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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Behind the Bot

Ten Chili’s Restaurants Are Now Using a Server Robot Named Rita

Want your baby back ribs brought to your table via robot?

You may be in luck as Rita the robot, a version of the Bear Robotics Servi server robot platform, has now been deployed in 10 Chili’s restaurants across the US.

The news, shared via a social media post on Linkedin, marks the latest in a string of deployments for the Bear Robotics robot over the past year. The northern California-based company has seen wins across the US in 2021, from Florida’s Sergio’s to the Country Biscuit in North Carolina to Sangam Chettinad Indian Cuisine Restaurant in Austin.

But with over 1600 locations, Chili’s is the biggest win yet for Bear Robotics, and one which looks like it’s growing quickly. Bear announced they deployed Rita to a fifth Chili’s just a week ago, and since then, new locations have been added almost daily.

The Chili’s server-bot deployment is also likely one that could signal a bigger turn towards robotics in fast-casual restaurants. Other chains are no doubt watching the rollout of Rita closely and could be planning to trial their own front-of-house bots as many continue to struggle with hiring.

Bear Robotics, founded by ex-Googler and restauranteur John Ha, has come a long way since Ha started trialing his first robot, Penny, in his own restaurant, the Kang Nam Tofu House in Milpitas, CA. A couple of years later, Bear debuted its second-generation robot Servi, and the company’s been serving up new deployments ever since.

“[Servers] are tired, they get a low salary, usually no health insurance, but they’re working really hard,” Ha told The Spoon in 2018.

In the same interview, Ha also told The Spoon he wanted to create the “Google of the restaurant field.”. With Bear’s relationship with one of the country’s biggest restaurant chains, he may just be inching closer to that vision.

Watch Flippy Make Fries at CaliBurger’s Newest Location in Washington State

Today CaliBurger announced they’d opened the first restaurant since the onset of the pandemic. The latest addition to the burger chain is in Shoreline, Washington, and to mark the importance of the occasion, the company brought a friend: Flippy the fry robot.

CaliBurger’s use of Flippy at the north Seattle location is the first deployment of Miso Robotics’ fast food robot in the Seattle market. According to the release, Flippy will start at the fry station, but the restaurant expects its new employee to be somewhat versatile:

While the Shoreline store will use Flippy for french-fry cooking initially, Flippy can also cook chicken breasts and tenders, onion rings, sweet potato waffle fries in addition to fries. The system’s image recognition technology allows for real-time quality control to prevent any food quality errors during the cooking process and before any food items reach customers.

The new CaliBurger location is also the first time the chain has deployed PopID’s pay-by-face technology. PopID, which launched its pay-by-face network in southern California last year, allows customers to create an account that ties a debit card to their biometric ID (i.e., their face). The customer can also pull up information such as favorites and loyalty points once ID’d at the point of sale.

As for Flippy, CaliBurger CEO Jeffrey Kalt had the now-standard company line we hear when a new food robot is installed in a new location: the deployment of Flippy will allow the humans to focus on customer-facing jobs and, as a result, will improve the overall guest experience.

“The deployment of Flippy enables CaliBurger to retrain our staff to spend more time tending to customer needs to better improve the guest experience, while supervising the robotic system that’s handling the cooking,” said Kalt. “This results in happier workers, more satisfied customers, and a more profitable business.”

You can watch the video of Flippy in action below:

Watch Flippy the robot make fries at Caliburger in Shoreline, Washington

Jamba and Blendid Open Second Robot Smoothie Kiosk, Eyeing More Locations

You know what they say: one robot smoothie kiosk is an experiment, two make a trend.

Ok, so while no one really says that, it is true in this case as Jamba, the retailer of health beverages and smoothie drinks, has announced the opening of its second co-branded robotic smoothie kiosk in partnership with Blendid.

The new Jamba-bot will be in Stonewood Center in Downey, CA, a shopping mall located in the broader Los Angeles metro area. The first co-branded kiosk by Jamba/Blendid, which opened in late 2020, is located in a Walmart on the outskirts of Sacramento. By opening its second location in a shopping mall, it looks like the health drink operator of nearly a thousand locations is trying out new types of venues in which it can put unattended retail bots to serve up healthy beverages. As hinted at in the release, it won’t be long before the company drops a smoothie bot in a gym or college campus:

Building on the successful 2020 opening of the first Jamba by Blendid in Dixon, CA, this is the next step in the effort to open Jamba by Blendid kiosks in additional types of venues – from big box retailers and shopping malls to gyms, hospitals, and college campuses.

