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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

Beer Made With a Beer Brewing Robot Wins Gold Medal

In July, a homebrewer using a BEERMKR home beer brewing appliance won gold at the National HomeBrew Competition.

According to a release from BEERMKR, a beer brewed by Christian Chandler of Phoenix, AZ, won the gold medal in the Porters & Stouts category, beating out 164 entries in the contest put on by the American HomeBrewers Association.

The win was an important milestone in that it’s the first time that a homebrewer used an automated beer brewing countertop appliance to help develop an award-winning recipe at the HomeBrew Competition.

So how did Chandler use the BEERMKR to develop his beer? From the release:

Chandler says that BEERMKR’s small batches and ease of use let him make multiple iterations of a recipe and “really tweak things on the fly.” Chandler was able to fine-tune his recipe into a national gold medal winner.  The repeatability of BEERMKRs process also helped him make consistently good beer as he advanced from the first to second rounds of the competition.

Chandler used the BEERMKR to do quick batches, which he later scaled up using a higher capacity brewing system called the Grainfather to increase batch size. While The Grainfather automates some parts of the brewing process, it still requires the user to monitor readings manually and transfer the wort to a separate container for fermentation after the brew. The BEERMKR, on the other hand, automates much more of the process of beer brewing. The brewer chooses the ingredients and builds a recipe, but from there the sensors and software of the BEERMKR monitor much of the process, from brewing through fermentation to carbonation.

In short, Chandler, an experienced brewer, integrated the BEERMKR as part of his recipe development process. He iterated recipes and brewed quick small batches with smaller portions of ingredients on the BEERMKR, and used his bigger machine to brew larger quantities once the recipe was dialed in.

So will it soon become commonplace for homebrewers to use brewbots like the BEERMKR to develop recipes for brewing competitions? I imagine so, in part because the machines essentially act as a tool for serious homebrewers to develop recipes faster. While purists might resent any use of technology when it comes to brewing up a batch, technology like the BEERMKR helps them get better at their craft by automating the boring parts like temperature control and leaving the creative parts up to them.

You can watch a video of Chandler below talking about developing his award winning recipe with the BEERMKR.

BEERMKR beer wins gold at National Homebrew Competition

Soft Robotics Wants To Give Your Food Robot Good Eye-Hand Coordination

Football wide receivers that can catch the ball well are said to have soft hands. Food robots who use too much force grabbing delicate produce are, well, just being robots.

But now, robot system designers can turn their food robot into a veggie-shuffling Jerry Rice with the new mGrip “hand” from Soft Robotics.

The mGrip is part of a new SoftAI product suite from Soft Robotics that robot designers can add to existing systems to optimize them for handling food like meat and produce in high-volume environments. In addition to a food-grabbing hand, the SoftAI suite includes a “perception module” that pairs cameras with machine vision software that the company says will add “eye-hand coordination” to industrial robots. The on-board processing of the perception module uses machine learning to understand how to categorize and segment different types of food.

Robotics has long been used for tasks like packing food, but only in highly structured environments. Often, this meant using humans as part of the process to do things like sorting. However, advances in machine vision over the past couple of years have meant machines can essentially replace the need for humans to do some of the tasks they’ve been needed for in the past. With an off-the-shelf product like SoftAI, what companies like Amazon have probably spent millions to build now becomes more turnkey.

Beyond high-volume warehousing applications, I can also see how a platform like SoftAI could be used in more consumer-facing food robotic systems. For example, first-generation robotic food kiosks often used off-the-shelf robotic arms that required lots of customization to make them work. With new food-optimized plug-in hardware like SoftAI, small teams could accelerate their time to market and dedicate their time to other engineering problems.

You can see the mGrip and the SoftAI perception module in the video below.

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.

Soon You Will Be Able to Buy Bubble Tea From a Robot and Pay With Your Face

If having a boba drink made by a robot wasn’t futuristic enough for you, soon you will be able to pay for that bubble tea with your face.

That’s because Bobacino, the maker of eponymous boba-making robots, announced today it has partnered up with PopID to let boba lovers pay for their drinks using facial recognition technology.

The way it works is customers can choose to opt-in and register using the PopID app. The app will scan the user’s face during registration, and from there, they can preorder and pay for the boba tea on the app. The customer can also choose to verify their ID once at the Bobacino kiosk to retrieve the drink. Once scanned, the drink is dispensed.

The PopID app integrated with Bobacino

If this all sounds like technology piled on technology, it is. That said, there’s no doubt biometrics as a form of payment has its advantages. Face-pay and other biometrics do add additional security beyond that of the traditional debit card PIN or even NFC-powered mobile payment, since, after all, it’s tough to fake someone’s face (or retina).

