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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Behind the Bot

South Korea: LG’s Robots to Ride Elevators and Make Convenience Store Deliveries

Delivery robots are making their way indoors. At least, they are starting to in South Korea. ZDNet reports today that LG has started using its Cloi Servebots to make deliveries from a local convenience store to anyone within the LG Science Park in Seoul.

The Serve bot, which features a series of shelves to hold food and drinks, will be able to get on the elevator at the Science Park and navigate nine above-ground floors as well as the basement to make deliveries to people there.

Typically, food delivery robots stop outside of a building, requiring the recipient to come out to retrieve the order. But robots in South Korea are starting to cross that threshold, as it were, to venture inside office and residential buildings to make deliveries more direct.

Earlier this month, Woowa Brothers announced that it was working with HDC I-Controls and Hyundai Elevator to allow Dilly robots to enter a residential complex and autonomously work the elevator.

As with the Woowa deal, there are still some details left unclear by ZDNet’s report about LG’s machines. To use the Cloibot, a user places an order through the KakaoTalk chat app. A human at the GS25 convenience store packs the order into the robot and sends it off. Then, as ZDNet writes:

The robots will then depart and send their destination information to a nearby elevator wirelessly. Once the robots arrive at their destination, they will call and text the customer to notify them of their arrival.

As with Woowa, which didn’t mention how its robots would navigate to a specific apartment after getting off an elevator, we don’t know how far the LG bot will go. Will it travel to a lobby, or a conference room or to a specific desk? Hopefully we’ll see more details from LG soon.

The bigger point is that delivery robots are gaining the ability to traverse indoor settings at the right time. The pandemic has businesses looking for a way to reduce human-to-human contact to reduce potential virus transmission. Having a robot means that a store or restaurant doesn’t have to send one of its workers out to make deliveries, and office/residential buildings can cut down on the number of different people coming in and out its doors.

With Self-Driving Delivery Vehicles, KFC’s International Brands Keep Pushing Us Into the Future

As with many posts we write about on The Spoon, there is the news and then there is the story.

The news rumbling across Twitter and as reported by Cnet’s Roadshow is that KFC-branded self-driving vehicles were spotted on the road in China bringing fried chicken to people outside. Roadshow reports that this “restaurant on wheels” looks like it’s a partnership between Yum Brands (which owns KFC) and a Chinese company called Neolix (though neither company confirmed that news). From Roadshow’s story:

As for how the little food pods work, it looks like customers make a selection via screens and pay via a QR code and then a door opens to reveal their order. It’s not clear what stops someone from taking more than what they ordered, but surely there’s some sort of system for that. There isn’t anyone inside preparing food as it happens.

Keeping people from taking food that isn’t theirs probably isn’t too big of an issue. This could be addressed either through cameras and computer vision or shelf sensors or both. If a person took more than they had ordered, they would probably just get charged more.

So the news is that China has self-driving cars acting as mobile restaurants. That’s cool. But the bigger story here is what the heck is going on with the international KFC brands? This rolling chicken stand is just the latest example of the company bringing its food into a sci-fi-style future. Consider other moves that KFC has done abroad:

  • A KFC in Moscow is using a system of conveyor belts and an articulating arm to shuttle food from the kitchen into a locker from which customers pick up their order.
  • In July, KFC Russia announced that it was “launching the development of innovative 3D bioprinting technology to create chicken meat in cooperation with the 3D Bioprinting Solutions research laboratory.”
  • Last month, KFC in Korea partnered with Hyundai to develop chicken frying robots.

I realize the grass is always greener on the other side, but it seems like the only thing KFC in the U.S. is working is… a better drive-thru (womp womp). I mean, that’s important, but come on! Where are our robots?

Brooklyn Dumpling Shop Adds Miso’s Flippy Robot to its Automat Concept

In addition to feeding you, the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop wants to create a “zero human interaction” experience. And as Restaurant Business reports today, the company is removing at least one human from its equation by bringing on Miso Robotics’ Flippy to work in its kitchen.

Brooklyn Dumpling Shop (BDS) co-founder Stratis Morfogen told Restaurant Business, “Miso is executing the full kitchen operation, which will be available in the third quarter 2021. Until then we will be using countertop portable versions in Q1 of 2021.”

What Morfogen seems to be referring to there is that eventually his company will install Flippy ROARs, which run on rails above the fry station. For now, his store will use the ground-based versions.

The Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, which is slated to open its first location in December (and, confusingly, in Manhattan), is bringing back the old Automat concept. Customers will order their meals via a kiosk or mobile app. Once ready, BDS stores each order in its own a temperature-controlled locker until the customer arrives to retrieve it.

The timing is certainly right when it come to having fewer humans involved in the preparation of your restaurant food. The COVID-19 pandemic is more widespread than ever and causing another round of restaurant dining room closures. Creating a restaurant where you don’t have to interact with another person helps reduce the vectors of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

Robots like Flippy are also finding accelerated interest from restaurants because they can work around the clock, don’t get sick and can create more social distance for employees inside a kitchen. White Castle recently announced it was adding ten more Flippys to its roster after an initial pilot earlier this year.

For BDS, the addition of Flippy plays into a bigger expansion plans for the company. As Restaurant Business wrote in today’s post, Brooklyn Dumpling Shop also signed a deal with Fransmart to franchise the brand with the possibility of adding 1,000 locations across North America.

Highpper Aims to Make Standalone Robot-Powered Restaurants-in-a-Box

When we write about food robots, typically those robots are like (very advanced) appliances that fit into an existing kitchen. Miso’s Flippy works the fryers, Picnic’s robot assembles pizza, and Spyce’s Infinite Kitchen sits at the center of that particular restaurant, making meals.

So one of the things that makes Tel Aviv, Israel-based Highpper interesting is that its robot is the restaurant. Everything from storage to production to packaging is 100 percent automated and done within a standalone 40-foot-long container that can be set up in parking lots or pretty much wherever you can get power and water. Highpper can run all day without needing human assistance.

That’s the plan, anyway. The company is still in the very early prototype phase, but there are reasons to believe it could come through on its ambitious plans. One such reason is that its founder and CEO, Udi Shamai, is also the president of Pizza Hut Israel, a master franchisee that oversees 90 Pizza Huts across his country. Shamai is also the non-executive chairman of Dragontail Systems, which uses computer vision and AI to automate food quality assessment for clients such as Domino’s Australia. (Dragontail was also named one of our Food Tech 25 in 2020)

Because of Shamai’s background, it’s no wonder that Highpper is starting with pizza. As we’ve said before, if you want to see the future of food tech, look to pizza, and Highpper is no exception. Though, when I spoke with Shamai by phone this week, he insisted that Highpper’s unique value proposition was less about futuristic technology and more about scale.

“I can ship 200 stores,” Shamai told me. “It’s scaled.”

Obviously, the proof will be the pudding to see if that’s the case, but Shamai said that Highpper will open its first third-party branded (Shamai declined to say which brand) standalone pizza operation in June of next year in Israel. Before that, the company will install components of its robots in an existing restaurant, to show off the machine’s capabilities.

One of the obvious uses for Highpper’s technology is automated ghost kitchens. If Highpper’s containers work (and that’s a big if right now), it’s not hard to imagine a parking lot filled with various robo-restaurants, churning out food for delivery, twenty-four hours a day. Speaking of ghost kitchen automation, there is actually another Tel Aviv-based company called Kitchen Robotics, which unveiled its Beastro robotic ghost kitchen earlier this year. Bistro, however, only does cooking and not everything Highpper says its machine does.

Right now, Highpper’s system only makes pizza, with burgers to follow and then the vaguely worded “Asian” food option. Highpper is in the business of selling its containers, not owning and operating its own machines or leasing the robots out as a service. An automated container will cost roughly $350,000 per unit (though Shamai indicated that price might vary a little bit).

Highpper is certainly entering the market at the right time. Euromonitor predicts that the ghost kitchen market will hit $1 trillion by 2030. More immediately, the global pandemic has accelerated interest in food robotics. Highpper’s ability to automate the entire workflow of creating fast food, could make potential restaurant customers pretty high on the company.

Spyce Kitchen Relaunches with All New Robot Kitchen, Dynamic Menu and Delivery

Spyce, the Boston-based robot-centric restaurant, officially announced its revamped concept today. The new Spyce features an all new automated cooking system, a dynamic, customizable menu, and in-house delivery.

The first Spyce Kitchen restaurant burst on to the scene back in the Spring of 2018. The robot used in that incarnation featured a row of bowls that spun to mix and heat ingredients that were dropped into them. This new version, dubbed the “Infinite Kitchen” aesthetically seems more akin to Creator’s burger creating robot.

