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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

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

Spyce Closes Location of First Robot Restaurant as It Turns Focus To Sweetgreen

When Sweetgreen acquired robot restaurant startup Spyce in August, one of the outstanding questions was whether the new owners would continue to operate the standalone Spyce restaurants. Finally, it looks like we now have an answer.

According to a post today by Spyce on their Facebook page, the company’s original location at Downtown Crossing in Boston will close at the end of this week.

From the post:

To our DTX Family:

Since our recent Sweetgreen acquisition, we’ve been working hard each day on our mission to scale healthy food and bring the magic of Spyce to more communities. In the next chapter of this long journey, we’ll be closing our DTX location after evening services on 10/22 to focus on developing technology for sweetgreen restaurants.

Downtown Crossing will always be a special place to us! We opened our door back in 2018 as a few fresh-faced college grads with an out-there dream to make healthy food more accessible through automation. We were different! But you gave us a shot and for that, we owe you so much.

With the closure of the downtown Boston restaurant, it’s worth speculating how much time remains for the remaining Spyce location. While I wouldn’t be surprised if Sweetgreen closed it as well, I can also see the company continuing to operate the Harvard located restaurant as a test-lab for potential new technology.

In the announcement about the acquisition, Sweetgreen said it was evaluating where and how it would integrate Spyce’s technology into its restaurants. It looks like that process is starting. The company indicates in the post that the existing team will be offered positions at the Harvard Square location or in a Sweetgreen location.

As for myself, I’m a bit bummed that we’ll be saying goodbye to this standalone Spyce location. I visited there with my son in 2018, and it was one of the highlights of our trip.

Basil Street’s Pizza Robot Takes Flight With New Airport Rollout Deal

Basil Street, a maker of automated pizza vending machines, announced this week it has struck a deal with Prepango, a company that specializes in automated retail of food and beverage products in airports, to bring its pizza robot to airports across the US.

Launched this year, the Basil Street pizza smart vending machine – called Automated Pizza Kitchens (APK) – is roughly 20 square feet in size and holds up to 150 10-inch, thin-crust pizzas. When a customer places an order via the touchscreen or mobile app, the APK heats the flash-frozen pizza up using a non-microwave oven that cooks the pies in about three minutes.

Up until this point, the APK has been serving up pizzas in universities, business parks and corporate headquarters. That all changes in a couple weeks when the two companies bring the pizza bot to the San Antonio International Airport. From there, Basil Street and Prepango are eyeing launches of the APK in Chicago O’Hare International Airport, Cincinnati/North Kentucky International Airport, Indianapolis International Airport among others.

For its part, Prepango is no stranger to bringing new food concepts via vending machines to airports. In Las Vegas’ McCarran Airport, the company launched vending machines for Sprinkles cupcakes and Doughp cookie dough (the latter machine is called – not kidding – a ‘Doughp Dealer’). It also launched one of the first automated grind and brew espresso vending machines with Illy Caffè North America earlier this year.

The arrival of Basil Street’s pizza robot is no surprise as travelers return to airports nearly two years after the start of the pandemic. With consumers now accustomed to contactless solutions, the pace of new arrivals for airport smart vending solutions can be expected to accelerate in the next few years.

According to the release, the two companies plan to expand to up to 200 APKs in airports over the next 12-18 months.

You can see the APK in action in the video below:

Watch The Jamba Smoothie Robot In Action In The Middle of Stonewood Center Mall

Sometimes it’s hard to visualize something in action until, well, you see it in action.

That’s why I thought this fast-motion video clip from Blendid of their new Jamba branded smoothie robot is so interesting.

In the clip, you can see the robot sitting in the middle of the mall and shoppers convening around it as it makes smoothies. The placement of the robot in the middle of the mall walkway where you typically find iPhone case and t-shirt booths illustrates why Jamba is interested in trying this new format out. The ability to drop a smoothie bot into a mall without the traditional store opens up the option of a faster-deployed, lower cost, and less permanent build-out.

Jamba and Blendid have hinted additional locations are to come. I expect if this location goes well, we’ll see more malls added to the rollout plans for the Jambabot.

You can see how the robot makes a smoothie in the video below.

The Spoon & CES Bring Food Tech To The World’s Biggest Tech Show For First Time Ever

Each January for the past couple of decades, I’ve packed up my suitcase and headed to the Nevada desert to take part in the world’s biggest tech show, CES.

I’m not alone. CES is the singular tech show that pretty much every major industry attends along with those who watch and follow those industries.

This includes the food world. Many remember the debut of the Impossible 2.0 burger in 2019, a watershed moment for both the company and the plant-based meat industry. There’s also been food robots, ice cream makers and much more that have made a big splash at the big show.

