The network of underground robots of this startup could change for fast food forever

After placing his order on an application in advance, the customer goes to the restaurant, finds a parking space and heads inside. They score space. Is it crowded with delivery drivers and people who order in the register? Is their food ready? Will they have to catch him with an employee? Is there an designated collection shelf? If so, is it full of bags, letting them scan each receipt for their name?

For all progress in numerical order and growing collection in recent years, experience has often been useless. But what happens if customers could simply stop, take their food from the car and be on the way in a few seconds-without adding another road to the steering wheel for orders placed through the application? It’s the vision behind Pipedream.

Founded in 2021 by Garrett McCurrach, the Austin -based startup found a new way to put food between the customer’s hand with its instant collection system, which uses underground robots to facilitate the transfer of high -speed controls.

The broader Pipedream ambition extends beyond the improvement in food delivery. The company strives to connect entire cities with underground delivery networks. At the end of 2023, he began to test longer deliveries in Peachtree Corners, in Georgia, where he successfully connected an office building to a retail store via a 0.7 mile tunnel.

“I do not know why, but throughout my life, which facilitates the things that have been obsessed with me,” explains McCurrach. “How to move something from point A to point B as fast and as inexpensive and as easy as possible?”

Although this larger -scale vision of the city’s underground delivery networks will probably take up years to materialize, Pipedream is currently focused on the fast food sector with its instant collection system. It is modeled after the infrastructure which provides public services such as water and electricity to buildings and uses a modular type train configuration.

The process begins with the entrance portal, a compact unit which can be installed flexibly in the kitchen, ideally located towards the end of the food preparation line where the items are finished. This allows fast and easy loading of controls in the system. From the input gate, the order is transferred to a storage station at controlled temperature, generally located nearby to minimize the distance that the order must travel.

If Pipedream is able to install its location software development kit on the application of the restaurant, the system will automatically move storage items to the output gate – a reception station similar to a banking tube system – when the customer arrives. Otherwise, there is a verification process that uses tools such as Vocy AI or QR codes for rapid confirmation. The output gate adapts to align with the height of the car window. Then the customer simply catches his food and is on the way.

The company has designed the system to accommodate different restaurants. If the only space available for the entrance gate is at the front of the restaurant, while the only location for the outdoor storage station is behind the building, this flexibility is integrated.

“We realized that the system had to work everywhere, and that is why it works like public services,” explains McCurrach. “It is really easy to connect it and move it wherever it needs.

The objective when creating the system was to make the collection as friction and easy – perhaps even easier – than the driving service. The whole interaction is designed to take only 15 seconds.

“It’s a magical experience, and we have all the pieces to do so,” explains McCurrach. “And not only do it, but make this technology very easy to modernize in current existing buildings, to do it very at low cost and very quickly, and to allow flexibility.”

Some fast servages have wondered about the use of the Pipedream system for their driving service, but McCurrach is not fully sold on this idea. Although he is not against the concept, he thinks that there is an important opportunity to refine the collection experience first.

“So many people like to pick up, but it’s really a bad experience right now,” he says. “If people love it as much as it is a bad experience, how much they love when it is even better than the Drive-Thru? I think that is the opportunity that people are lacking.”

One of the main advantages of the instant collection system is its ability to strengthen dependence on the application of a restaurant – a central objective for many brands aimed at driving more business thanks to their control channels among the first. By facilitating this change, the system allows restaurants to collect customer data directly, by helping it to establish stronger and more personalized relationships with their guests. In addition, there is the advantage for customers, who can earn rewards and can have access to special offers and promotions via the application.

“Apart from everything why the application is good, instant collection is a bit like an expressway,” explains McCurrach. “It’s a bit like what Fast Pass is for Disney, but for food. You can just jump the line and go through.

In November, Pipedream completed its first installation on a site in Texas. The store brand will be announced in the future.

Pipedream focused on minimizing the construction calendar, ensuring that the Drive-Thru can remain open throughout the process and keep the costs in check. Although the first installation has taken four nights, which concerns an additional stamp time to ensure in -depth work – McCurrach is confident to go to two or three nights of construction in a coherent manner, and at the same time, to reduce the cost with this.

The construction process is simpler, less expensive and faster than many could not expect, and the same goes for technology itself. Although the word “automated” in the QSR industry often recalls complex and flashy systems like robotic brothers cooks or sandwich manufacturers, McCurrach says to think of an instant pick-up more like a self-truth kiosk.

“They are easy to install, there is not much for them, and not many can break them,” he says. “We really worked to take so much complexity and engineering. The things that can break can be swapped. If there is something that breaks, we make sure that we can get this part out that day, and that anyone can go, open their backs and exchange it. It is quite reduced in the quantity of real things that happen, which is great for the time to obtain this cost and for long -term reliability. ”

Pipedream’s philosophy is that if people recognize a system as a “robot”, it’s probably not good. McCurrach points out that a dishwasher is one of the best examples of automation – people forget that it is automated because it just works and does what it is supposed to do.

“We wanted to make sure that we could get there with that – that it is so simple, you wouldn’t even call it automation,” he said.