October 21, 2026
Molly McVety/PhillyVoice
Avride, the company that provides delivery robots for Uber Eats in Philadelphia, will expands its presence in the city through a new deal expanding service from Grubhub and Wonder food hall.
The same company that provides autonomous delivery robots for Uber Eats in Philly will soon begin using its AI-powered couriers to fetch meals ordered on Grubhub from Wonder food hall and other restaurants.
Avride, the autonomous vehicle startup that rolled out its robot fleet in Philly in March, said Wednesday it will expand its partnership here and in three other cities. Wonder acquired Grubhub two years ago. The company's billionaire founder Marc Lore recently described restaurants as "just software," and the tech-forward platform will soon allow users to create their own AI-prompted menu concepts to sell on the app for commissions.
“This expansion reflects our belief that the future of food delivery will be faster, smarter and increasingly powered by technology,” PJ Poykayil, Wonder's executive vice president of customer delivery, said in a statement about the deal with Avride.
Grubhub started using Avride's robots last year as part of a test program in Jersey City. The expansion will bring robot delivery via Grubhub to Hoboken, New Jersey, and Arlington County, Virginia, in addition to Philly and a larger service area in Jersey City.
Restaurants that use the Grubhub marketplace will have the choice to opt in to Avride's robot delivery service. Customers who order from eligible restaurants on Grubhub will get their food via robot if they opt in and fall within the company's service areas.
Wonder and Avride expect dozens of new restaurants to start sending out orders with robots in Philly and the other new markets. Grubhub already uses Avride to deliver food on about 25 college campuses across the country, although none are in the Philly region.
The arrival of Avride in Philly has not been entirely smooth. The four-wheeled robots, each weighing about 150 pounds, have been targeted on streets and sidewalks in videos posted on social media. In one instance in May, an Avride robot bumped into a women on a sidewalk in Center City, prompting a frustrating effort for her to report what happened.
The most high-profile incident came last week when retired Penn professor Carolyn Marvin was arrested for blocking an Uber Eats delivery robot in Center City. Marvin said she's being disrupting the robots for months in protest of the technology's displacement of human delivery workers.
“This is a known and expected phase as people get used to the technology," an Avride spokesperson told the New York Post earlier this year. "These few cases of vandalism in Philadelphia did not affect our service area expansion plans. The robots are designed to respond conservatively. In most cases, they will simply stop and wait if someone approaches or interferes, resuming their route only once the interaction has ended."
Avride has not said how many additional delivery robots will join the company's fleet in Philadelphia as a result of its partnership with Wonder and Grubhub.
State law classifies the delivery robots as pedestrians, giving them legal rights to use sidewalks, pedestrian areas and crosswalks. They are required to yield the right-of-way to people and cyclists. The speed limit for the robots is 12 mph on sidewalks and 25 mph on roadways.
“Our fully autonomous technology, combined with our extensive experience operating delivery robots in dense urban environments, ensures that we can deliver a reliable, seamless service for our partners at scale," Polishchuk said.
Wonder is known for offering menus from multiple cuisines — some developed by celebrity chefs — on a single app that allows people to get different kinds of food in one order. The company has expanded aggressively in the Philly area, growing its footprint to 16 locations since opening its first at a Walmart in Quakertown two years ago. There are six outposts in the city, including one in Center City at the corner of 16th and Chestnut streets.
The company is investing heavily in robotics, including last year's acquisition of Sweetgreen's automated food prep startup Spyce. Wonder also is in the process of moving its production and distribution offices to South Jersey, where it plans to take over a distribution center in Gloucester County.
