Robot delivery for restaurants: who operates, what it costs, how to enroll
Three companies deliver for restaurants with sidewalk robots today: Serve Robotics, Coco Robotics, and Avride. Most merchants are enrolled through Uber Eats or DoorDash, not through a separate signup. Here is what is actually true today, not vendor marketing.
Who actually operates robot delivery for restaurants
These are the three sidewalk robot operators with real, running restaurant delivery in the U.S. today. Drone delivery (Wing, Flytrex) and robotaxi-based delivery (Waymo on Uber) exist in some of the same corridors but serve a different fulfillment shape; see the corridor table below for what is active where.
Serve Robotics
2,000+ robots across 20 cities and 6 metro areas, supporting delivery for 3,600+ restaurants (per Serve's own 2026 investor materials).
How merchants get enrolled
Automatic. If your restaurant already takes Uber Eats delivery orders inside an active Serve zone, you are enrolled with no separate signup. Uber notifies merchants; opt out by emailing robotdelivery@uber.com.
What it costs
No additional merchant fee. Robot delivery runs through the existing Uber Eats delivery commission; Uber has stated there is no added cost for merchants.
Sources: Serve Robotics investor materials; Restaurant Dive; StockTitan coverage of the Chicago and Atlanta expansions.
Coco Robotics
Live in Los Angeles and Chicago through DoorDash (roughly 600 participating merchants at U.S. launch), plus Miami, San Francisco, and additional metros through other platform partnerships.
How merchants get enrolled
Coco offers a free week-long trial run directly to merchants so they can see the handoff (crew places food in the robot, closes the lid) before committing. After the trial, most merchants access Coco through their existing delivery platform rather than a separate signup.
What it costs
Per-delivery, priced by distance the robot travels (Coco's own materials describe deliveries typically in the one-to-two-mile range). No flat published rate; DEPLOY has not found a public fee schedule beyond the distance-based structure Coco describes.
Sources: DoorDash and Coco partnership announcements; AgFunderNews merchant-readiness reporting; cocodelivery.com.
Avride
200+ restaurants across Austin, Dallas, and Jersey City, with expansion into Philadelphia; tens of thousands of meals delivered per Avride's own reporting.
How merchants get enrolled
Same automatic-enrollment mechanism as Serve: restaurants already on Uber Eats delivery inside an Avride zone are enrolled without a separate application. Opt-out is the same robotdelivery@uber.com address.
What it costs
No additional merchant fee beyond the standard Uber Eats delivery commission, per Uber's public statements on the robot delivery program.
Sources: TechCrunch, NJBIZ, and Avride's Medium posts on the Jersey City, Austin, and Dallas launches.
Where robot delivery is active today
Atlas-verified active fleets for the eight priority U.S. robot delivery corridors DEPLOY tracks. This table is live, not a static snapshot: it reflects the same corridor intelligence rendered on each corridor's own page.
| Corridor | Active fleets | |
|---|---|---|
| Los Angeles, CA | Serve RoboticsCoco | Corridor detail → |
| San Francisco, CA | CocoWaymo | Corridor detail → |
| Austin, TX | AvrideWaymo | Corridor detail → |
| Phoenix, AZ | WaymoDoorDash | Corridor detail → |
| Dallas, TX | AvrideServe RoboticsWing | Corridor detail → |
| Miami, FL | ServeCocoWaymoAvrideCartkenPinkbot | Corridor detail → |
| Atlanta, GA | WaymoServe Robotics | Corridor detail → |
| Chicago, IL | CocoServe Robotics | Corridor detail → |
Not in one of these eight corridors? Robot coverage expands monthly outside them too. Search your city at deploy.report/ground/cities.
Where DEPLOY Ground fits in
DEPLOY Ground is not a fourth robot delivery operator competing with Serve, Coco, or Avride. It is a neutral directory and discovery layer that sits above all of them:
One listing, not three separate merchant accounts
Your Deploy Ground listing is claimed once and reflects your business regardless of which operator or platform actually fulfills a given order.
Visibility into AI agent demand platform integrations don't surface
Uber Eats and DoorDash tell you about human customer orders. Deploy Ground logs every AI agent order attempt, live or not, so a business can see demand it is currently missing.
