SALISBURY, Md. - Salisbury University has partnered with Avride to bring food delivery robots to campus.
The University says they've been partnered with Grubhub since 2020, which allowed students to order takeout for pickup at four on-campus eateries. With the introduction of these robots, students can now select delivery when ordering on Grubhub, and have their food brought to designated campus drop-off points by robots.
Prior to the launch of the program, officials tell us that Avride mapped out the entire campus to allow for safe and efficient navigation for the robots. The program officially launched on Monday, February 2.
WBOC spoke with Salisbury University's Director of Dining Services, George Oakley, about the new program. He told WBOC that the service is already being successfully used by students. "It's taken off great so far. We had 52 completed delivery transactions Monday. That doubled to 112 on Tuesday," Oakley said.
Oakley also addressed concerns about the robots potentially taking jobs away from people. "We never had any type of delivery service to begin with at all," he said. "So the robot delivery is an enhancement to our service, not taking away any jobs. If anything, it's going to make our locations busier and have a need to fill more student positions."
Officials say students who use this service pay a flat delivery fee of $3.49 to order food from the on-campus Chick-Fil-A, Hungry Minds, Cool Beans, or Chesapeake Coffee Roasters. The service is currently only available for delivery to main campus locations like dorms and academic buildings, but the East Campus and buildings on the west side of Camden Avenue may be included in the future.
As more colleges introduce services like robot food delivery, Salisbury University wanted to offer the same to their students. "It's a very competitive landscape out there right now in higher education," Oakley told WBOC. "We want to be able to provide the same services that some of the larger institutions are providing, and robot delivery is a great way to show everybody that we're leveraging technology and giving them the same kind of quality services that they're going to get at any other bigger school."
Salisbury University students can now utilize these robots for convenient food delivery during each dining location's normal operating hours, officials say.