This is very much location/culture dependent. Where I live is customary for the delivery drivers to wait on the sidewalk while you go down to pick the order up.
The robots are operated by the building, for what it's worth. The delivery drivers drop the deliveries off to the robots in the lobby, and the robots take it from there to the individual rooms.
Maybe we will end up with a mix of drones for places where we can reach by air, and robot operators to deliver other packages when human interfaces are what you have to deal with.
I think you'd have to have nerves of steel as a company to try either of those maneuvers. The wind can be unpredictable so close to a structure, it is a cramped environment filled with objects and materials you can't predict, even a meal for 2 can be kindof bulky (doubly so bc it has to be packed well enough to be airworthy), the load might shift internally, and if you screw up there's a good chance a drone goes plummeting 20 stories down onto a crowded sidewalk.
Alright hear me out, a drone "cannon" that shoots the food onto the balcony. It's perfect for covering that last distance. Works best for food packaged in discrete boxes. ;)
How are they going to get the right apartment, and even if they do, what if the food gets fumbled in the handover and someone is injured by falling meals?
They're still used pretty heavily in hospitals and they do take advantage of newer technology like RFID for routing.
Separately, there's a very cool startup called Pipedream that does autonomous underground delivery robots that are kind of the next iteration of the concept.
"We add a $70 surcharge to each delivery for the ballistic parachute system that protects people on the sidewalk from fumbled delivery handovers. This surcharge is refunded when the intact and unused parachute system is returned via the drone from your next delivery."
