Walking to the nearest vending machine can be so exhausting to the average college student.
Fortunately, students at the University of the Pacific will no longer have to make that trek. Starting Thursday, they will be able to summon one of several autonomous robots on campus that will deliver food and drink to them with a couple clicks.
Students can buy healthy food and drink on their phones from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and have it delivered by these self-driving robots, called “snackbots,” to more than 50 pre-set locations across campus through a special app. The program is part of a collaboration between PepsiCo and San Francisco Bay Area-based Robby Technologies.
PepsiCo invested an undisclosed, though likely significant, amount of money in the bots, which are part of a pilot program.
“Snackbot is the next generation of us delivering convenient, healthier products,” Scott Finlow, a vice president at PepsiCo, told USA Today. “It represents a really important intersection of consumer demands and needs and also the evolution of technology.”
Students at the university will be relieved to know that the snackbots are virtually weatherproof, equipped with headlights and all-wheel drive capabilities. Yes, even in the most inclement weather, students will get their Baked Lay’s potato crisps and their Pure Leaf Tea without delay.
This new high-tech convenience is supercool and an example of the market meeting the changing consumer demands of new generations. But is this really a demand that we should be encouraging? A demand to receive everything on-demand?
It appears Generation Z consumers expect to be treated like kings when it comes to their sustenance.
Food delivery services have become all the rage with the advent of apps such as Uber Eats, Grubhub, and DoorDash, and they have even reached high school campuses.
A growing number of spoiled high schoolers have opted to use food delivery services for lunchtime delivery in lieu of cafeteria food. This became such a problem at one California high school that administrators had to ban their use on campus. Secretaries were spending an exorbitant amount of time checking in delivery guys and tracking down the students who called them.
So the students went back to eating at the cafeteria — like peasants!
Generation Z has been deemed the “digital native” generation for good reason. But if this is where interest in digital technology is headed, then we should all be a bit concerned.
Brendan Pringle (@BrendanPringle) is writer from California. He is a National Journalism Center graduate and formerly served as a development officer for Young America’s Foundation at the Reagan Ranch.
