Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery, Autolane and Nash team on autonomous food delivery service in Texas
Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery, Autolane, and Nash have joined forces to bring autonomous food delivery to Austin, Texas, pairing select customers with a supervised Tesla Model Y that delivers their order from restaurant to door through a single checkout flow.
"This launch is proof that autonomous delivery isn't a future concept. It's running today, on real Austin streets, supervised and live, with real orders for real customers. Tso Chinese had the vision to move first and the operational scale to make it meaningful. Nash made the integration simple. We're proud to be the infrastructure connecting all of it,” says Ben Seidl, CEO and Co-Founder, Autolane.
"Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery was built from day one as a technology enabled, delivery first operation, so partnering with Autolane on autonomous delivery is a natural next step. We've spent years optimising everything from our kitchen workflows to our own tech stack to get our takeout and delivery orders to customers at the lowest possible cost, faster and more reliably. Autonomous delivery is a natural extension of that same approach. It means our customers get a fast, no hassle experience with no tipping required - and Autolane lets us keep raising that bar without adding cost or complexity for them,” says Angell Tsang, Cofounder and CTO, Tso Chinese Takeout & Delivery.
“Merchants adopt autonomy when it slots into the operation they already run. Working with Autolane, a restaurant can offer an autonomous car at checkout tonight and fall back to a courier when an order calls for it, without asking the customer or the operator to think about which is which. No replatforming, no new integration. On Nash, an autonomous vehicle is dispatched like any other capacity, weighed order by order,” says Mahmoud Ghulman, CEO and Co-Founder at Nash.
The Tso Chinese service first launched at the restaurant's Cherrywood location on 7th July with a fleet of supervised autonomous Tesla Model Y vehicles, managed end-to-end with the Autolane platform and field support on the ground in Austin. This marks the first collaboration between Autolane and Nash. Autolane operates the autonomous delivery network - the vehicles, supervision, loading, and curbside operations - along with the company's platform that coordinates every arrival, stall assignment, and handoff on private property.
Nash runs the merchant's delivery decisioning: which orders suit an autonomous vehicle and which should go to a human courier, and how each is dispatched, tracked, and communicated to the customer.
The pair say that they expect to announce additional restaurant and retail brands on the platform later this year, starting with Tso Chinese’s four other locations in the Greater Austin area.
2026 RTIH Innovation Awards
Autonomous deliveries will be a key focus area at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards.
The awards are now open for entries and celebrate global retail technology innovation in a fast moving omnichannel world.
Our winners will be revealed at the 2026 RTIH Innovation Awards Ceremony, taking place at The HAC in Central London on Wednesday, 4th November.
Check out our 2025 winners here.
Our 2025 hall of fame entrants were revealed during a sold out event which took place at The HAC on 16th October and consisted of a drinks reception, three course meal, and awards ceremony presided over by award winning comedian, actress and writer Tiff Stevenson.
In his welcome speech, Scott Thompson, Founder and Editor, RTIH, said: “This is the awards’ fifth year as a physical event. We started off with just 30 people at the South Place Hotel not far from here, then moved to London Bridge Hotel, then The Barbican, and last year RIBA’s HQ in the West End.”
“But I’m conscious of the fact that, to quote the legend that is Taylor Swift, You’re only as hot as your last hit, baby. So, this year we’ve moved to our biggest venue yet, and also pulled in our largest number of entries to date and broken attendance records.”
He added: “This year’s submissions have without doubt been our best yet. To quote one of the judges: The examples of innovative developments across both traditional and digital retail spaces were truly remarkable.”
Congratulations to our winners, and a big thank you to our sponsors, judging panel, the legend that is Tiff Stevenson, and all those who attended our 2025 gathering.