The big challenge for face-pay systems will be convincing some customers to use them. The rollout of face-pay in China raised privacy concerns and left some customers confused by the onboarding process. Because PopID’s system is opt-in, it may sidestep privacy concerns, but the two companies will still have work to do educating customers on the benefits of face-pay.

PopID’s move into automated beverage kiosks is a logical evolution given the company’s early traction integrating with payment kiosks as restaurants looked for ways to mitigate consumer fear about COVID. Last year, the company established its pay-by-face network in Southern California and had since taken it nationwide, riding the wave of interest over in contactless payment.

For Bobacino, partnering with PopID adds one more interesting tool in the toolbox for its operator partners when the company rolls out the machines. Last year, the company said it planned to roll out its machines in the second half of 2021, and they are currently raising funds on StartEngine to help fund the rollout. Bobacino is backed by Wavemaker Ventures, the same fund backing Miso, Piestro (who also partnered with PopID), and other food robotics startups.

You can see what the Bobacino looks like in action (face-pay not included) on the video below:

Bobacino Brand FINAL3

Bartesian Brings Its Cocktail Robot to Williams-Sonoma & Macy’s

Home robot bartender Bartesian has made the (retail) big time.

According to a release sent to The Spoon, the long-time maker of countertop cocktail makers has announced that its machines are now available at Williams-Sonoma and Macy’s.

Bartesian, which shipped its first machine in 2019 after years of development, has seen a 300% increase in revenue in 2021, which follows a nearly 10x increase in sales in 2020 over the previous year. While the company saw its growth accelerate in 2020 with bars closed due to COVID, its fast growth predated the pandemic, according to company CEO Ryan Close.

From our post in April about Bartesian’s $21 million funding round:

Close said that while his company did get a COVID bump, it was already experiencing triple growth rates prior to the pandemic (they got off to a nice start by being an Oprah pick in the winter of 2019). Close said that the company has generated more sales in the first quarter of 2021 than during the first half of 2020.

Bartesian’s growth stands in contrast to the rough-sailing experienced by others in the home booze appliance business. Somabar, which saw early adulation at CES for its home cocktail bot, has struggled to fulfill its Kickstarter commitments. Barsys suffered early negative reviews for its cocktail robot and has recently emphasized its smart coaster.

Bartesian’s success is perhaps a validation of the company’s early strategy of partnering with larger companies such as Hamilton Beach (for manufacturing) and Beam to gain access to channels and resources in a business. It also was the first home booze-bot maker to build a business around a consumables with its pods, ensuring recurring revenue beyond the initial hardware sale.

Since its launch, Bartesian has witnessed other pod-based drink systems come to market. Drinkworks, the joint venture between Dr. Pepper/Keurig and AB InBev, continues to roll out new cocktail-related partnerships and products as it expands into new states. European startup Smart Spirits is trying to convince folks to use pods to create base-liquor drinks like gin or whiskey.

But now, with its entrance into Williams-Sonoma and Macy’s, Bartesian hopes to gain a leg up on the competition. By securing prime brick & mortar real retail real estate to sell to customers who still buy things brick & mortar retail, the company looks like it may be positioning itself as the market leader in the still-nascent but fast-growing home cocktail-making appliance business.

Smoothie Robot Blendid Joins The Equity Crowdfunding Crowd With $2 Million Raise

Blendid, the maker of smoothie-making robots, announced today it had raised $2 million via crowdfunding platform StartEngine. According to the announcement sent to The Spoon, the raise brings the company’s total funding to $20 million raised through venture capital, strategic funding, and crowdfunding. The company raised funds over a four month period from over 1475 individual investors.

From the release:

Blendid is currently focused on growing its location footprint to increase its reach across the United States and perfect its food automation platform. Recently announcing its expansion plans to two new geographic areas, Blendid will use the additional funds to accelerate its expansion into the Southern California and Georgia markets with openings in a variety of venues such as malls, airports, hospitals, universities and retail stores.

The company counts Walmart and Jamba as its customers and, according to company sources, has served over 50 thousand customer orders.

Blendid isn’t the only robotics company to use crowdfunding in recent years. In fact, it seems like food robotics equity crowdfunding space has become downright crowded .

So why the interest in equity crowdfunding? There are a few reasons:

The first reason is the shine of traditional rewards-based crowdfunding has dimmed in recent years after several high-profile failures like the Coolest Cooler. By offering equity in the company, smaller investors feel they have a stake in the company and may be more forgiving than those who came to see rewards-based crowdfunding platforms as merchandise marketplaces.

