Since first being spotted on campus in February, Idaho Eats officially launched Starship food delivery robots at the University of Idaho with an event at the ISUB plaza.
“Quite frankly, I think this is a great opportunity to demonstrate our leadership and innovation of bringing a vibrant, fun campus experience to our students,” Dean of Student Blaine Eckles said. “It also makes food delivery for them easy. We’re the only state institution doing this at the moment.”
Starship Launch Specialist Joe Maloney hopes that the launch is just the beginning for these food delivery robots.
“We start with a smaller scope, the merchants that we offer for our service area, and as we go along, what we try to do is expand in any way that we can,” Maloney said. “Our current offerings is what we could get up and running in this amount of time that we had and eventually we’ll start to add more, you can definitely look forward to that.”
Maloney said that they are optimistic to expand services outside of the campus further down the line.
“It’s honestly it’s been one of my most favorite launches that I’ve ever done,” Maloney said. “Who would have thought in the middle of you know, Moscow, Idaho. I did not know this place existed before. I’m very glad that I’m here and I know that Starship is as well.
Maloney said that using the app is easy to use if you are familiar with other delivery apps.
“Lots of bright pictures and easy to use interface, has a bot tracking feature as well to see how far away your bot is on the map,” Maloney said. “You can select a pin in the app as well drop it anywhere. So if you’re eating on a picnic table, you can zoom in on the satellite image, drop the pin and the robot will come right up to you.”
To use the robots, download the Starship app and select which food location to order from. Currently, the Market, Cravings by Joe, True Burger, Qdoba and Einstein are available. There is an added $1.99 delivery fee.
For another look at the robots, check out our TikTok.
Daniel V. Ramirez can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @DVR_Tweets