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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

Zippin Launches Cashierless Checkout Store in Yokohama Techno Tower Hotel

Zippin announced today the launch of a checkout-free convenience store in the Yokohama Techno Tower Hotel in Japan. It was done in partnership with Fujitsu and the Koyo Group, and Zippin says this is the world’s first cashierless checkout store within a hotel.

The Green Leaves Plus store sells pre-packaged food, drinks and fresh bento boxes. It opened earlier this year as a pilot and is accessible to the public. Customers must first download the Green Leaves Plus mobile app and register their credit card information, after which they can then enter the store with a QR code displayed on the app. Customers can also use the biometric authentication that links palm vein and facial recognition with the mobile app. After this is submitted, users just need to swipe their palm to gain entrance to the store.

Once inside, shoppers just grab what they want and go. Zippin’s combination of cameras and shelf sensors automatically keep track of what people take and automatically charge them upon leaving the store. Zippin said that based on early analytics shoppers are spending an average of just 113 seconds inside the Green Leaves Plus store.

Zippin and Fujitsu announced their partnership back in December of last year. Fujitsu is the exclusive distributor of Zippin’s cashierless checkout system, and adds its biometric authentication layer.

This first Green Leaves Plus store in the Yokohama Techno Tower could be just the beginning for Zippin in Japan. In addition to hotels, the Koyo Group operates convenience stores and restaurants in more than 500 hospitals, and from the press announcement emailed to The Spoon, Green Leaves Plus is part of Koyo’s multiphase expansion plan to create new c-store concepts for hospitals.

Zippin isn’t alone in bringing cashierless checkout to Japan. New Zealand based-IMAGR has partnered with Japanese retailer H2O to install smart shopping carts at three locations across Tokyo and Osaka.

The pandemic has pushed retailers towards cashierless checkout solutions as they look to reduce human-to-human contact. As such, we’ll be seeing a lot more cashierless checkout stores opening around the world.

DoorDash Acquires Salad Robot Maker Chowbotics

Third party delivery service DoorDash has acquired Chowbotics, the company behind salad-making robot Sally. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Chowbotics had raised nearly $21 million in funding since its founding in 2014.

The first question that pops to mind is, Why? Chowbotics’ technology is decidely stationary. Its robot is installed at a location and makes salads, yogurt bowls and more for people that come to it. DoorDash is a company built on mobility, getting food and other goods from other places to you.

Representatives from neither company were made available to comment.

The Wall Street Journal, which appears to have scooped the announcement earlier today wrote how a DoorDash+Chowbotics combo could work:

Ideas include using the technology to help restaurants expand their menu—such as enabling a pizzeria to offer salads—or to allow a salad bar to try out new locations—a kiosk at an airport, for instance—without the need for more manpower.

One of the big selling points of modern, automated vending machines is that they create, essentially, a restaurant in a box that can be placed anywhere. Chowbotics has co-branded machines with regional restaurant chain Saladworks, for example. DoorDash, with its vast marketplace of restaurants, could leverage those relationships to get co-branded Chowbotics machines in airports, hospitals and other high-traffic locations. Sally itself is versatile, holding 22 ingredients, so it could be easily adapted to different menus.

It’s not too hard to think DoorDash could also install Sallys at their own DashMart delivery-only chain of convenience stores to offer fresh food for delivery along with snacks and sundries.

But the new relationship could work in the other direction. Since the pandemic shut down salad bars, Chowbotics has seen increased interest from grocery retailers. DoorDash could use this as a wedge to get co-branded restaurant Sallys into retail and expand DoorDash’s grocery delivery ambitions.

Or, and this is a little more out there, DoorDash could be working on an autonomous mobile vending unit similar to what Yo-Kai Express is launching soon. A self-driving vending machine could travel around college and corporate campuses being hailed by hungry students and workers.