Second, equity crowdfunding also gives small companies a way to sidestep traditional venture and strategic investors who a) might have higher oversight requirements or b) ask for too much of a stake than a founder(s) is willing to give up. It also opens up an entirely new pool of funding from small investors who have been shut out of the more traditional venture funding ecosystem.

Finally, robotics is a category that resonates with smaller investors. It’s an easy-to-understand space, and the investment thesis undergirding many of the proposals is largely correct: the food space is ripe for more automation and robotics, so why shouldn’t I put some skin in the game.

Long term, I expect the food robotics equity crowdfunding momentum to continue as smaller investors look for places to put their money outside of traditional investment vehicles. How these investments pay off for these investors is another story worth watching.

Will Zero-Emission Zones Drive Robotic Delivery Adoption? Looks Like It.

Last February, Santa Monica passed a rule that said all deliveries within it need to have zero emissions. Basically, this means that food needs to be delivered by someone on a bike, in an electric vehicle or…a robot.

It looks like the robots may be winning.

According to this dot.LA piece, delivery bots from a few different companies are now buzzing around the sidewalks, one of them being the Santa Monica-based Coco.

Launched in 2020 amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the company has expanded operations from one Santa Monica neighborhood to six other neighborhoods in little over a year. In February, the company rolled out their robots in San Pedro, working with Councilman and mayoral hopeful Joe Busciano and the Chamber of Commerce. Several local restaurants including San Pedro Brewing Co. and Whale & Ale signed on.

California often leads when it comes to regulations, and Santa Monica’s new zero-emission zone is the country’s first. I suspect that we’ll probably see other California cities follow suit and, if they do, I expect we’ll see more sidewalk robots shuttling meals to customers soon after.

Could other cities outside of California follow suit? I think they will, especially as cities become increasingly crowded with traffic from customers ordering food.

For now, though, we’ll keep an eye on how many more robots pop on the sunny sidewalks of Santa Monica.

Gatik Raises $85M Series B, Brings Automated Middle Mile Delivery to Texas

Autonomous middle mile delivery company, Gatik, announced today that it has raised an $85 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Koch Disruptive Technologies, with participation from existing investors Innovation Endeavors, Wittington Ventures, FM Capital, Dynamo Ventures, Trucks VC among others. This brings the total amount raised by Gatik to $114.5 million

Despite its hum-drum name, the middle mile is far from middle of the road. In fact, the middle mile is perhaps one of the more exciting areas in autonomous vehicles right now. For those unfamiliar, the middle mile is the route between two business-to-business locations. Think: a retailers distribution warehouse to one of its store locations. Because the route is fixed, there are fewer variables a self-driving vehicle would encounter (same road, typically the same traffic conditions, etc.).

Because of these route limitations, it can be faster for a autonomous middle mile delivery company like Gatik to get to market. Local regulators don’t have to worry about self-driving cars learning and navigating complex situations and added safety concerns that come with delivering to a neighborhood house. Gatik now operates delivery routes in Toronto, Canada for Loblaws and for Walmart in Louisiana and Arkansas, where its middle mile route is fully driverless.

Along with today’s funding announcement, Gatik also said that it is expanding its operations into Dallas, Texas. Gautam Narang, Co-Founder and CEO of Gatik told me via video chat last week that as part of its move into Dallas, Gatik has signed undisclosed customers, which Gatik will be serving simultaneously, operating its trucks almost around the clock. “[We’ll be] moving goods for customer A during the day and customer B during the night,” Narang said.

The big funding and big move into Texas is the continuation of a big year for Gatik. So far this year the company has introduced an all-electric box truck, received $9 million (CAD) from the Canadian government to help winterize its technology, and partnered with Isuzu to develop autonomous medium-sized delivery trucks.

There isn’t a ton of competition right now in the autonomous middle mile space. Udelv unveiled its Transporter platform in April of this year. Unlike Gatik’s vehicles, which look like regular delivery trucks, Udelv’s Transporters are essentially giant pods, that don’t even have a place for a driver.

Between the investment and customers that Gatik is attracting, and the expanding willingness of local regulators to allow autonomous middle mile delivery, I suspect we’ll be seeing more players enter the space this year.

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.

Small Robot Company Crowdfunds £4M for its Ag Robots

British agriculture robot company, Small Robot Company, announced today that it has raised £4 million (~$5.5M USD) through its equity crowdfunding campaign on Crowdcube. This brings the total amount for funding raised by Small Robot to £11 million (~$15.12M USD).

Small Robot Company uses a combination of robotics and artificial intelligence to help farmers manage their fields. Small Robot makes a trio of robots dubbed, Tom, Dick and Harry that map fields, zap weeds, and do no-till drilling, respectively. The whole system is tied together with the Wima AI that uses computer vision to identify weeds and gather per-plant intelligence.