Jamba operates using a franchise model, one which it plans to continue even as it enters the robotic vending era.

“After a successful launch of our first Jamba by Blendid kiosk, we’re excited to open a second test kiosk at the Stonewood Center, bringing freshly blended smoothies to mall shoppers,” said Geoff Henry, president of Jamba in the news release. “Jamba by Blendid provides an opportunity for our local franchisees to make smoothies more accessible to Jamba fans, while leveraging the latest in technology to deliver contactless food.”

With the company sticking to its primary franchise business model to fund expansion of the Jamba-bot, the possibility of a smoothie robot becomes an exciting new option for franchise entrepreneurs. Opening up potential new high-traffic venues like gyms, campuses, or even airports gives existing franchisees a new way to expand in the same city without cannibalizing their existing storefronts. It also gives them an accelerated pathway to open a location that doesn’t put them through the same hiring and construction headaches that often accompany a traditional franchise location.

Jamba is owned by franchise store conglomerate Focus Brands, which also owns Schlotzsky’s, Carvel, Cinnabon, and Aunt Annie’s among others. While some of the food types in their portfolio might not lend themselves to automation, it is intriguing to think about whether this push into food robotics by one of the largest franchise operators in one of its businesses could signify a broader strategy. It’s not too hard to imagine the tantalizing smell of a Cinnabon cinnamon roll wafting from an automated kiosk (a Cinnabot?) filling the terminal of an airport or college campus. I have to imagine Focus Brands – and its franchisees – are thinking the same thing.

Karakuri Semblr Food Robot To Feed Up to Four Thousand Employees at Ocado HQ

Karakuri announced today that its Semblr food-service robot is being deployed at the headquarters of British online grocery Ocado. Karakuri is partnering with Ocado (who holds a minority investment in Karakuri) and Atalian Servest, a facilities management services company to feed up to four thousand employees at Ocado headquarters in the company’s canteen.

“We are committed to making their vision a reality and that is why our investment in Karakuri goes beyond financial support and sees us opening up our canteen as a living lab for their testing. Plus we get to give our staff an experience of what the future holds for food service,” said Stewart Macguire, ​​Head-Corporate Development at Ocado Group, in the release. 

The Semblr 1 (formerly known as the DK-One) is a 2m x 2m kiosk that assembles various cold and hot ingredients into prepared meals. Like many new generation fast-prep food assembly robots, the Semblr doesn’t cook the food, but instead holds it at a proper temperature in up to 14 enclosed serving chambers and assembles a meal based on a customer’s personalized order. For the Ocado deployment, the Semblr will make Asian fusion bowls and will have 17 different ingredients from which employees can choose. The Semblr can make up to 110 meals per hour, and can make up to 4 meals concurrently

The deployment of a fast-assembly machine like the Semblr (formerly known as the DK-One) makes lots of sense for a corporate cafeteria. Because ingredients are prepped in advance, a corporate catering management company like Angel Hill can restock the machine throughout the day. In addition, the rapid pace of the robot (about 30 seconds per meal) means it can feed a lot of employees in a short amount of time.

“Putting our robot in action in a busy dining room for the first time marks a huge milestone for everybody at Karakuri,” said Karakuri CEO Barney Wragg. “We’ve come a long way in two years and our mission remains the same --  to develop robots that support the hospitality and catering industry and improve the experience for both hospitality operators and customers.

You can see a video of the DK-One in action below.

Karakuri DK-One Demo

After Almost 40 Years, Adam Lloyd Cohen is Bringing His Vision for Food Robots to Life

Back in college, Adam Lloyd Cohen had a vision.

It was 1985, and he was in Paris working on a documentary about ancient robots as a project during his senior year in college. After steeping himself in the history of automation during the day and dining on French cuisine at night, he began to think about how we might use robots to make food.

“The combination of good food and making a film on robotics stimulated the idea that, ‘hey wouldn’t it be great if we could somehow democratize access to very high-quality food?'” Cohen told me in a recent interview. “And there seemed to be no way to do that except with automation.”