At the end of the day, the one thing DoorDash does give Chowbotics is scale. DoorDash is a publicly traded company with deep pockets and the largest marketshare of third-party delivery in the U.S. This means Chowbotics can focus on its technology and less on business development.

As they get more technologically advanced, we’re seeing more applications for vending machines. They are selling hot ramen, fresh made pizza, and even fresh dairy on farms. You can learn all about the industry in my Spoon+ market report The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report (subscription required).

Berlin: Nomitri Moves Cashierless Checkout to Your Cart-Mounted Smartphone

When it comes to cashierless checkout for retail, there is a host of startups offering a number of different solutions. Grabango and Zippin install banks of cameras in stores and use computer vision and AI to keep track of purchases. Caper and IMAGR move the cameras and AI to smart shopping carts. And now Nomitri is pushing all that cashierless checkout tech to your mobile phone.

Founded in 2019 and based in Berlin, Germany, Nomitri is just now coming out of stealth mode. The company provides retailers with a special mount that affixes to a shopping cart and holds a mobile phone. Shoppers download and install the Nomitri app on their phone and place it in the holder with the camera facing into the cart Users then scan a food item’s barcode with the phone’s camera as it is placed in the cart and Nomitri’s software keeps a running total of what the shopper is getting. (Produce and bulk items are weighed on special scales that produce a sticker with a barcode that is scanned.)

The Nomitri app uses computer vision and AI to understand what is in the cart at all times. So if you try to slip something in there without scanning it, Nomitri notices and alerts you to either scan the item or remove it. Once you’re done shopping, Nomitri tallies up your total. The store can either integrate Nomitri into its existing checkout lanes, or set up new ones for a more frictionless checkout experience using Apple Pay or similar e-payment systems.

Nomitri Product Demo - Visual AI for Retailers

Trinh Le-Fiedler, Founder and CEO of Nomitri, explained to me by phone this week that all of the computer vision and AI is happening in the app itself. So there isn’t any extra computing power that needs to happen at the store, nor is there ongoing communication with a cloud service as people shop.

Le-Fielder said that ideally all of this cashierless checkout will happen on a Nomitri-branded app. That way a user just needs to download one app to shop at different Nomitri-powered stores. But she also admitted that retailers may want to retain that customer relationship and sales data, so white label versions of the app could also be created.

Nomitri’s solution is similar to Israel-based Shopic, which also pushes all the cashierless checkout tech to a user’s mobile phone. Shopic also has a component added to shopping carts to monitor what goes in them to help deter theft. Le-Fielder said that Nomitri’s solution is currently being tested by two different retailers in Europe.

All of these solutions from Grabango, Caper, Nomitri et al. are coming to market around the same time, giving retailers plenty of options. Which one(s) will they choose? A full retrofit like Grabango’s requires a lot of up-front work, but it can also provide inventory management services (like if items are misplaced on the wrong shelf). Smart carts like Caper’s don’t require a store build out, but require getting a fleet of entirely new shopping carts. Nomitri is carving out its own niche because it allows retailers to transform their existing carts into smart carts with the simple addition of a phone holder.

Whatever the solution, we’re going to see a lot more cashierless options being adopted by retailers as the technology matures and stores look for ways to reduce human-to-human interaction in a post-COVID world.

Is the College Market Back in Session? Yo-Kai Express Installs Machines at U. of Arizona

Yo-Kai Express is heading off to college to feed hot ramen to hungry students. Over the weekend, company founder and CEO Andy Lin posted a picture on Linkedin of Yo-Kai’s newest vending machine installation at the University of Arizona.

In a follow up email sent to The Spoon, Yo-Kai COO Amanda Tsung said that the company now has 25 machines live. The hot ramen vending kiosks are located across corporate campuses, hotels, retail locations, airports and now, colleges. The University of Arizona will actually be getting two additional Yo-Kais once students and faculty return.

In addition to the University of Arizona, Yo-Kai has installations going in at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center Parnassus and the University of San Diego. Machines will accept student dining programs as a form a payment.

