How Bodega typifies Silicon Valley’s cultural ignorance

This is basically a fancy vending machine, so I'm not really clear on why this got funded, but on the other hand vending machines are a thing. They don't actually seem to be trying to displacement bodegas from the get go, but rather putting their machines in upscale places like lobbies and gyms, but I'm still a bit confused by this whole thing, is the premise that these places are more likely to accept a pretty vending machine?

I don't know, I can think of several times in the last week I would have been very happy to have a vending machine with toilet paper and coffee creamer in the lobby of my building. The only corner store nearby went out of business a few months ago.

Sure, everyone wants convenient things, but why do they need fancy tech development (they're planning to use computer vision), and what makes them think they will be able to make the economics work?

Putting these inside building lobbies means they can serve far fewer people than a regular vending machine; their costs have to be far better than a regular vending machine for this plan to make sense.