A dgp-endpoint any agent can discover, independent of which operator delivers
The Deploy Ground Protocol (DGP) is what lets a Claude or MCP-compatible agent find and order from your business directly. See what a dgp-endpoint is at /ground/dgp-endpoint.
Claiming a listing is free, and claiming does not require you to have signed up with any specific robot operator first. See the full setup guide at how to make your business robot-accessible.
DGP vs. the agent checkout protocols
Two other standards are emerging for AI agents buying things: OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) and Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) paired with its Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP). Both are real, both are live in beta, and neither does what DGP does.
| Protocol | What it does | Who built it |
|---|---|---|
| ACP | Lets ChatGPT ingest a merchant's product feed and complete a purchase in-conversation via Instant Checkout. The merchant stays merchant-of-record; Stripe handles the payment leg. | OpenAI + Stripe |
| AP2 / UCP | UCP carries the cart-level commerce flow for AI Mode and Gemini; AP2 provides the cryptographically-verifiable payment mandate underneath it. Merchant stays merchant-of-record. | |
| DGP | Answers the question upstream of checkout: is this specific business robot- and agent-orderable right now, what fulfillment modes does it support, and where is its live ordering endpoint. | DEPLOY |
None of the three compete directly. ACP and UCP need to know a business is orderable and how to reach it before they can run a checkout flow; DGP is built to answer exactly that for physical, robot- and agent-fulfilled local commerce, a gap neither general-purpose checkout protocol was built to fill. Read the full spec at /ground/protocol.
DEPLOY Ground
See which robot operators and AI agents already reach your restaurant.
Claim your listing in 5 minutes. Free, and independent of which robot operator or platform actually fulfills your orders.
Free to claim. No credit card required.
Frequently asked questions
Is my restaurant automatically enrolled in robot delivery?
If you already take delivery orders through Uber Eats and your restaurant sits inside an active Serve Robotics or Avride zone, yes: enrollment is automatic and there is no separate signup. You can opt out by emailing robotdelivery@uber.com. Coco Robotics works differently: it typically starts with a free trial week arranged directly with the restaurant before ongoing delivery runs through your existing platform partnership.
How much does robot delivery cost a restaurant?
For Uber Eats-mediated robot delivery (Serve Robotics, Avride), there is no additional merchant fee beyond your existing delivery commission. Coco Robotics charges per delivery, priced by distance traveled, after an initial free trial period. DEPLOY has not found a published flat-rate fee schedule for any of the three operators beyond what is described here; if a business finds different terms in its own merchant agreement, that agreement governs.
Which robot delivery operators serve my city?
It depends on the corridor. Serve Robotics, Coco, and Avride each operate in a different mix of cities, and coverage changes as fleets expand. The corridor table on this page shows Atlas-verified active fleets for the eight priority U.S. robot delivery corridors DEPLOY tracks; deploy.report/ground/cities/{city} shows the underlying business directory for any of them.
Do I need to sign up separately with each robot delivery operator?
Usually not. Serve Robotics and Avride enrollment flows through your existing Uber Eats merchant relationship. Coco Robotics is reachable through DoorDash, Uber Eats, Wolt, or Olo Dispatch depending on market. The separate step is claiming a Deploy Ground listing, which is not required by any individual operator; it is what makes your business discoverable to AI agents and lets you see AI agent order attempts that platform-specific integrations do not surface.
What is the Deploy Ground Protocol, and how is it different from ChatGPT's checkout or Google's agent commerce tools?
OpenAI's Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) and Google's Agent Payments Protocol (AP2) and Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP) are checkout and payment-authorization layers: they let an AI agent complete a purchase from a merchant's product catalog, with the merchant staying merchant-of-record. Neither indexes which physical robot fleet actually reaches a given address today. The Deploy Ground Protocol is a discovery and fulfillment-capability layer underneath that question: it tells an agent (or a person) whether a business is robot-orderable right now, which fulfillment modes it supports, and how to reach its ordering endpoint. DGP is complementary to ACP and UCP, not a competitor to them; a business could plausibly use DGP for physical-fulfillment discovery and ACP or UCP for the payment leg of the same order.
How to make your business robot-accessible
The DEPLOY Ground setup guide, step by step.
What is a dgp-endpoint?
The link tag that makes a business agent-orderable.
More on DEPLOY Ground