Spyce’s new food robot makes both salads and warm bowl food, and holds 49 separate recipes. Serving dishes are placed on a conveyor belt that runs underneath the dispensers, which automatically portion out the proper ingredients for each dish. There is also a plancha searing station to cook and dispense proteins and vegetables as well as a superheated steamer to cook pastas. The Infinite Kitchen can make up to 350 bowls in an hour, with the average bowl costing $11.

Food is ordered either through the Spyce mobile app or via in-store kiosk. The new menus feature real-time customization to meet dietary preferences such as keto or vegan, as well as eight different allergen requirements like gluten-free. The menu also lets you adjust to taste preferences like levels of sauce and spiciness. The new Spyce menu does not, however, offer red meat, which has been left off for environmental impact purposes.

Like just about every other restaurant looking to survive this pandemic, Spyce is also placing an emphasis on delivery. There is no dining room to eat in, though people can walk in to order and take out food. The robot and new ordering system work in conjunction with each other to ensure that food is prepared and ready just in time for delivery.

Spyce is extending its precise operational control to delivery as well. The company is using its own in-house delivery fleet, which will help Spyce retain more of the customer experience (and data) and help ensure a good delivery experience. Drivers are W2 employees and will use electric scooters outfitted with special hot side/cold side insulated containers to carry the food.

The new Spyce is located at 241 Washington St. and is open for lunch and dinner every day between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m.. Delivery is currently to the Back Bay, Battery Wharf, Financial District, North End and West End neighborhoods, with the delivery radius increasing to more neighborhoods in the coming weeks. Spyce also plans to open up a second location in Cambridge’s Harvard Square neighborhood later this fall.

Self Point and Tortoise Team Up to Offer Grocers a Robot Delivery Option

Self Point and Tortoise announced today that they have partnered up to make same-day robot delivery available to local grocers.

Self Point makes digital commerce software that allows grocery retailers to build their own websites that integrate point of sale, inventory management and order fulfillment. Tortoise makes a teleoperated electric cart built for transporting heavy loads like groceries. With the Tortoise integration, Self Point’s grocery customers can add robots as a delivery option on orders.

You can check out a video of the Tortoise in operation here:

Tortoise Cart TikTok

Tortoise sets itself apart from other players in the last mile robotic delivery space such as Starship, Refraction and Nuro in a couple of ways. First Tortoise is proudly not autonomous. All Tortoise robots are teleoperated remotely by human drivers. By taking this approach, Tortoise believes it can get to market faster by avoiding some of the hesitations some local governments have with the safety self-driving robots on city sidewalks.

Tortoise is also not positioning itself as an on-demand delivery service. Tortoise is not meant to get you groceries in under a half hour. It’s meant to be scheduled ahead of time. Though it does appear that with Self Point, Tortoise robots will be available same day.

The Self Point + Tortoise partnership is certainly coming at the right time. Earlier this year, the pandemic pushed online grocery shopping sales, and by extension grocery delivery, to record-shattering new heights. Though those numbers have come down in recent months, grocery e-commerce is expected to represent 21.5 percent of total grocery by 2025.

As such we’ll see more grocers going online and needing more options for order fulfillment. Walmart has been doing automated grocery deliveries with Nuro in Houston, TX. Refraction has been doing grocery delivery in Ann Arbor, MI, and in Modesto, CA. And Save Mart is using a fleet of 30 Starship robots to make deliveries.

The robotic delivery market is definitely heating up, and it’s not to hard to imagine through deals like the one with Self Point, Tortoise could arrive in a bunch of neighborhoods rather quickly.

Nuro Raises $500M for its Autonomous Delivery Vehicles

Nuro announced today that it has raised a $500 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, with participation from new investors that include Fidelity Management & Research Company, and Baillie Gifford, as well as participation from existing investors SoftBank Vision Fund 1 and Greylock. This brings the total amount raised by Nuro to $1.5 billion.

Nuro makes pod-like, self-driving, low-speed cargo delivery vehicles. Nuro’s R2 vehicle is roughly half the size of a regular car, is autonomous (there is literally no place for a driver to sit) and travels at 25 mph.

But equally as important as its technology is Nuro’s work around getting regulatory approvals for deliveries. Self-driving vehicles are new, and all levels of government are coming to grips with how to regulate the concept to ensure safety on public streets. In February of this year, Nuro got approvals from the federal government to drive on public roads. This was followed up in April when the state of California gave Nuro the green light to run on its public roads.