College campuses were becoming quite the hot spot for automated vending machines like Chowbotics and Blendid prior to the pandemic. Colleges are a good target location for unattended vending machines because they have a sizable population of students that don’t necessarily constrain their mealtimes to normal daylight hours. Vending machines can operate around the clock, and have the ability nowadays to serve up pretty complex food like ramen and grain bowls.

Yo-Kai could be a canary in the coalmine — a sign that the college campus market could be back in play for automated vending companies. With overall infection rates in the U.S. declining (knocks on wood) and vaccine efforts ramping up, students going back to college in the fall could mark a return to “normal” (whatever that will actually mean).

Relatedly, last month the San Francisco Airport gave the go-ahead to Cafe X to reopen its robot barista in the Terminal 3 location as foot traffic there ticked back up. Airports, too, could once again be a more thriving location for vending machines as travel increases.

For those vending startups that have successfully weathered the COVID-19 storm thus far, this should be welcome news that more opportunities lie ahead.

Orders for Food and Consumer Goods Robots Grew 56 Percent Last Year

Often when we write about the growth in food robotics, it’s based on anecdotal data. For example, over the past year robot startups have told us that thanks to COVID-19, they’ve seen a surge in demand.

Now, thanks to the Association for Advancing Automation (A3), we have some hard numbers to reaffirm what we’ve already been reporting. The A3 announced yesterday that for the first time last year, orders of robots for non-automotive purposes surpassed automotive robot orders. According to the press announcement, sales of robotic units in North America in 2020 were up 3.5 percent over sales in 2019. North American companies ordered 31,044 robotic units at a value of $1.572 billion last year.

For our specific purposes here at The Spoon, the A3 said that orders for food and consumer goods robots grew by 56 percent in 2020. And not only were more robots being ordered for the food sector, they were being used for higher-level tasks. Mark Joppru, Vice President, Consumer Segment & Service Robotics, US ABB Robotics and Machine Automation, said in the A3 press release:

In food applications, for example, where robots were traditionally used to automate simpler processes like case loading, they are increasingly being commissioned for higher value processes, like directly preparing food, resulting in improvements to food safety and hygiene. While these trends have existed for several years, COVID has changed perceptions and priorities for customers, accelerating the adoption of robotic automation.

This echoes what we’ve been hearing from food robot startups throughout the pandemic. Cleanliness and hygiene are the new priorities for the companies buying food robots. Robots provide a contactless way of preparing, ordering and delivering food, create more social distance in kitchens and can help alleviate staffing issues.

Just as important, robots are getting more sophisticated and, as Joppru points out, able to complete higher value tasks. Flippy is working the fryers at White Castle. Woowa Brothers delivery bots are integrating with elevator and security systems to increase navigation within buildings. And robot kiosks like RoboEatz can prepare 1,000 meals before needing a human to refill the ingredients.

Given the constant stream of robot news we’re been writing, it’s not too hard to imagine that this time next year, we’ll be writing about record growth for the industry in 2021.

PizzaForno Bringing its Pizza Vending Machines to the U.S. Next Month

Like so many other startups in the space, PizzaForno doesn’t like to call its product a “vending machine.” That term carries with it a lot of baggage, conjuring up coils of stale snacks. Instead, the company makes “Automated Pizza Ovens.” But regardless of what you call it, PizzaForno is bringing its 24-hour, unattended pizza kiosk to the U.S. next month.

Based near Toronto, Canada, PizzaForno has 25 such machines in operation already in Ontario. They work pretty much as you’d expect. Customers walk up to the machine, place an order through the touchscreen (a mobile app is forthcoming) and roughly twelve dollars and two minutes later, a 12 inch piping hot pizza is dispensed.

While PizzaForno, the company, is based in Canada, it’s using technology from an undisclosed company in France. Each machine holds 70 pre-made pizzas (typically eight different varieties), and features a convection technology that blast hot air to cook the pizza.