But it was still the eighties, and robotics were a far cry from the AI-powered machines of today, so when Cohen graduated, he decided to set aside his vision of the future and get a job.

Still, as he navigated what would become a successful career in the 3D printing industry that included founding and selling a company, Cohen never forgot his idea about food automation and, by 2018, he decided it was time to give it a try.

“I started to hear about people working in this area, and I realized, well, the time has come.”

And so he got to work, eventually building a beta prototype of a food-making robot that he and his new company Now Cuisine trialed in late 2020. That trial helped him secure a deal with a popular burrito chain in Texas called Freebirds World Burrito, announced today, to run a three-month pilot with six new automated robotic kiosks called Takeout Stations. The robots will be deployed in different office buildings and multifamily housing units throughout Dallas.

The idea behind putting automated fresh-food-making kiosks in different locations goes back to Cohen’s original vision of making good food accessible through automation. It’s a vision his company now calls (and has trademarked) ‘Distributed Dining’.

From the announcement:

Through its vision of Distributed Dining, Now Cuisine seeks to democratize access to delicious, healthful, affordable food, making it ubiquitous and always nearby: wherever people live, work, and play. Through a connected network of Takeout Stations, Now Cuisine is working to improve nutrition, shrink food deserts, save precious time, and reduce waste, traffic, and emissions.

The new generation robotic kiosks will operate autonomously and assemble up to three dozen bowls per day, each taking about two minutes to assemble. They’ll also make a lot more than burrito bowls.

“There are all sorts of things we could be doing with the next generation,” said Cohen. “Certainly burrito bowls are of great interest, but grain bowls are fantastic. There’s potential for rice bowls, noodle bowls, and pokey bowls.”

But before the pilot program – and the rest of this vision for the future – can take place, Now Cuisine has to raise money to build the robots. To do that, Cohen is looking at venture capital, but he’s also considering crowdfunding.

“I’m intrigued by crowdfunding,” said Cohen. “Especially given the success some other folks have had in this space. But I’m going to start with more conventional approaches.”

Cohen is confident he can raise funds since he’s done it before. “For my last company, I raised about $17 million.”

Once funded, Cohen believes that it will take about ten months until the first Takeout Stations are deployed. The plan is to build the first six or so robots by hand so the engineering team can learn and stabilize the design.

From there, “the idea is to transition it to a contract manufacturer to make a lot of them,” said Cohen.

With Cohen’s long-term plan falling into place, he’s closer than ever to achieving the vision he first had while making a documentary in Paris about the future of robots.

Speaking of the documentary, whatever happened to it?

“I didn’t have enough money to finish it,” said Cohen.

Now a successful entrepreneur and no longer an aspiring documentarian, Cohen hopes for a different outcome as he works to build the future of democratized, automated food production he first envisioned had almost four decades ago in Paris.

Los Angeles International Airport Rolls Out NomNom, a Semi-Autonomous Food Delivery Robot

Los Angeles International is not my favorite airport. It’s crowded, has nine (nine!) terminals that take forever to navigate, and traffic blows once you get in your rental car and head to the Sunset Strip.

But all will be forgotten on my next trip through Los Angeles if NomNom, the airport’s new delivery robot, brings me food.

That’s right. LAX announced today it’s launching a pilot program for a 40-pound cargo bot by the name of NomNom. NomNom is a two-wheeled semi-autonomous top-loading delivery bot that moves at 6 miles per hour and uses a human guide to navigate the airport.

NomNom is being rolled out in partnership with AtYourGate, a food delivery service provider for airports that powers the food delivery service at LAX. When a consumer orders food through the airport’s food delivery portal LAX Order Now, guests at eligible terminals will be given an option to have a delivery or an additional fee. In addition, travelers will be given an estimated delivery time to ensure their food gets there before they have to rush off to catch a flight.

The robot, which uses cameras and sensors to follow its handler around the airport, is a gita, the delivery bot designed and built by Piaggio Fast Forward (PFF), a division of Piaggio Group, the maker of the Vespa scooter (could we see a Vespa delivery bot someday?). This is the second US airport to roll out a gita (Philly was first).

Airports have proven to be a favorite testing ground for food robots of all kinds. First, it was coffee bots like Cafe-X and Briggo, then came ramen, and now it looks like delivery bots are rolling in.