Nuro has also done a number of tests over the past couple of years, delivering food for Kroger and Walmart as well as Domino’s.

At the end of October, Nuro revealed that it had been running fully autonomous tests, meaning no drivers and no chase cars, successfully over the previous few months in Houston, TX, Phoenix, AZ and Mountain View, CA. You can see a video of the R2 in action here:

Nuro’s technology is certainly coming to market at the right time. The global pandemic has more people staying at home and thereby ordering more restaurant meals and groceries for delivery. Nuro’s vehicle can carry a full load of groceries directly to a customer’s curbside around the clock. The autonomous nature of the Nuro also means that delivery is contactless, an important feature as people look to reduce human-to-human contact in order to stem the transmission of the virus.

Nuro isn’t alone in the autonomous last-mile delivery space. Other players range from the small cooler-sized robots of Starship to the larger three-wheeled REV-1 from Refraction to the cargo vans of Udelv.

In other words, autonomous delivery is coming, and Nuro now has more money to assert its place when it arrives.

Video: Chowbotics’ Sally Makes Salads at Coborn’s Marketplace

As you are well aware, the way we get our food has undergone dramatic changes during this pandemic.

One of the more visible changes we’ve seen is the removal of buffet-style services like salad bars in grocery stores. The thought of trays of lettuce and mushrooms and bacon bits just sitting in the open for lots of people to pick through (and worse) is no longer appetizing, to say the least.

What is slowly starting to replace some of those grocery salad bars is robots. Specifically Chowbotics’ Sally robot. The company recently signed a licensing deal with Saladworks , which will put Sallys in grocery stores. And just last month Chowbotics introduced new features that enabled contactless ordering, as well as a video screen that displays dynamic video advertising, which will make its robot more attractive to potential retailers.

Thanks to a promotional video from Apex Commercial Kitchen posted to Linkedin (see below), we can now take a look at what Chowbotics robots look like in the grocery store. Yes, this video is a little commerical-y and doesn’t provide much detail, but it shows what Sallys look like in the real world, and oh yeah, also is a bit of an announcement that Sallys are being deployed to at least one Coborn’s market.

During different conversations with the company throughout the year, Chowbotics has told us that it has seen increased interest from grocery retailers looking to replace their salad bars. We’re starting to see that interest turn into actual installations. In addition to Sally at the supermarket, Blendid’s smoothie-making robot recently debuted at a Walmart in Fremont, CA.

As retailers (and shoppers) still deal with the ongoing ramifications of the pandemic, we can expect to see more robot deals like Chowbotics and Blendid in the coming months. For more on the automated vending space, check out The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report I did for Spoon Plus earlier this year.

Woowa Delivery Robots to Access Buildings and Ride Elevators Next Year

If you want to know what the future of robot delivery looks like, then take a look at what Woowa Brothers is doing in Korea. The Aju Business Daily has a story up today about how Woowa is creating new partnerships that will allow its robots to pass through a building’s security as well as take an elevator to travel between floors.

In August of this year, Woowa’s “Dilly” robots started making limited food deliveries to a multipurpose housing complex in Gwanggyo, Suwon city. But in this scenario, when it arrives, the robot waits at the entrance of the complex and the resident who placed the order must come down to retrieve their items.

As Aju reports, Woowa has partnered with networking platform developer HDC I-Controls and Hyundai Elevator to make a Dilly’s delivery more direct. With HDC I-Controls, Woowa’s robot will be able to automatically get through a front door’s security system and enter the building. Once inside, the connection with Hyundai Elevator will allow the robot to automatically travel in between floors of a building. This functionality is expected to roll out next year.

While Aju didn’t mention how the robots navigate to a recipient’s front door, that seems doable either though GPS on a user’s phone or QR codes placed on doors.

On it’s face, this is a really cool idea. Not only could robots enter a building and take the elevator on its own, but food orders in the same building could be clustered so robots could make multiple deliveries with one trip.

But the bigger reason we’re highlighting this story is that it’s another example of automated systems starting to daisy chain with one another. We talked about this during our food robotics panel at our Smart Kitchen Summit last month. In that talk, we outlined scenarios where something like a Picnic robot makes a pizza, a Bear Robotics Servi bot brings that pizza out to a delivery bot like Kiwi, which the brings it out directly to a person.