PizzaForno’s go-to market is a little different from other players in the automated pizza space. Piestro is building its own brand and licensed pizza vending robots, and API Tech makes machines that are then branded by a third party. PizzaForno wants to build its own food brand and is using a licensing model to expand its presence.

Licensees will pay between $115,000 – $125,000 for the machine, materials and territorial rights. They will then negotiate with landlords for location space, and handle maintenance, operational and logistical matters. The first machine U.S. will be placed in Jackson, Michigan in February.

As I wrote last year, smart vending machines are going through a re-invention, one partly spurred on by the global pandemic that has consumers wanting contactless food retail experiences. Vending machines keep ingredients safe from outside germs, don’t require humans to serve up food, and can operate around the clock.

But it’s also a reinvention because the food these machines make is just better than it used to be. It’s no longer packaged snacks. Instead, it is hot, fresh food created by what is essentially a small restaurant-in-a-box. Ramen, salad, bowl foods — vending machines are making it all these days.

Pizza in particular is turning into a hot sub-category for automated vending services. In addition to Piestro and API Tech, Basil Street has its “Automated Pizza Kitchen” and Bake Xpress offers personal pizzas among its baked goods.

The question for PizzaForno is whether its licensee approach will work. Pizza vending machines are still a relatively new concept. People immediately know what they’d get from a Domino’s Pizza vending machine, regardless of who made the actual machine. And while it isn’t exactly hard to figure out what PizzaForno makes, consumers won’t be familiar with the brand or the product. Hungry folks may be more hesitant to try it — even though it comes out of an “automated pizza oven.”

UPDATE: Though PizzaForno reps used the term “franchise” during my call with them, the company followed up to say the correct term was “license.” Also, the location of the first Michigan machine changed after the publication of this article. It has been updated to reflect these changes.

Foodspace is Using AI to Create Better CPG Data So You Find That Spicy Cheese Faster

You ever search for a food product online or at the grocery store but can’t find that exact something that perfectly matches your taste, dietary or nutritional preferences? You’re not alone. One of the big reasons searching for food products can be so frustrating is they are often bucketed under data categories that are holdovers from existing category management systems built fifteen or twenty years ago.

A new startup called Foodspace wants to eliminate this annoying experience by helping the CPG and food retail industry update their old-school category management systems with technology that makes sure that every conceivable product attribute a consumer may be searching for is documented and assigned to products headed to a physical or digital shelf.

The Boston-based startup plans on doing that by using machine vision technology that analyzes scanned images of new product packaging introduced by CPG manufacturers and uses AI to synthesize and assign attributes based on its understanding of the product packaging and label data. The attributes go beyond the typical high-level product categories such as organic or gluten free, and factors in things such as sensory preferences (creamy, grainy, etc) and consumer taste and lifestyle archetypes. All told, Foodspace’s system can assign nearly three thousand different attributes to a product.

The end result should be faster, more personalized searches for consumers. If, for example, a person who likes cheese, loves spicy food, and has a gluten allergy heads to the deli section of an online grocery store, they shouldn’t have to drill down five categories deep within the deli category to find that gluten-free habanero cheddar. With Foodspace’s AI-powered synthesis and matching of different attributes, a consumer finds a product match much faster, perhaps almost immediately, depending on the understanding the online grocer has about the shopper.

Of course, this move towards more granular, highly-consumer centric data is something that CPG and retail industries recognize is important, but have been slow to evolve away from because of the huge magnitude of switching towards systems that have thousands of product attributes. The Food Industry Association (which goes under the acronym FMI), has been working on a new framework called Shopper Centric Retailing that would update product information in the more detailed way, and this week at FMI’s annual midwinter meeting, the industry consultant who developed Shopper Centric Retailing framework, Winston Weber, announced Foodspace as a “premier” strategic solution partner to help food product companies transition their products to the new format.

