If You Are Quarantined, Will the Delivery Economy Save You?

March 2, 2020 - As quarantined and other concerned people in China learned, food delivery is a life saver if you can’t – or feel like you shouldn’t – leave your home. This has led to innovations like contactless delivery, where the couriers drop the food at a specific location from which customers then pick it up without ever coming face-to-face, and has even prompted robot deliveries.

With the news that patients infected with the COVID-19 novel coronavirus have been found in US urban areas, including NYC, residents are considering how tech can help them, too. Local public health agencies and companies that employ gig delivery workers are developing guidance for how to maintain worker and public safety in such situations.

Still, if companies have a hard time finding enough healthy workers or if people are too nervous about an encounter with their delivery person, autonomous delivery robot developers such as Starship and Nuro may see rapid acceptance.

For more information, see Freedonia’s Global E-Commerce report as well as Global Food E-Commerce and Online Grocery Shopping from Packaged Facts, our sister publication.