WEST LAFAYETTE, IN — When Purdue students return to campus in the fall, they will have to find new ways to order food and other convenience goods to be delivered.
Starship Technologies has announced the removal of its Starship delivery robots from U.S. campuses — including Purdue — in favor of investing more fully in the grocery delivery market, both domestically and abroad.
Currently, the Starship app is not allowing orders to be placed at any Purdue on-campus locations, as efforts to remove robots seem to already be underway.
“We’ve made the decision to wind down all U.S. campus operations, including Purdue University, as we shift our strategic focus to retail grocery chains and hot food delivery in cities across Europe and the United States,” Starship spokesperson Jessie Warner said in an email to the Journal & Courier. “Grocery delivery is on a 10x growth trajectory for us over the next two years (in Finland alone, roughly one in five grocery deliveries is already completed by a Starship robot), and we’re looking to replicate that success with new U.S. retailer partnerships.”
Emails to Purdue officials for comment were unsuccessful.
Since September 2019, Purdue’s campus has played host to the small rover-shaped bots, which are programmed with maps that allow them to deliver to many buildings across the university. From hot Starbucks coffee to pizzas from HotBox — even items like medicine and toiletries from CVS — Starship has been a convenience for many Purdue students using their BoilerExpress debit cards who don’t have access to vehicles nearby.
“I (used Starship) my freshman year, but I haven’t recently,” Purdue junior Gretchen Graves said Wednesday. “I was delivering food because I was sick in my dorm and I didn’t want to go out, so it was more convenient to use my dining dollars and order it to my door.”
Linked directly to students’ meal plans through the university, Starship has offered its food delivery system for seven years. Graves hasn’t thought much about Starship since her early college days, though, as having her own car on campus now renders its service obsolete.
“It may open up some jobs for DoorDash, but I feel like a lot of people utilize the Starship robots a lot,” Graves said. “People may be upset with the inconvenience of not having that option, because DoorDash may be more expensive.”
“It won’t affect me, but if I used them, it probably is much cheaper than getting someone to drive your food to you,” Purdue student Mikayla Roach said.
Starship will begin pouring resources gained by removing robots from campuses like Purdue’s into a new operational model that partners with grocery chains and prioritizes delivery year-round, as opposed the seasonal model currently employed with U.S. universities.
“Our campus partnerships have been foundational to who we are,” Warner said in the email. “Universities are engines of innovation, and we’re genuinely grateful they believed in our vision from the very beginning. But campus and grocery are fundamentally different operations: One is seasonal and contract-driven, the other is a 365-day urban business requiring different infrastructure, different retail partnerships, and a different go-to-market approach.”
Some students questioned the effectiveness of Starship’s service at all, citing instances where Starship bots have been obstructions in traffic or on sidewalks and required students to intervene.
“I’ve seen a bunch of them (crushed),” Purdue student Sid Lavu said. “Their sensors are not good so they’re going in front of a bus and I’ve seen them crushed by it. Or get stuck in a snowbank. I had to push one out before.”
Overall pedestrian inconvenience was a focal point of multiple student testimonies, with disruptions to the flow of busy campus intersections being the main grievance.
“The Starships, they’re really good in theory,” Graves said. “They are a nuisance when it comes to driving or walking on campus. (Purdue) tries their best with trying to control them and getting them the quickest route possible, but they get stuck a lot. They interrupt walkways and sidewalks a lot around the main part of campus.”
It seems the robots are already being cleared out.
“We are working closely with all university campuses and industry partners to ensure a smooth transition as we officially wind down campus operations over the coming summer months,” Warner said. “We are committed to minimizing disruption for campus communities throughout this process.”
This article originally appeared on Lafayette Journal & Courier: Starship robots are leaving Purdue campus for good
Reporting by Elijah Greene, Lafayette Journal & Courier / Lafayette Journal & Courier
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Elijah Greene, Lafayette Journal & Courier | USA TODAY Network