In short, Weber sees Foodspace’s technology as an enabling platform to help food brands migrate to the future.

Foodspace’s technology is “helping translate products in the online space, to the benefit of brands, retailers and the end consumers,” said Weber CEO and namesake Win Weber in the press release. “Their technology is the conduit for which the Shopper-Centric Retailing business model can optimize consumer satisfaction.”

As I thought about better product data that could personalize my food product searches, I started to wonder if this could help usher in the personalized food profile concept that I’ve been thinking about ever since I heard Mike Lee talk about the idea at Smart Kitchen Summit in 2017.

Foodspace CEO Ayo Oshinaike thinks so. “The universal data set that enables that is not there,” Oshinaike told me via Zoom. “That’s the piece that’s in the middle that Foodspace is trying to solve with the breaking down of the information accuracy and how we’re able to relate products to consumers.”

Walmart Scaling its Automated Fulfillment with Alert Innovation, Dematic and Fabric

Walmart announced today that it is ramping up its use of automated centers to fulfill online grocery orders. The company said it is already planning “dozens” of locations with “many more to come.”

Automated fulfillment centers use robotics to assemble items for incoming orders. The result is a faster turnaround for customer delivery or pickup.

According to a corporate blog post announcing the news:

[Walmart will] be building local fulfillment centers with various technology partners, including Alert Innovation, Dematic and Fabric. With these partners, we’ll be testing different orientations and add-on innovations to understand what works best in different environments. For example, in some locations, we’ll be adding on to our stores. In others, the fulfillment centers will sit inside the existing store footprint.

At its Salem, New Hampshire location, Walmart had piloted Alert Innovation’s automated fulfillment technology back in 2019. Walmart didn’t explain why has chosen three different solutions going forward, though if the retailer is going all-in on automated fulfillment, one company may not have been able to scale up quickly enough. We do know that Fabric specializes in building automated fulfillment centers in small, non-traditional spaces, and Walmart said its rollout would test different automated fulfillment configurations.

After a slow burn for the past few years, automated fulfillment is becoming hot with grocers in 2021. FreshDirect is also using Fabric’s solution for a fulfillment center in the Washington D.C. area. Albertsons is expanding its use of Takeoff Technology’s micro-fulfillment. Dematic is being used in Amazon’s grocery stores. H-E-B is using Swisslog. And Kroger is set to open up the first of its planned 20 automated customer fulfillment centers this year.

The reason for this burst in robotic fulfillment activity is the pandemic. COVID-19-related fears pushed people into record amounts of online grocery shopping last year. While a vaccine is being deployed, people have developed new habits, and online grocery shopping is expected to take up 21.5 percent of total grocery sales by 2025.

As such, retailers need to increase their throughput now to retain customer loyalty. Faster turnaround means more slots available for curbside pickup and delivery. Walmart may not have found inventory counting robots on its floors particularly efficient, but it seems to believe robots in the backroom building out orders is.

Starship Raises Another $17M, Adds UCLA and Announces its Millionth Delivery

Delivery robot company Starship announced today that it has raised an additional $17 million in funding. Investors include TDK Ventures and Goodyear Ventures, and this brings the total amount raised by Starship to $102 million.

As part of today’s announcement, Starship also said that it has now completed 1 million autonomous deliveries, and that its service will be rolling out to the campuses of UCLA and Bridgewater State University (Massachusetts).

Starship makes self-driving, cooler-sized, six-wheeled delivery robots that carry food, groceries and more. Starship started rolling out its robot delivery service to U.S. college campuses starting with George Mason university back in January of 2019. Since then, the company has added a steady stream of colleges to its ranks across the country over the ensuing years, and has started making grocery deliveries in Modesto, CA.

The COVID-19 pandemic has helped generate interest in delivery robots because of their contactless nature. You don’t have as much human-to-human interaction when the delivery agent is a robot. Robots can also operate all day (even taking the crummy shifts without complaining), and potentially bring down the cost of delivery, making it more affordable for more people.