However, up until this year, any food professionals coming to CES were attending despite the lack of a dedicated food technology and innovation area in the exhibition space or in the conference tracks. Because CES is *the* great convener in the tech world, we felt food tech needed representation. This led The Spoon to rent out the ballroom of Treasure Island for a couple of years running to produce Food Tech Live. We wanted to give the food industry a central place to connect and check out the latest and greatest in food innovation.

But now that’s all about to change as food tech hits the big time this coming January. CES announced in June that food tech is going to be a featured theme for the first time ever at the big show. We couldn’t be more excited, in part because we will get to see even more cool food tech innovation, but also because CES has chosen The Spoon as the dedicated CES partner for the food tech exhibition and conference portions of the show!

We’re busy helping to develop a half-day conference and talking to lots of companies about coming to show their products at the four day CES food tech exhibition and we can’t wait to show what we’ve helped CES build.

But we need your input too! If you are interested in showing off your latest and great food and kitchen-related product or solutions, make sure to let us know. Just head over to this form on the SKS website and drop us a line. We’ll get right back to you and let you know how you can be a part of food tech at CES.

You can read more about the program below with our official announcement, or just drop us a line to see how to get involved.

We’ll see you in Vegas!

Food tech has arrived at CES®. Leaders in kitchen, food and cooking are coming together in Las Vegas from January 5th to January 8th at CES  2022 to examine how technology is changing the global food chain. CES has teamed up with The Spoon, the leading food tech media and events partner to showcase, demo and discuss the way technology has transformed the world of food. 

While we’re sure the excitement and buzz around food tech will be everywhere, we are working with CES on two key initiatives at the show, including: 

  • The Food Tech Exhibit, an exhibit space showcasing the latest innovations and demonstrating new products from across the kitchen and food tech spectrum. This will be live on the CES show floor in the Venetian Expo. 
  • The CES Food Tech Conference, presented by The Spoon, will bring together visionary thinkers, chef entrepreneurs, appliance vendors, delivery and food retail disruptors at CES 2022. Each session will highlight the innovation and disruption happening across the food industry as a result of tech advancements like artificial intelligence, machine learning, automation, mobile accessibility and more. 

CES is fast approaching — and there are many ways to get involved before, during and after the show. The CES Food Tech presented by The Spoon area will focus solely on companies building the future of food and cooking. Booth spaces are diverse in terms of size and ability to customize – get in touch and we’ll work with the CES exhibitor team and our team to ensure you put together a space that serves you. 

If you aren’t able to secure a demo or company/showcase spot but still want your brand to be part of the inaugural year of food tech at CES, you can sponsor the CES Food Tech Conference on Day 2 of CES in the Venetian. Conference tickets for CES programming will be on sale soon. 

Here Are All The Food Tech Innovators We’ve Spotted in David Chang’s New Hulu Show

There may be no one with more culinary street cred in America today than David Chang. Not only has the New York-based chef won multiple James Beard awards and seen his restaurant Momofuku called the country’s most important restaurant, but Chang himself is widely recognized as an astute observer of the food world who always has his finger on the pulse of the country’s culinary zeitgeist.

And what’s on Chang’s mind these days is a whole lot of food tech, at least if his new series on Hulu, The Next Thing You Eat, is any indication. While the six-episode series isn’t available until October 21st, we do have the video preview, which features shots of everything from food delivery bots to lab-grown meat to indoor robotic farms, so we thought it would be fun to play a game of ‘guess who’ and see how many people and companies we can recognize from the food tech revolution. Below is a list those we spotted in the video. Watch it yourself and see if you can identify the ones we could identify and help us ID those we couldn’t.

Wild Type and its cell-based salmon: Chang talks about how climate issues will impact our food and we soon see Wild Type’s Justin Kolbeck saying, “we’ve come up with salmon without using animals” as Chang and others taste the company’s lab-grown fish.

Upside Foods: As we watch a meatball simmer in a pan, Chang states “we’re going to be eating lab-grown meat.” We then cut to a scene in which he turns to Upside Foods’ VP of product and regulation Eric Schulze and asks, “you could just recreate a geoduck?”. Schulze calmly responds, “you could go even further back and do its ancestor, the dinosaur.”

Serve, the delivery robot: While Chang doesn’t say anything specifically about robotics in the two minute video preview, we do get to see him jump in surprise as Serve Robotics sidewalk delivery bot, rolls up behind him.

Miso Robotics: We see Flippy the robot doing its thing, and then we see Miso’s Buck Jordan saying to Chang, “it can look at a piece of meat, it can know how hot that portion of the grill is. Perfect grilling, every time.” Chang responds that this technology is at least 5-7 years out, to which Jordan replies, “Oh no. We are installing into steakhouses this year.”