You can check out NomNom in the video below.

NomNom the delivery robot at LAX

Schnuck Markets to Deploy Simbe Shelf Scanning Robot to All of its Locations

Schnuck Markets announced today that it will be deploying Simbe Robotics‘ Tally shelf-scanning robot to all of its 111 locations across the U.S. This builds on the existing agreement between the two companies, which currently has Tally bots in 70 percent of Schnucks stores.

Simbe’s Tally robot is an autonomous shelf-scanning robot used to monitor a stores inventory. The robot traverses up and down aisles, using computer vision and AI to scan shelves and detect when a product is running low or has been misplaced. Tally can also monitor other issues such as pricing to ensure that sales and promotions are being executed properly.

Validating in-store inventory is more important than ever as people continue to shop for groceries online. Stores need to be more aware of what is in stock to accommodate both in-store shoppers, and customers selecting items online (where they can’t physically see store shelves or ask staff if there is more in the backroom). By automating inventory checks, Simbe says that retailers can get more accurate data and act faster to prevent out-of-stocks. In the press announcement today, Simbe said that Tally enables a 20 – 30 percent reduction in out-of-stock items.

Worth noting is that Schnuck Markets is expanding its use of shelf-scanning robots almost a year after Walmart gave up on them. Last November Walmart made headlines when it announced it was no longer using Bossa Nova’s robots to manage inventory. It was reported at the time that Walmart had found what it considered easier ways of managing inventory than using the robots.

Other retailers, however have put in-store robots to use. Giant Eagle was trialing Simbe’s Tally as well, and Woodman’s Markets was testing Badger Technologies’ robot at its stores across the Midwest.

Forthcoming Tesla Humanoid Robot Will Get Your Groceries, But Should it?

Tesla is working on a bipedal humanoid robot that will get your groceries and take over other “dangerous, repetitive, boring tasks.” Company CEO Elon Musk unveiled Tesla’s robotic ambitions yesterday during the company’s AI Day.

The human-shaped robot will be 5 feet 8 inches tall, weigh 125 pounds and capable of deadlifting 150 pounds. Musk also reassured the crowd that “you can run away from it” and “most likely overpower it,” which are a couple of descriptors that are meant to be comforting but are actually just somewhat unsettling.

Tesla’s decision to go with a human-shaped robot bring up a question I asked last year — “Should food robots be humanoid?” If we are looking towards automation to make our lives easier and create more convenience, wouldn’t more distributed, industrial type machines be better? For example, is it faster to have an android wash dishes individually by robotic hand, or to have a dishwasher appliance clean them all at once? (Obviously the best solution is to have the robot load the dishwasher, but you get my point.)

Think about the grocery example Musk specifically called during his presentation. Fetching your groceries quite honestly seems like it would take longer for a bipedal robot that only moves at 5 miles per hour. Why not just autopilot a Tesla car to the grocery store to curbside pickup the food you ordered online. Sure, Tesla Bots could be useful in loading your trunk, but the car would drive itself back home. To be fair, Musk is a smart guy, so perhaps he meant the humanoid would act more like a house servant and bring your groceries from the car into your house.

But creating a humanoid robotic labor force is certainly more on-brand for the sci-fi inspired Tesla, which is also developing the Cybertruck, which looks like it was pulled from the movie MegaForce. There is theatricality to a humanoid robot, which is the reason some robot startups choose to go with the slower articulating arms. The robotic arms are part of the attraction. Watching an autonomous arm swivel about to make us drinks and meals scratches some basic itch we have to live in the future.

As part of his robot presentation, Musk envisioned a world where robots take over most of the everyday manual jobs that humans currently do. He also said that in doing so, we basically build an infinite labor force. He quickly added that if such a vision were to come to pass, there would need to be a universal basic income for displaced workers. The societal implications of an increasingly automated workforce are complex and need to be addressed sooner than later, but at least Musk is thinking of them now.

Of course, the bigger issue right now is if and when Tesla bots will actually make it to market. Sure, robots can do parkour now, but developing a smart useful robot assistant will take massive amounts of work. But, if anyone can will such vision into existence, it’s probably Musk.

Singapore: Crown Digital Installing Robot Baristas at 30 MRT Train Stations

Singapore-based Crown Digital announced yesterday that it will be installing its robotic baristas at 30 Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stations in that country by the end of 2022.

