Last Friday, I attended the annual Curbivore conference focused on the future of last-mile delivery, autonomy, and mobility in Downtown LA. Over the course of the day, I attended conversations with leaders from companies like Wing, Coco, Uber, DoorDash and Sweetgreen about how they’re leveraging automation today and the second-order effects of it all. Generally, these speakers unanimously tried to paint a pleasant picture of the future with robots and humans rather than just the former. The buzzword of the conference was certainly “multi-modal”– the idea that rideshare and delivery require different vehicle and courier types depending on the geographical location and level of convenience demanded from the customer. Below is the play-by-play of the food-related panels I attended.