This is Small Robot’s fourth trip to the crowdfunding well, and this particular campaign got off to strong start in July when the company raised £2M (~$2.75M USD) on its first day. Small Robot isn’t the only ag robotics company going the equity crowdfunding route. Future Acres, which makes an autonomous driving platform for a number of farm is crowdfunding as well.

Agriculture is an area that is ripe for automation as the industry faces ongoing labor shortages and extremely harsh working conditions. Robots can work in the fields in extreme heat all day without injury or sickness, and can bring precision to tasks such as weeding to reduce the need for harsh herb and pesticides.

One indicator of the opportunity in agriculture automation is the fact that Bear Flag Robotics, which makes autonomous driving technology for tractors, was acquired by John Deere earlier this month for $250 million.

If you’d like to learn more about the state or agriculture and robotics, watch the video from the “Crops and Robots: How Automation is Changing Agriculture” panel we held at our ArticulATE food robotics conference in May that featured Aubrey Donnellan, Founder and COO of Bear Flag Robotics (Spoon Plus subscription required).

Coco Raises $36M Series A for Teleoperated Robot Delivery

Coco, a teleoperated robot delivery service, announced today that it has raised a Series A round of funding led by Sam Altman, Silicon Valley Bank and Founder’s Fund.

Launched a year ago, Coco makes a four-wheeled, cooler-sized robot that delivers food and beverages. Coco prepositions its robot at merchant locations in dense city environments, and advertises that it completes deliveries in 30 minutes or less.

Unlike other delivery robots like those from Starship and Yandex, Coco’s robots are not self-driving and are instead piloted remotely. As with Tortoise, another teleoperated delivery robot, by foregoing autonomy, Coco can get to market faster because it doesn’t have to deal with the same state and city regulations around self-driving vehicles.

According to the company’s Careers page, those driving the robots are called “Coconauts,” and Coco is currently hiring remote drivers for Hawaii, Nevada, and Texas. Responsibilities include “Remotely drive a robot: carefully and responsibly” and “Follow a map to and from your destinations.” Under Qualifications, Coco asks that you have a “Reliable, high-speed internet connection,” and “Experience playing racing video games” (hopefully not just Mario Kart).

Coco is raising money at the right time as the food and restaurant world is accelerating its interest in robots and automation. Sweetgreen just acquired the robot restaurant Spyce, and 800 Degrees Pizza will launch 3,600 Piestro-powered robot pizza making vending machines over the next five years.

Robot delivery itself is poised to take off. As Ali Kashani, Co-Founder and CEO of robot delivery company Serve likes to say — you don’t need a two-ton car on the road to deliver a taco. With their smaller footprint, delivery robots can help ease congestion on the road by removing unnecessary full-sized delivery cars. With its new funding, Coco will be able to get its robots on the sidewalks (and provide humans with “driving” gigs), and scale up to more cities sooner than some of its competition.

Sweetgreen Acquires Robot Restaurant Spyce

Salad chain Sweetgreen announced today it is acquiring the robot restaurant Spyce. The deal is expected to close in the third quarter, and terms were not disclosed.

Spyce was created by MIT alums and launched its first restaurant in the Spring of 2018, which grabbed headlines because of its use of robots to prepare each meal. The company partnered with chef Daniel Boulud to develop its menu and went on to raise nearly $25 million in funding. In November of last year Spyce re-launched itself, and introduced its new “Infinite Kitchen” robot, which allowed for more ingredient customization and could make 350 meals per hour. Spyce currently operates two locations in Massachusetts, one in Cambridge and one in Boston.

In the press announcement, Sweetgreen said Spyce’s automation technology will allow its workers to focus more on customers service, expand its menu into warm foods, and make meal preparation more consistent.

In June of this year, Sweetgreen confidentially filed to go public. CNBC today speculated that the acquisition of an automation company like Spyce could help Sweetgreen attract investors because the technology could help alleviate some of the labor shortage issues facing the restaurant industry at large.

Labor issues and the pandemic have accelerated interest in restaurant automation. In addition to robots being able to work around the clock without a break, robots don’t get sick and provide customers with a contactless food transaction. Sweetgreen’s acquisition comes less than a week after Creator, another robot-centered restaurant that has raised a fair amount of venture capital, re-opened its doors after being shut down by COVID last year. And just today, robot pizza maker, Piestro announced a partnership to deploy 3,600 units co-branded with pizza chain 800 Degrees over the next five years.

As the pandemic maintains a looming presence in our lives and automation technology matures, expect more announcements like this over the coming year.