The delivery robot space is heating up and there are a number of players getting into or scaling up their operations around the world. In the U.S., Kiwibot is operating in San Jose and, coincidentally, it announced earlier this month that it would be expanding to Los Angeles (where Postmates’ Serve robot already works). Yandex is operating food delivery bots in Moscow. Woowa Brothers is making deliveries in Seoul, South Korea. And a newcomer called Ottonomy is just starting to bring its robots to market here in the U.S.

The delivery robots aren’t coming, they are already here.

Ukko Raises $40M to Fight Food Allergies and Develop its Good Gluten

Ukko, a biotech company that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to develop food and therapeutics that fight food allergies, announced today that it has raised a $40 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Leaps by Bayer (the impact investment arm of Bayer), with participation from Continental Grain Company, PeakBridge Ventures, Skyviews Life Science and Fall Line Capital. Existing investors including Khosla Ventures and TIME Ventures, the investment fund of Marc Benioff, participated as well.

This brings the total amount of funding raised by Ukko to $47.7 million dollars. According to the press announcement, the new funding will allow Tel Aviv, Israel-based Ukko to enter into clinical trials for its investigational therapeutic for peanut allergies and, more relevant for our purposes, accelerate development of the company’s proprietary gluten.

Simply speaking, Ukko uses its AI platform to analyze patient data to map how an allergen triggers a reaction in the body. With that information, Ukko breaks down the gluten protein to its component level and gets rids of the bad parts that cause allergic reactions. It keeps the good parts. Ukko then creates this new good gluten either by genetically modifying wheat plants or fermenting yeast (or some other applicable base cell) to grow it in a bioreactor.

The result, Ukko Co-Founder and CEO Anat Binur told me by phone this week, is a gluten that stretches and bakes and has all the biophysical aspects of gluten, and can be eaten by people with gluten sensitivities and celiac disease. This, in turn, means that gluten-sensitive people don’t need to sacrifice quality when enjoying different types of baked goods.

At least, that’s the plan. Binur said that some of the company’s new funds will go towards clinical trials of its gluten and getting the product through all the safety protocols and to the point of commercialization.

Once Ukko’s gluten reaches the commercialization stage, Binur said that there are a number of options for how it comes to market. Ukko could sell its own gluten, which could be added to gluten-free starches (like almonds or rice). Alternatively, the company could sell its own gluten flour as an ingredient to food companies and restaurants/bakeries, or create its own line of branded gluten-free flour to be sold on store shelves. Or Ukko could pursue some combination of all three.

By one estimate from Grand View Research, the gluten-free products market was valued at $21.61 billion in 2019, and projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.2 percent through 2027. So there is plenty of market opportunity just in gluten for Ukko.

But Ukko’s platform can be applied to any food allergy. As noted, the company is developing therapuetics for peanut allergies, but Ukko’s tech could be used for dairy allergies, soy allergies, egg allergies, etc. Creating replacement foods from the ground up that have the same nutrition and behave like the original could help alleviate a lot of sickness and save lives.

Ottonomy’s Delivery Robot Drops Food at Your Door and Indoors

There are a few common threads among most delivery robot startups like Starship, Kiwibot and Postmates: They are all using cooler-sized rover ‘bots. Each of their robots has just one cargo compartment. And they are all focused on outdoor delivery. This is where Ottonomy aims to separate itself from the rest of the pack.

Yes, Ottonomy makes rover robots like those other players. Ottonomy’s four-wheeled robot is twice the size of Starship’s robot, has autonomous driving capabilities, and can carry 40 to 45 kg (88 to 100 lbs.). But Ottonomy’s approach to delivery is a little different.

First, Ottonomy’s robot has two compartments, allowing it to make two separate deliveries during a single trip. This means the robot can generate more revenue per trip because it doesn’t have to return to a restaurant or market after every single drop-off.