In Woowa’s case, the connections are more software related, but it’s still all about bringing more automation to the meal journey. You could see similar functionality coming to the U.S., especially at college dorms and apartment buildings. This type of automated travel path could also spur more delivery cubbies like Minnow’s for buildings without an elevator. A robot could place the order inside a temperature controlled locker for the person to pick up when they are ready.

The point is that we are just scratching the surface of what robotic meal delivery is capable of. These types of interplay between automated services will only increase making our robot-powered future seem not that far off.

Walmart to Stop Using Bossa Nova’s Shelf-Scanning Robots

After touting their efficiency and effectiveness for years, Walmart has decided to stop using Bossa Nova’a autonomous shelf-scanning robots to monitor inventory, according to a scoop in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Almost exactly three years ago, Walmart announced it was deploying Bossa Nova’s ‘bots to 50 stores. At that time, the company hailed the robots’ efficiency, saying the machines were 50 percent more productive and three times faster than a human at the job of taking inventory. In April of 2019, Walmart announced it was broadening Bossa Nova’s use to 300 locations, and just in January of this year, Walmart bumped the deployment number up to 1,000 stores.

Of course, shortly after that January announcement, the pandemic hit, which precipitated a massive surge in online grocery shopping. And this seems to have had an unintended consequence when it comes to automation, writes the Journal:

Walmart ended the partnership because it found different, sometimes simpler solutions that proved just as useful, said people familiar with the situation. As more shoppers flock to online delivery and pickup because of Covid-19 concerns, Walmart has more workers walking the aisles frequently to collect online orders, gleaning new data on inventory problems, said some of these people. The retailer is pursuing ways to use those workers to monitor product amounts and locations, as well as other automation technology, according to the people familiar with the situation.

Additionally, the Journal reported, Walmart was concerned with how shoppers were reacting to seeing the six-foot tall robots roaming the aisles.

The pitch from Bossa Nova and other players like Simbe Robotics and Badger Technologies is that shelf-scanning robots can provide a more accurate and up-to-date accounting of inventory on store shelves. As the CEO of Simbe Robotics told me in August, better data about what’s in stock can alleviate product outages like those experienced during the panic buying early on in the pandemic.

At the same time Walmart is retreating on shelf-scanning robots, other retailers are increasing their use. Schnuck Markets is expanding the use of Simbe’s Tally robot to 62 locations across the Midwest. And Woodman’s Market in Wisconsin will add Badger Technologies’ shelf scanning robot to all of its 18 stores and Illinois and Wisconsin by the end of this year.

For all their advantages, robots were always kind of a stopgap technology for grocers. Robots still need time to go up and down store aisles, and as noted above, interact with human shoppers. Cameras, sensors and the burgeoning world of cashierless checkout technology can do much the same in real time (or near real time) without intruding on a shoppers’ space.

Walmart debuted its IRL store last year that uses cameras and computer vision to monitor inventory. Trax installs cameras on ceilings and store shelves to do much the same. And lineless checkout companies like Grabango monitor what people are taking from store shelves and charging them automatically as they leave the store.

The Journal reports that Bossa Nova, which has raised more than $100 million in funding, laid off 50 percent of its staff after the Walmart contract was terminated.

We have reached out to both Walmart and Bossa Nova and will update as we hear back.

UPDATE: A Walmart rep sent us the following statement via email:

We’ve worked with Bossa Nova for five years and together we learned a lot about how technology can assist associates, make jobs easier and provide a better customer experience. This was one idea we tried in roughly 500 stores just as we are trying other ideas in additional stores. We will continue testing new technologies and investing in our own processes and apps to best understand and track our inventory and help move products to our shelves as quickly as we can.

SECOND UPDATE: We received the following statement from Bossa Nova CEO Sarjoun Skaff via email:

“I cannot comment on Walmart, however the pandemic has forced us to streamline our operations and focus on our core technologies. We have made stunning advances in AI and robotics. Our retail AI is the industry’s best and works as well on robots as with fixed cameras, and our hardware, autonomy and operations excelled in more than 500 of the world’s most challenging stores. With the board’s full support, we continue deploying this technology with our partners in retail and in other fields.”

A Roundup of Pizza Robots

To borrow from The White Stripes, “I’ve said it once before but it bears repeating now.” If you want to know the future of food tech, look at what’s happening in pizza.

