Campus-Built Delivery Bots Are Picking Up Steam in L.A.; Shake Shack Praises the Service

Coco Robotics, a start-up launched by a pair of UCLA engineers, is now making roughly 1,000 runs a day in Los Angeles and says it has completed more than half a million deliveries while logging north of 1 million miles. The company’s compact, purpose-built vehicles are being adopted by restaurants that want to cut costs and protect food quality, and one regional Shake Shack manager told the company its service has become a go-to option for the chain.

The idea began on campus when the founders grew skeptical about using full-sized cars to move single takeout orders across short distances. Melissa Fahs, Coco’s vice president of enterprise partnerships, joined after years working with restaurants and watching how expensive and unpredictable third-party delivery could be. She says the economics of moving meals door to door aren’t sustainable when traditional passenger vehicles handle so many short trips.

Coco’s machines are small, electrically powered carriers with locked compartments that travel directly from restaurant counter to customer door. That model removes the rider-to-driver handoff and, the company argues, reduces the need for customers to add gratuities while keeping meals at intended temperatures and presentation. A Shake Shack regional manager who’s used the service told a company representative that orders arrive more consistently than with conventional couriers and that the bots have helped reduce complaints about soggy fries and cold burgers.

Restaurants face a tough balancing act: they produce food quickly for hungry customers while operating on thin margins and dealing with perishable inventory and largely entry-level labor. Coco’s pitch is that its hardware and software can plug into existing workflows without introducing complex new steps. Fahs says the real engineering challenge wasn’t the vehicle itself but ensuring the machines don’t slow down kitchen throughput or add hidden costs. An academic who studies urban logistics noted that replacing short car trips with smaller electric vehicles can cut operating expenses and local emissions, but warned the savings vary based on routing, utilization and local rules.

Looking ahead, Coco is leaning into denser neighborhoods where short runs are common, arguing its model scales where conventional delivery becomes inefficient. Obstacles remain: municipal regulation, restaurant adoption rates and whether consumers embrace autonomous, unattended handoffs at scale. Still, with steady daily volume in Los Angeles and endorsements from franchise operators, the company has moved from experimentation toward a business that some restaurateurs now view as a practical alternative to traditional couriers.