More important, however, is where Ottonomy will make those deliveries. In addition to making last-mile deliveries, Ottonomy robots will make deliveries indoors. Think large transit hubs like airports or shopping malls. So, for example, a consumer waiting at an airport could order a meal from a participating airport restaurant and have it brought directly to them, wherever they are inside.

Ottonomy Co-Founder and CEO, Rutikar Vijay told me by phone this week that his robots can accomplish this indoor delivery because they do not rely as heavily on GPS to get around. The robots just need to map out the space once, and can then start making deliveries (Ottonomy robots cannot, however ride escalators or elevators).

In addition to opening up a new delivery market, making indoor deliveries could also be an easier path to market for Ottonomy. Unlike Kiwibot, which uses humans to plot delivery routes on public sidewalks, Ottonomy, as its name indicates, is all-in on autonomous driving (though there is still someone monitoring the robot). States and cities are all developing their own rules around autonomous delivery robots with varying levels of restrictions (which streets, operation house, whether a human needs to accompany the robot, etc.). Ottonomy isn’t avoiding outdoor deliveries in the U.S., but by going indoors and off city sidewalks, it can sidestep dealing with the patchwork of regulation and start generating revenue right away.

Though the COVID-19 pandemic has kept most people from going to airports or congregating in large indoor areas, at some point we will again, and chances are good that robots will join us. In addition to Ottonomy, Cheetah Mobile in China has its FANBOT, which is basically a mobile vending machine that roams around hotel lobbies and cinemas.

That pandemic has also spurred more interest in robot delivery because of their contactless nature. Not only do they reduce a vector of human-to-human transmission, robots provide an additional method of delivery, which is more important than ever to restaurants.

Ottonomy has already been making deliveries in India and did a pilot last fall in an undisclosed transit hub. Vijay didn’t disclose pricing, but said that the company is exploring both a straight up robotics-as-a-service business model as well as one that includes revenue sharing.

Miso Robotics Equity Crowdfunds $17M, Extends Campaign to Raise $30M

Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy the cooking robot, announced today that it raised $17 million during its equity crowdfunding campaign from April through November of last year.

In its press announcement, Miso said that its campaign was the highest-grossing technology deal ever on the SeedInvest equity crowdfunding platform. The $17 million was only a little more than half of the $30 million the company had intended to raise, but Miso will be extending this equity crowdfunded Series C round into this year to try and hit that $30 million milestone. Miso has previously raised $15 million in financing and $3.3 million in venture debt.

Miso’s crowdfunding came during a tumultuous time for the restaurant industry, and running an equity campaign during a global pandemic was both bad and fortuitous for the food robotics company. On the one hand, COVID-19 decimated the restaurant industry, shuttering thousands of restaurants and limiting Miso’s potential customer base. Stadiums, where Flippy was already making in-roads as an automated fry cook, were also shut down.

But this crisis also meant opportunity for Miso. While many restaurants were closed, deep pocketed QSRs were able to weather the tumult and were in more of a position to afford Flippy. In a high-profile example, after an initial pilot in July of last year, White Castle quickly expanded its use of Flippy to 11 of its locations.

Buck Jordan, Co-Founder, President & Chairman of Miso Robotics, told me by phone this week that the pandemic caused a “massive” increase of QSRs interest in Miso’s technology. According to Jordan, that interest is being driven by QSR staffing issues, the ability to create social distancing in the kitchen and the ability to transition workers into roles that more involve cleaning and fulfilling delivery and takeout orders.

With restaurants emphasizing delivery and takeout options, there will most likely be sustained interest in technology that can keep workers engaged with off-premises order fulfillment and customer service.

In addition to the funding news, Miso also announced the appointment of Mike Bell as CEO and Jake Brewer as Chief Strategy Officer. Bell was previously COO at Ordermark and President and COO at Bridg. Brewer was formerly VP of Restaurant Excellence at CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.