They are the little robots taking north Leeds by storm as they trundle food across the city, dodging traffic and ne'er do wells who might try to stop them on their automated deliveries.
I didn't know anything about Co-Op's new 'Starship Food Delivery' robots until last week, when a flyer for the supermarket's three month trial dropped onto my doormat.
Naturally, among the pile of circulars for stairlifts, equity release and window cleaning, I didn't give it much of a second look.
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Then as I walked to the shop (soon a thing of the past if Co-op has anything to do with it), I saw one. There he was, the little delivery robot that could, waiting patiently at a zebra crossing for a chance to zip across the road and complete his long journey from the Adel Co-op shop to someone's front door.
So later that night I took the plunge and placed my order, as Cookridge is one of the areas covered in the three-month pilot of the electric motorised delivery robots which is being run in conjunction with Leeds City Council.
To order, you download the Starship app and then make your food selection as normal. To give him a proper test, I picked a few bulky things/things I couldn't be arsed to carry home, such as milk, potatoes and chicken, and then added my free trial code from the flyer to get the entire 58p delivery charge knocked off.
On that, it would appear that delivery isn't a flat fee, but charged based on the distance the thing has to zip from the Co-op you order it from. Anyway, the first one's free.
Just two hours later, I got a text. He's here! The little robot had wheeled itself more than two miles from Co-Op Adel, in the cold and dark of a Monday night, to arrive outside my door, orange light flashing excitedly.
The first emotion I felt was regret. Because when you order, you can choose a song for the robot to play when it arrives. So cute! But when you choose Wham's Last Christmas, and the robot arrives at 10pm and blasts George Michael to the entire street, you might wish you hadn't.
Indeed, I spotted several curtain twitchers gazing through their windows at the odd man in his pyjamas being serenaded by a robot in the street. After the song was over, the bot unlocked, and you can then just lift the lid open and scoop out the bag full of food.
My first issue: The milk was out of stock! So no milk in my tea tomorrow morning. That's annoying.
I patted the lid back down, bade the robot a cheery wave and then pressed the 'food received, send robot away' button on the app. Seconds later, the robot turned and whizzed down the pavement, stopped, appeared to be thinking, and then trundled out into the road, pausing again to drive itself up and over the paving slabs on the kerb, and then it whizzed away into night. I was quite impressed at how it hiked itself up onto the pavement over the slabs.
But my second and biggest issue is the price. Are these really the prices Co-op shoppers have to pay? It's £2.04 for 4 pints of milk. £2.04! A quick Google tells me it's £1.65 for 4 pints from Asda, or £1.65 from Tesco. So right off the bat, you're paying an extra 49p for the robot to whiz it to you.
I looked at some cereal, but the box of Gluten Free Honey Nut Flakes that cost £2.30 in Asda are £3.30 for the same box here. That's a whopping 43% more expensive than Asda for exactly the same thing.
Of course, the novelty of this thing right now is the appeal. It's honestly great fun to summon a milk and potato robot to the house in the dark, get a performance of Wham and then watch it whir back down the street, no concerns about whether I was friendly enough or whether a delivery driver could or should drag a diesel van out here with just two bottles of milk, some carrots and a bag of potatoes.
But, cuteness aside, I don't *really* see the point. For all its technology, and for all the savings the Co-op is making on not having to pay a human being those fussy things like wages, pensions, and sick days, it's no cheaper than just getting an Asda driver to deliver to me with a van. Asda charges £4.50 to deliver, but Co-op's prices would make short work of that saving. And it's cheaper still if I just walk to the local Tesco Express myself.
It pretty much just feels like a service for people who either can't be bothered to walk to the corner shop or who don't mind paying Co-op prices (!) for the sake of a cute robot to deliver their food. That being said, if it wasn't for Co-op's prices, I would definitely use him again.
Either way, this feels like a turning point. The robots are coming, and I'm sure cheaper supermarkets will roll them out one day. They might not save us any money, but at least they'll look cute and play Wham.
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