Coco (Isn’t) Coming to New Roads

Exploring the much-anticipated arrival of delivery technology.

Set the scene: New Roads, fall afternoon. The hour of lunch arrives, and with it, the attempt to arrange a Coco delivery cart, ready to ship the next order from restaurants like Ashland Hill and Goop Kitchen. These carts (seemingly) zoom past many stuck in Santa Monica traffic, and often stir up curiosity and envy at their rapid pace.

The objective of the day is to have a Coco cart arrive at the New Roads campus, to fully experience the technology without the typical distance between a Coco cart and a car, and to answer any questions that arise within that distance — what are some details of the Coco cart that only those who have food delivered to them can see?

With enough determination (and budget, and location, and the right restaurant to deliver on-campus) that experience was set up, with the aid of a certain local establishment: Goop Kitchen.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s as-West-LA-as-it-gets restaurant in the center of Santa Monica (and conveniently partnered with Coco) is within the two-mile radius of New Roads that falls within Coco’s delivery boundaries, but unfortunately, it wasn’t meant to be. I waited alongside Jaguardian writer-photographer Dylan Nilsson, arranged with two of my teachers to leave class for the robotic delivery, and yet, Coco never came; a human arrived. My hopes of a visit from Coco were diminished for a few minutes, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up on my search for food delivered by the tiny Santa Monica robot.

After my efforts became fruitless, a realization arrived in its place, in the form of an email from The Jaguardian’s faculty advisor Larry Friedman:

“It dawns on me that (and I am not sure what you’ve found in your research), that the carts might only serve certain areas with sidewalks. Is that true? If so, then I imagine it might be trickier than thought to get the cart to come to you…”

The New Roads campus, much to my chagrin, is on the sidewalk-diminished area of Olympic Boulevard, where entry to the school without the aid of a car is difficult. Even though a small sidewalk is available on the New Roads property itself, a Coco cart faces much difficulty trying to cross Olympic or traverse through the surrounding area.

Looking wistfully as my attempt to receive a meal from a Coco cart ends.

As a company, Coco markets primarily to their merchants, with their website giving ample opportunities for businesses to partner with them and read the step-by-step process of delivery from the starting lens of a restauranteur. The appeal of Coco carts to consumers is clear: zero-contact, electric transportation, with efficient deliveries. But is this truly progress? With a maximum speed of 5 MPH and a limitation of delivering within a two-mile radius of each business that they partner with (often located in affluent locations, such as Santa Monica itself), the Coco delivery system is not the most accessible, to say the least. Not to mention that they’re entirely human-controlled, crushing the hopes of full automation for consumers and requiring workers to be “comfortable making decisions under pressure,” as per their job description — asking the same as delivery workers who do not face the advent of automated technology.

This isn’t to say that Coco is all bad; I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, and it’s important to note that two-mile radius deliveries often occur, regardless of Coco’s presence, which lightens emissions and allows for workers with physical disabilities to pursue delivery work without the constraint of physical demands.

The point, though, is that no one should deliver food once fully automated technology is accessible and available. Until then, I’ll be waiting (forever) for Coco to deliver my meal with efficiency and ease.