Jordan is probably referring to the machine vision technology that pairs with and helps direct Flippy’s robotic arm. While we’re not aware of Flippy currently being used in a steakhouse, it’s not a stretch for a robot that got its start flipping beef patties at Caliburger to move a higher grade of beef.

Impossible Burger: During the course of the video, we see a few shots of juicy alt-meat products, including an Impossible Burger. How do we know it’s an Impossible Burger? Because immediately afterward we have a shot of Danny Preston, owner of Malibu’s Burgers (which serves Impossible products), says, “it’s designed to make the meat eater say…” as Chang bites into a burger and exclaims “Oh God.”

There are a few mysteries in the video such as the children’s cereal as well as a robotic vertical farm, but there’s not enough visual info (for me at least) to confirm the companies behind them. If you can help us identify these or any other food tech innovators we missed, please let us know in the comments.

Either way, the mystery will soon be solved as Chang’s series drops on Hulu on October 21st.

Flippy The Fast Food Robot Has Its Own National TV Commercial

Flippy’s about to hit the big time.

That’s because the fast food robot from Miso that’s in service in places like White Castle is going to be the focus of a new nationally televised commercial.

The commercial, which can be seen below, is a 30 second ad that introduces Flippy to a TV audience.

Introducing Flippy | National Television Commercial from Miso Robotics on Vimeo.

The ad opens with Flippy making fries in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant while a voiceover actor proclaims “Nothing hits the spot quite like good food, made fast.”

From there the 30 second spot toggles back and forth between a mother and daughter happily eating food and Flippy making fries back in the kitchen.

The voiceover continues: “The taste you grew up on, now made more consistent, more efficient, and dare we say, more delicous. Introducing Flippy, the world’s first AI kitchen assistant.”

The narrator brings the pitch home with the tag line, “Let the robots do the robotic work, so people can do the people work.”

I’m not sure where the ad will play and what the audience will be – I reached out to the folks at Miso and haven’t heard back – but it’s interesting to me that they have decided to pay for a national TV spot introducing a food service robot to a general audience. It’s certainly a new direction for a company that has largely stuck to programmatic social media ads for their crowdfunding campaigns.

Here are a few thoughts as to why the company went in this direction.

The company wants to reach a new audience outside of it traditional marketing campaigns. Miso traditionally uses programmatic cookie-driven web advertising on social media and websites to appeal to potential investors. The TV spot ends with a call to action to visit Meetflippy.com, where visitors get a general overview of the robot, can get on a mailing list, and can hit a “Become a Customer” button for more info. My guess is the company believes they will reach a new audience that is less tech-savvy, but could be potential customers or even potential new investors.

Miso is beginning the “robots are our friends” messaging. There’s no doubt that as robotics become more mainstream in food service and other jobs, there will be some pushback from those that see them as job-stealers. The tagline, “Let the robots do the robotic work, so people can do the people work” seems intended to possibly get in front of the anti-robot trend.

The company is looking to time ad to coincide with its Hulu spotlight. If you watch the hero reel preview of the upcoming David Chang Hulu food show that is heavily focused on food tech, Wavemaker – the robot-focused investment vehicle closely affiliated with Miso – gets a star turn on the show. The preview features Miso Robotics Chairman Buck Jordan talking to Chang while it shows the Flippy in action. This ad spot might even be intended to play during Chang’s Hulu show.

Whatever the reason, you got to give Miso credit. The launch of a national TV commercial to push a fry-making robot is definitely a first.

Editor Update: Miso Robotics CFO Kevin Morris responded to my inquiry the following comment: “We want to make Flippy as well known to the masses as possible and doing a commercial increases its national exposure exponentially. The more eyeballs that see the commercial, the greater likelihood we can attract additional innovation partners.”

Cala Raises €5.5M Seed Round To Fund Autonomous Pasta-Robot Restaurant

Cala, a maker of autonomous pasta-robot restaurants, announced it has raised a €5.5M Seed funding round led by BACKED VC, according to a release sent to The Spoon. The new funding follows a €1M angel round raised in 2019 by the Paris-based startup.

Cala’s robot is essentially a fully operational restaurant in a box. It preps and cooks pasta, plates it, and cleans up afterward using a cartesian coordinate system robot. While the company is on its gen-2 robot, you can get an idea of how the Cala bot works by watching the video of the gen one below. The current generation machine can prepare up to 400 pasta dishes in one hour.

cala - the future of restaurants

The company opened its first robot restaurant in Paris’ fifth arrondissement district in 2020 and, according to Cala, they’ve dished up 25 thousand servings of pasta so far. Customers can order their pasta at the kiosk using the touchscreen or through meal delivery apps like UberEats or Deliveroo. Interestingly, the company says about 95 percent of the meals made so far have gone to customers who ordered through delivery.

