The News

• Tortoise’s mobile e-commerce robot is now selling “souvenir” food and drinks at Sacramento Kings basketball games. The Kings are the first NBA team to offer this robo-service.

• Last month, Tortoise pivoted from last-mile delivery to mobile commerce, and launched with 18 retailers.

• Tortoise uses tap to pay, making the transactions not only mobile but also fast — perfect for a stadium.

The Story

When Tortoise made its pivot away from last mile delivery to mobile commerce, we knew that stadiums were one use case. So we shouldn’t be surprised that an NBA team would be quick to jump on the sales opportunity the slow moving Tortoise robot creates.

Tortoise CEO Dmitry Shevelenko posted a picture to Linkedin today showing his company’s robot decked out in Sacramento Kings branding, selling souvenir bottles of water and popcorn. Along with this picture, Shevelenko also wrote:

Tortoise is going Pro! Congrats to the Sacramento Kings for moving fast and becoming the first NBA team to delight fans with the magic of automated instant commerce with Tortoise's mobile vending robot. A lot more exciting news coming soon...

Assuming this works well (and I’ll bet it will), we will see just about every other stadium and arena jump on the Tortoise train over the coming year.