Because of its ubiquity, relative ease to make, and transportability (i.e. great for delivery!), pizza is a perfect food when it comes to testing out new technologies across the meal journey.

One technology in particular being applied to pizza making is robotics. Automated pizza making appears to be all the rage nowadays with a number of players heating up the space. Here’s a quick rundown of the key companies bringing robotics to the world of pizza:

PICNIC
Funding: $20.7 million
Solution: Picnic makes a modular system of robots that precisely apply toppings like cheese, pepperoni and more to pre-formed dough. Picnic’s robot can assemble 300 pies in an hour that are cooked separately, and just last week the company debuted its second-gen robot, which provides greater visibility into the machine. Picnic’s solution isn’t just for pizza, however, it can also be used to assemble foods like burritos and Subway-style sandwiches.

MIDDLEBY/Lab 2 Fab
Funding: Publicly traded
Solution: Middleby’s Lab 2 Fab publicly debuted its new PizzaBot 5000 at our Smart Kitchen Summit last month. The enclosed cabinet robot applies three base ingredients (e.g. sauce, cheese, pepperoni), and can assemble a pizza in under a minute, where it can be moved by a human or a robot into an oven. The PizzaBot 5000 will go into beta in early 2021.

PIESTRO
Funding: completed $1 million in equity crowdfunding, seeking another $5 million
Solution: Piestro is a new startup looking to build a robotic pizza vending machine. The planned machine can accept orders through a mobile app and deliver a hot pizza in under three minutes. The company also recently announced a partnership with Kiwibot that allows that company’s eponymous delivery robot to retrieve pizzas from Piestro and deliver them to customers.

PAZZI
Funding: €12.2 million (~$14.9M USD)
Solution: Of all the companies listed here, PAZZI’s (formerly EKIM) pizza maker is the more “robotic,” with multiple articulating arms that top the pizza, put it in the oven, remove a slice it. PAZZIs are roughly 45 sq. meters and meant to be automated standalone kiosks. The first PAZZI went live in France last year.

This list doesn’t even include the pizza vending machines that are popping up from API Tech, Basil St. and Bake Xpress. We didn’t formally include those in this roundup because they are just re-heating frozen pizzas, not performing a series of different tasks to create a pizza on the spot.

With its universal appeal (who doesn’t like pizza?), pizza will remain a medium that pushes food technology forward that other types of cuisine will benefit from.

White Castle Expanding Use of Flippy the Robot to 10 More Locations

White Castle is adding 10 more Flippy Roars to its roster, Miso Robotics announced today. The expanded order for more Flippy robots comes after a successful pilot at one White Castle location that was announced this past July.

Through a combination of robotics, computer vision and AI, Miso’s Flippy ROAR can operate both grills to cook hamburgers as well as fry stations. The entire system is suspended on rails from above, and White Castle had been using Flippy as a fry cook. According to today’s press announcement, Flippy made an average of 360 baskets of fried food per day during its pilot with White Castle, with a total of roughly 14,580 lbs. of food and more than 9,720 baskets made.

In addition to Flippy making food in a more contactless fashion, something consumers are more aware of than ever during this pandemic, Flippy also creates more social distance among employees in the kitchen, and frees workers up to pay more attention to order fulfillment and delivery. Today’s press release noted that White Castle is open 24 hours a day, which creates its own set of staffing challenges, with late night shifts harder to fill. Because it’s a robot, Flippy can work around the clock without needing a break (or calling in sick).

White Castle’s Flippy expansion comes less than a month after Miso announced the general commercial availability of its robot. In addition to wider availability, Miso is hoping to attract new customers beyond large QSRs with its new financing option, which eliminated the $30,000 up front cost and replaced it with a $2,000 a month subscription.

The pandemic has helped accelerate interest in food robotics, and we’ve seen a flurry of activity even just this month. KFC Korea partnered with Hyundai to develop fried chicken making robots. Walmart added a Blendid smoothie making robot to one of its stores. And Costa Coffee officially took over Briggo and its automated coffee kiosks.

White Castle did not disclose where its new Flippy robots will be located, only saying they will be delpoyed in 2021. For Miso, this new contract — and, by extension, this vote of confidence in its technology — could also help boost the company’s equity crowdfunding efforts. The company is looking to raise a $30 million Series through SeedInvest, and to date has only raised a little more than $9 million.