Cofounder and CEO Ylan Richard, who dropped out of college in 2017 at age nineteen to start the company with cofounders Julien Drago and Nicolas Barboni, said he was motivated to build his pasta robot restaurant because he was frustrated by the lack of affordable and healthy meals available to him as a student.

“Through our research, and driven by our own stomachs, we could see that the foodservice industry is broken,” said Richard in the announcement. “In fast food, the low-profit margin means that it’s impossible to use higher quality ingredients. We realized that if you could automate the meal preparation, you could rapidly increase the number of meals being produced and improve the economics.”

In some ways, Richard’s motivation echoes that of Now Cuisine’s Adam Lloyd Cohen, who started thinking about using automation as a way to democratize good food while also studying in Paris (what’s with France and food robots?).

The company plans to use the new funding to expand to new locations in France and around Europe. The company is also looking to add more employees across its engineering, product and operations teams.

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.

Video: A Look at The RoboEatz Robotic Kitchen

In the world of food robots, there’s a trend towards building what are, in essence, stand-alone restaurants in a box.

These independent robotic kiosks enable operators to offer food and generate revenue from pretty much anywhere: airports, universities, condos. For the consumer, they’re great because it allows you to buy a warm meal without having to sit down at a restaurant.

Many of these self-contained food-making robots specialize in a type of food or are limited in what exactly they can do. The RoboEatz Ark 03, however, stands out because it can do almost everything: food prep, make hot or cold meals, plating the meal, cook four meals simultaneously. It even cleans up when it’s done.

“It’s almost like a dark kitchen,” Alex Barseghian, CEO of RobEatz, tells the Spoon. “You can cook bowls, salads, pasta all in one shot.”

Recently, The Spoon’s Carlos Rodela caught up with Barseghian to check in on the company’s progress and see the Ark 03 in action. During the interview, Barseghian tells Carlos all the details about the robot kitcen, including how many meals it can make, how many ingredients it holds, and when it expects to deploy the Ark 03 to a second location.

You can hear all of that and more by watching the full interview below:

A Look at The RoboEatz Food Robot With The Spoon

Piestro Raises Nearly $5M in Equity Crowfunding to Fund Pizza Robot Development

On Thursday, Piestro, a maker of automated pizza-making vending machines, wrapped up a nearly $5M ($4,667,468 to be exact) equity crowdfunding campaign.

According to the funding prospectus for the just-completed campaign, the company plans to use the funds to develop its second-generation pizza robot. The second-generation Piestro, which will be the first pizza robot from the company to be deployed in consumer-facing locations and take payments, will use what the company describes as ‘cold-to-cook’ technology. The company hopes to have its new prototype deployed by December of this year.

While Piestro’s first-generation prototype has largely been completed, the company is iterating on the software and is working to add a conveyor belt system into the product which will enable it to cook a pizza in 3 minutes or less.

Piestro’s use of crowdfunding isn’t surprising given it’s a Wavemaker Labs portfolio company. Wavemaker Labs, which describes itself as a “robotics and automation corporate innovation studio”, has shown a preference for using platforms such as StartEngine and SeedInvest to raise funds with its portfolio companies like Piestro, Miso Robotics, Future Acres and Bobacino.

Piestro’s success with its crowdfunding campaign comes on the heels of the news about locking up a partner in 800 Degrees, a pizza chain that has plans to roll out 3,600 Piestro pizza vending machines over the next five years.

According to Piestro CEO Massimo Noja De Marco, the company has preorders for over 5 thousand Piestro machines. That disclosure came in an interview with Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr Wonderful), the Shark Tank investor who is a spokesperson for StartEngine.

During the same interview, O’Leary asked what it costs to make a Piestro. “Ultimately it’s probably gonna cost around $45 thousand and we’ll be selling at around $75 thousand, but we want to be able to use two different models,” said De Marco.

Piestro’s CEO explained the company will use both a robot-as-a-service and a direct purchase model. With the robots-as-a-service model, the customer pays a fee that includes the monthly lease, maintenance and support feeds, and a royalty for each pizza sold.

“It can be anywhere between $2,900 to $3,000 a month, but they have a machine that they can take to market without putting a lot of money down,” said De Marco.

For direct purchase models, which DeMarco said some large foodservice companies are interested in, Piestro will charge between $799 to $899 a month, which includes ongoing support and maintenance and a per-pizza royalty fee.

You can read more about the funding campaign in the prospectus and watch the interview with Mr. Wonderful below.

Meet the Innovators: Piestro