Dive Brief:

• Jamba by Blendid is expanding from college and university campuses to hospitals, with a pilot robotic kiosk debuting this month at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, the companies announced Wednesday. 
• The kiosk will be operated by Sodexo, a major institutional foodservice provider, which worked with Jamba and Blendid to deploy a robotic smoothie kiosk at Georgia College & State University, according to the press release.
• Jamba and Blendid have previously focused on universities, malls, retailers and travel centers as avenues for expansion.

Dive Insight:

Blendid highlighted the ease of access its kiosks offer customers in the press release, noting the kiosk is open 24 hours a day and seven days a week.

Blendid CEO Vipin Jain said the autonomous kiosk maker sees its partnership with Jamba as key to its American expansion. Blendid, according to the press release, currently has eight Jamba kiosks in the United States.

“We want to make Jamba by Blendid smoothie kiosks a standard option for food service operators so they can keep pace with changing consumer needs — providing a quick and easy way to make contactless, personalized, fresh smoothies available any day at any time,” Jain said.

Dyiesha Kerr, general manager at Sodexo, said the foodservice operator was confident the kiosk would generate demand and sales based on the company’s experience with its first kiosk on a college campus.

Last summer, pressured by tightening capital markets, some restaurant tech companies and adjacent businesses began pulling back from autonomous solutions. Save Mart, for example, canceled a partnership with Starship Robotics, and DoorDash eliminated its salad-making robot unit, Chowbotics. But the continued expansion of Blendid by Jamba, and its entrance into new categories in institutional foodservice, show that there may still be room for growth for autonomous restaurant options.