Dubbed “Ella,” Crown Digital’s robo-coffee kiosk is 5 sq. meters, serves a variety of coffee and tea drinks, and can make up to 200 coffees per hour. While Ella uses an articulating arm to make and serve drinks, one of its standout features is its transparent screen that can display information about drinks, orders and even full-motion videos and graphics.

For these MRT installations, Crown Digital has collaborated with Stellar Lifestyle, which has “expertise in property and retail management, media and digital advertising solutions,” according to the Crown Digital announcement blog post. Crown Digital also wrote that Stella Lifestyle has invested an undisclosed sum in Crown Digital’s pre-Series A round of funding.

This is the second rail network that Crown Digital has partnered with, following a pilot deal with Japan’s JR East‘s train stations signed at the end of last year. With their high-traffic audiences looking for refreshment on-the-go, transit hubs like MRT stations and airports are popular target markets for robotic coffee kiosk companies that are just now coming market such as Crown Digital, Smyze, and Cafe X.

Another benefit to robotic coffee baristas in these pandemic times is that they are contactless. Robots don’t get sick, and don’t act as a vector of viral transmission the way that humans do.

While there are a number of robot baristas coming to market, we have yet to see big coffee chains jump into automation. The exception is Costa Coffee, which bought Briggo last year and re-branded those Coffee Hauses into Costa Coffee BaristaBots. Though I suspect that as more deals like Crown Digital’s start popping up, we’ll soon see other big coffee brands like Starbucks and Dunkin add their own robots as well.

Creator Re-Opens With a New Burger Making-Robot Customers Can Control

Creator, the San Francisco restaurant made famous by its burger-making robot, was among the thousands of restaurants shut down by the pandemic (even though it engineered an awesome germ-free airlock delivery system). But the restaurnt announced today that it is back with a new location in Daly City, California, and that is has a brand new robot that customers can control.

Creator’s new robot is a little different from its first incarnation, offering a new array of functionality. The robot is faster, capable of cooking a burger in less than four minutes (when there are no other burgers in the order queue). It also holds 25 different seasonings and sauces that can be dispensed down to the milliliter. Gone from this version of Creator’s robot, however, are the automated toppings like lettuce, tomato and cheese, which humans will no apply to the burger themselves.

But perhaps the biggest change for Creator’s robot is how customers can interact with it. “We’re going to allow anyone to take control of the robot,” Creator Founder Alex Vardakostas told me via video chat this week. Customers can download the Creator mobile app and tweak the seasonings and sauces to their liking. These settings can then be saved and shared, which allows for someone like a well-known chef to “brand” their own burger program that people can replicate.

Another nice new feature is that when you place an order now, Creator’s system will let you know exactly long your wait time will be before your food is ready for pickup.

In addition to all these front-facing changes, Vardakostas said that there are also a number of back-end improvements to the robot that help with production and growth. “The new system is hyper scalable,” he said, “and way more reliable.” It’s these types of back-end changes that will allow Creator to manufacture robots en masse and expand in different ways. Vardakostas said that Creator’s growth will include a mix of owned and operated locations, licensing deals that still carry the Creator brand, and a white-label approach where the machine is modified for another restaurant’s use.

Despite all this technology, Creator remains a very human-focused eating experience. Vardakostas said his team looked at using ordering kiosks, but decided to stick with human order takers. “For a lot of us, we want to talk to a human,” he said.

Speaking of humans, unlike other restaurants, Vardakostas said that finding and hiring workers has not been a problem. “Labor has been a slam dunk. It’s been super easy,” he said. Part of that Vardakostas attributes to Creator being as much a tech company as it is a restaurant company. “Overall, a lot of people want to move into tech,” he said. But there certainly other factors at play, such as not having to work over a hot grill (since the robot does the cooking), Creator also helps with professional development by paying for things like Coursera classes (though a lot of QSRs offer something like that now). Creator does provide an upward path into the technology/robotics sector, however. Vardakostas said that Creator recently promoted two restaurant workers into its development lab.

