Reflecting the Bay Area’s Passion for Innovation and Multicultural Flavors and Tastes, Lucky California Offers a New Contactless Grocery Delivery Solution in Pleasanton

PLEASANTON, Calif. – (February 16, 2022) – In celebration of National Innovation Day, Lucky California, a part of The Save Mart Companies, today has announced the exclusive launch of an on-demand grocery delivery service to its guests at the flagship store and “innovation lab” in Pleasanton in partnership with the world’s leading provider of autonomous delivery services, Starship Technologies. Lucky California is the first grocery store in the San Francisco Bay Area to partner with Starship Technologies. The new service follows the May 2021 reopening of the Pleasanton Lucky California location that had been remodeled and re-invented to meet the evolving shopping needs of the community, offering the best value on local and fresh products and reflecting the familiar array of multicultural flavors enjoyed by Bay Area residents. Based in San Francisco and a leader in the field, Starship Technologies has completed more than 2.5 million autonomous deliveries around the world.

The robots, each of which can carry up to 20 pounds of groceries – the equivalent of about three shopping bags – provide a convenient, energy-efficient, and low-cost delivery alternative, allowing shoppers to browse thousands of items available at Lucky California via the secure Starship app for on-demand delivery straight to their home.

“The launch of our new robotic grocery delivery service with Starship Technologies is an additional offering that our shoppers will value and enjoy, especially as the service area will progressively expand over time,” said Mario Guerrero, store director at Lucky California Pleasanton. “Lucky California shoppers appreciate our diverse assortment of products and fresh, quality groceries and during these challenging times, they can count on us to serve our community as the one-stop shopping location, working hard to keep prices low and shelves stocked.”

Shoppers can access the ‘Starship – Food Delivery’ app (iOS and Android) to choose from a range of their favorite groceries and drop a pin where they want their purchases delivered. Once an order is submitted, Lucky California team members gather the delivery items and carefully place in a clean robot. Every robot’s interior and exterior is sanitized before each order. Shoppers can then watch, via an interactive map, as the robot makes its journey from the store to them. Once the robot arrives, they receive an alert, and then meet and unlock it through their mobile device. The delivery will typically take just a matter of minutes, depending on the items ordered and the distance the robot must travel. For many, this provides an opportunity to meet a robot for the first time!

“We are very pleased to bring the benefits of autonomous delivery to Pleasanton, in partnership with Lucky California,” said Ryan Tuohy, SVP of Sales and Business Development at Starship Technologies. “We think the residents of Pleasanton will appreciate the convenience and positive environmental impact of autonomous delivery and embrace our robots similar to every other community where they operate. We fully expect the service area to quickly expand to more households.”

Starship Technologies operates commercially on a daily basis around the world. The robots move at pedestrian speed and use a combination of sophisticated machine learning, artificial intelligence and sensors to travel on sidewalks and navigate around obstacles. The robots can cross streets, climb curbs, travel at night and operate in both rain and snow. Starship robots have been operating at L4 autonomous level since 2018 and complete numerous deliveries in a row 100% autonomously, including road crossings. Its zero-emission robots make more than 100,000 road crossings every day and have completed more than 2.5 million commercial deliveries and travelled 3 million miles (5 million+ kms) globally, more than any other autonomous delivery provider.

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