fix. In Chicago, they began piloting food delivery robots through a partnership with Coco Robotics and Uber Eats. They wanted to see if a small, semi-autonomous robot might take pressure off the parking lot and keep orders moving.

White House targeted a simple customer experience: a customer would place an order and get hot food with a handoff that felt smooth and safe. 

For the pilot to become a regular part of the White Castle experience, deliveries need to work smoothly every time. 

​​Why Restaurants Are Trying Delivery Robots

[[Quick-service restaurants]] have plenty of reasons to experiment with robots, and most of them come down to cost and speed. 

The “last mile” of delivery is the most expensive part of the whole process, often making up more than half of total delivery costs. Human drivers are harder to find than they were a few years ago, and rising wages mean every short trip to drop off a single bag of sliders costs the restaurant more. Add in the time lost waiting in line or circling the lot, and orders can get backed up fast, driving up costs and reducing the quality of the product and experience.

Robots, on the other hand, can run more frequent, shorter trips to maximize their availability during peak rush. Coco Robotics says its bots have already completed hundreds of thousands of deliveries, which at minimum proves customers are willing to give the new technology a chance. 

Long-term, the new means of delivery will only work if customers see robots as reliable. A single glitch, like a missed order notification or a stalled robot, could undo the benefits for customers and restaurants alike.

The Robot Delivery Customer Experience, Step by Step

So, how does robot delivery work, and what does it take to give customers what they expect? Each step depends on multiple systems working together. If the app glitches or a robot’s sensors misfire, one problem could lead to two and before long, the entire order and delivery experience could fail.

Remote monitoring and management, here, offers one way to keep the technology moving along. [[Remote monitoring and management]] for devices like these robots can report status updates, maintain software and hardware updates, and be configured to automate troubleshooting and other self-healing activities. 

From an RMM perspective, data can be tracked to confirm a robot is moving when it should be, detect when it stalls, and also make sure tracking and notifications fire correctly through integrations with other systems.

Here’s what that process looks like and what it takes to get it right.

Step 1: Getting Matched with a Robot

The first step comes at checkout. In the Uber Eats app, “Robot delivery” shows up as an option where it’s available. 

Some customers are excited when they see the option: lower fees and a faster ETA can be an easy sell. As one Reddit user wrote, “I want them. I'm tired of basically buying every deli guy dinner to bring two meals to our house.”

Other customers are turned off because they expect a door drop-off, not a meet-up at the curb. “I ordered DoorDash, not Come Meet Me Outside Dash,” another customer wrote.

Showing the likely walk distance and letting customers know exactly where they’ll meet the bot can help people feel in control of the experience. All that depends on real-time visibility into the robot’s performance and whereabouts.

Step 2: Tracking the Robot in the App

Once the order is placed, customers can watch the robot roll toward them in real time. When it works, it’s fun to follow along. When it doesn’t, like if the dot on the map freezes or the ETA stops updating, frustration builds fast. 

People have shared plenty of stories about robots getting trapped on sidewalks: “Whenever I see them they are stuck in front of [someone] taking over [the] sidewalk while food inside is getting stale.”

In a scene straight out of Futurama, someone even saw two food delivery robots in a standoff at an intersection, both refusing to move because their collision-avoidance systems wouldn’t let them take the right of way.

You have to laugh at this situation. On the other hand, because these failures happen on public sidewalks in more densely populated areas, they also become a form of advertising regarding the brokenness of technology. 

Brokedown bots are bad for robot business.

This is another moment when remote monitoring and management tools have an important role to play: detecting when a bot hasn’t moved in too long, alerting a human operator, and rerouting or taking manual control before the customer feels like the delivery has stalled completely. If they don’t, bots can stay trapped indefinitely.

Step 3: Getting the Arrival Alert

When the robot makes it to the destination, the app sends an alert that it’s outside and waiting. If a bad connection delays that notification, though, the order may be left out in the cold. And if the notification shows up early, the same may happen to the customer.

Even when the alert works, some customers say they don’t like having to walk outside, especially at night: “I don't feel safe as a female living alone walking out to the street myself to get my food,” one customer wrote. “I prefer drivers to leave the food at my doorstep so I can check my ring camera first and then quickly open the door to grab the food.” 

Small tweaks can make this step smoother: allowing people to choose a meeting point like a lobby or front entrance, or sending a follow-up nudge if the order hasn’t been picked up after a short wait.

Step 4: Unlocking the Robot

The last step happens when the customer uses their smartphone to unlock the lid and grab their order. It should be quick and satisfying: tap the button, hear the click, lift the lid. But several pieces of technology have to work together in that moment. The app has to send the unlock signal, the robot has to receive it over Wi-Fi or LTE, and the latch has to respond. If any of those systems falter, the lid stays shut.

Even a brief delay in processing the unlock can feel frustrating to a hungry customer standing on the sidewalk. To help mitigate these risks, remote systems should log every unlock attempt and trigger alerts after repeated failures. This gives remote operators the ability to open the lid manually. Plus, they can use it to spot trends and fix issues before they leave more customers empty handed.

Why Monitoring Is the Unsung Hero

The robot will get all the attention, but the behind-the-scenes technology monitoring is what keeps the system working consistently and with as few hiccups as possible. 

[[Remote monitoring]] spots problems before customers notice, like when a bot has been stuck too long at the same spot. They allow operators to step in with the right context, like street view and route history, so issues get resolved in seconds instead of minutes, sometimes even automatically.

Just as important, every intervention creates data that can be used to make the system more reliable over time. That data can help identify problems like high-incident areas in the route network or stores where curb access needs improvement.

Metrics like the rate of stalled robots and lid unlock failures all tell the story of how smooth the system feels. Tracking and improving these numbers can help make robots a more dependable delivery channel.

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What Comes Next for Delivery Robots

People are open to new tech when it adds convenience, but they’re quick to abandon it if it causes hassle or makes them miss a meal.

White Castle’s robot delivery pilot must provide a consistent experience that meets (or surpasses) customer preferences.

Customers must be given a clear choice at checkout.

Customers must get transparent updates when there’s a delay.

When problems happen, the system should switch to a driver. (Or credit the order automatically and appropriately if things can’t be fixed fast.)

Customers should also feel encouraged to provide feedback after delivery, and feedback should be engaged with when provided. (Even a single question about whether the meeting spot was convenient can help improve the next order.)

Robot delivery has the potential to become part of everyday life. Success will require the process to be reliable, from the first tap in the app to the moment the lid pops open. Each successful delivery helps build trust in the technology. 

Once robotic delivery works end to end, customers won’t think twice about choosing the robot option next time. It will just feel like delivery that happens to be a little more futuristic.