Creator is part of a larger movement towards automation in the food industry, which has been accelerated by the pandemic. Robots can work all day without taking break, don’t get sick or injured, and can help free up space for social distancing in the kitchen. As a result, there are a number of restaurant robots either at market or on their way. Miso Robotics’ Flippy is working the deep fryers at White Castle. Hyphen just introduced its new Makeline robot assembly system for Sweetgreen-style restaurants. And Picnic just announced the commercial availability of its pizza assembling robot.

For those in the Bay Area who have not yet tried Creator’s robot-made burger (ed. note: They are delicious), you can visit the restaurant’s new location in the Westlake Shopping Center at 514 Westlake, Daly City.

SJW Robotics Aims to Franchise Its Automated Asian Meal Kiosk

One of the emerging trends we’re seeing in food robotics is the fully automated restaurant-in-a-box-style kiosk. These are big, standalone devices that store ingredients and cook up a variety of dishes. Already we’ve seen announcements for such machines from Hyper, Mezli, and Wavemaker Labs with its Nommi. Now you can add SJW Robotics to that list, as the company has plans to franchise its automated restaurant-in-a-box that serves Asian food.

SJW has yet to officially name its automated restaurant concept, but the kiosk itself is 100 sq. ft, holds 36 different ingredients, and uses induction heating. While the outside doesn’t have branding yet, the internal robotics system is referred to as the “RoWok” (robot + wok). It can make one meal in about a minute and a half, though as the machine gets up to speed it can make six meals concurrently, dispensing each one in under a minute. It can make 250 meals before it needs to be refilled.

Nipun Sharma, CEO of SJW Robotics, explained to me by videochat this week that he’s interested in building his own restaurant brand through franchising. People interested in installing one of these kiosks will need to buy the robot for $200,000, pay a $25,000 franchise fee and pay 5 percent royalty.

SJW’s model is different from the approach other players are taking. Hyper plans on licensing its automated pizza technology to bigger brands, while Mezli says that it is more of a food company that plans to open up a number of its own restaurants (which could involve franchising, but Mezli didn’t mention that when I spoke to them earlier this year). SJW’s robot is also a little different in that it appears to be more of an indoor-based system, rather than the ruggedized shipping containers Hyper and Mezli are using that can be installed outside in places like parking lots.

Right now SJW is still developing its prototype. Sharma said that the company has raised an undisclosed round of funding and will be debuting a fully working version of its kiosk this October.

Picnic Announces Commercial Availability and Pricing of its Pizza Robot

Picnic announced today that its pizza-assembling robot is now commercially available for pre-orders and that its robot-as-a-service will cost between $3,500 and $5,000 per month, depending on factors such as menu and volume.

Picnic makes a modular system that uses computer vision and robotics to top pizza dough. Pizza crusts are placed on a conveyor belt, automatically stopping under dispensers to be topped accordingly with ingredients such as sauce, cheese, pepperoni and more. Because it is modular, more nodes can be added to add more toppings.

Obviously restaurant labor is a big issue driving much of the discussion around automation and robotics in food tech. Picnic CEO Clatyon Wood told me by video chat this week that while attracting and retaining labor is still a pain point for his customers, another reason for the move into automation is the digitization of ordering. Whether its online, mobile, or via in-house ordering via kiosk, digital experiences are driving more sales. “If you want to produce high volumes of food, automation is the answer,” Wood said. “Doing that with labor just isn’t an option these days.”

In addition to labor and volume, robot and automation can also provide a number of other benefits for restaurant. Robots consistently dispense the same amount of food every time, resulting in less waste and tighter control over ingredients. Robots can also operate dangerous machinery like a deep fryer or pizza oven without getting injured. And especially important in our ongoing pandemic, not only do robots not get sick, but they create more social distance for other human workers inside a kitchen.

All of these reasons help explain why we are starting to see more food-creation robots come to market. XRobotics and Middleby both make commercial pizza-assembling robots. Last week, Hyphen unveiled its Makeline automated food assembly system for fast casual restaurants like Sweetgreen. And while Miso Robotics’ Flippy is already working the fryer at White Castle, the company recently announced a new automated drink dispenser for QSR drive-thrus.

All of these solutions are still very early on, however, and we don’t yet know if the economics of robotics are truly sustainable. We’ll be seeing more public announcements of robot adoption from restaurant brands this year, so we can start to measure automation’s true efficacy.

For its part, Picnic will manufacture and install existing customer orders throughout the remainder of this year, and new orders will ship in 2022.