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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics, AI & Data

Newsletter: The New All-in-One Restaurant Tech Is Here, Digital Drive-Thru Goes Down Under

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I was in a local coffee shop recently and overheard a rep from a well-known POS company trying to sell his product to the shop’s manager. But for every feature he offered up (“It’ll manage payroll!” “It makes tipping easier!”), the cafe manager had more or less the same rebuttal: more tech would make more work for her staff.

I suspect this conversation is happening all over the world. Tech’s march on the restaurant industry is here to stay, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily making life easier for restaurants. In a growing number of cases, too many digital tools actually make it harder to get work done, particularly as demands for delivery and mobile orders ramp up and those functions have to be integrated into an already chaotic workflow.

But this week, we got a different glimpse into the future of the digital restaurant — namely, one where disparate tech solutions are replaced by a single digital platform that can manage every corner of the restaurant, from the kitchen system in the back to the kiosk out front to the off-premises order on its way out for delivery.

At least, that’s what Brightloom hopes to launch to restaurants this fall. The newly rebranded company, formerly known as Eatsa, announced yesterday that it’s revamped its existing end-to-end restaurant tech platform, into which it’s also integrating Starbucks’ famed mobile technology.

This is a big deal because, while many products claim to be “all-in-one” restaurant management software packs that make it easier for restaurant owners and operators to manage the entire business, no one’s yet managed to seamlessly integrate the mobile aspect of business into their system.

And nobody does mobile like Starbucks. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, it’s hard to deny the mega-chain’s dominance when it comes to offering fast, highly personalized order and pickup functions for customers. Brightloom’s soon-to-be-unveiled system will integrate the Starbucks mobile order, pay, and customer loyalty tech into its own system. We don’t yet know exactly what that will look like, but it will undoubtedly raise everyone’s standards around what restaurant-tech systems should be able to do and put pressure on others to make their offerings just as useful and less of a burden for restaurants to implement.

Good-bye, Crackly Speakerphone. Hello Digital Drive-Thru
Will all these digital developments render the crackly speaker at the drive-thru null and void? Probably, and sooner than we think.

While major QSRs like Dunkin’ and Starbucks have been implementing digital and mobile ordering into the drive-thru experience little by little over the last couple years, KFC took things a step further recently by announcing its first-ever drive-thru-only concept store.

The store, which is slated to open in November, will feature multiple drive-thru lanes dedicated to customers who have ordered their food via the KFC website or mobile app. The idea is to streamline the order process and cut down on how long it takes customers — or delivery drivers — to get their food. But again, it’s all about the implementation. KFC’s concept store could raise the bar on what QSRs are expected to deliver in terms of speed and quality. Or it could just be introducing another digital process that stresses workers out. We’ll know more when the pilot launches in November, in Australia.

Delivery Bots on the Rise
Or you could just let the restaurant come to you in the form of a roving bot. There’s a growing number of these devices delivering food from restaurant to customer, often on college campuses, which hold a lot of people in a relatively small geographic area.

But as my colleague Chris Albrecht pointed out this week, Kiwi announced it will test its semi-autonomous delivery bots on the streets of Sacramento, CA this fall, which suggests we’re coming to a point where these li’l roving machines will start to become a more common sight on regular city sidewalks. Who needs drive-thru when you can have your meal brought to you by a cute little box on wheels? As Chris said, “it was pretty amazing to whip out my phone, order a burrito, have a robot fetch my lunch and bring it to my location.”

For now, roving delivery bots are probably not a priority for most restaurants’ overall digital solutions. But as all-in-one offerings like the Brightloom-Starbucks tech get more commonplace and digital ordering becomes routine for customers and workers alike, there may be room for most restaurants to accommodate a bot or two in their tech stack.

Kiwi Expanding its Robot Delivery to Sacramento in September

Kiwi continues to roll out its diminutive li’l food delivery robots to more cities, with plans to begin operations in Sacramento, CA in September.

CBS13 first reported the story last week. While CBS13 didn’t provide many details around the Sacramento program, what caught our eye about the report is that Kiwi is working on this latest expansion directly with the city, which wants to become an urban technology lab. Most of Kiwi’s expansion so far has been through universities. Kiwi started out at the University of California in Berkeley and announced plans to be in a dozen more schools starting this fall including Stanford, UC Davis, Purdue, Cornell, and NYU.

Starting with universities makes sense for the nascent technology as campuses provide a sizeable population in a limited geographic area. Typically campuses have or are surrounded by plenty of restaurants to feed hungry students and faculties, and using a robot could make delivering those meals more convenient. Going the campus route is a strategy also employed by Starship for its delivery robot and Robby’s mobile commerce robot.

For Kiwi, going through schools also provides an infrastructure for running delivery operations, as students will be running operations at each school. We don’t have a ton of details on those programs (like how any money is split) but students will be responsible for robot maintenance and deployments. We reached out to Kiwi to find out more information about how the Sacramento program will work and will update when we hear back.

Kiwi’s robots are “semi-autonomous,” as they still have human operators who monitor a robot’s route and drop GPS waypoints for the robot to follow. I used Kiwi earlier this year at Berkeley and it felt like ordering food from the future. Aside from one glitch, it was pretty amazing to whip out my phone, order a burrito, have a robot fetch my lunch and bring it to my location.

Kiwi will begin testing in Sacramento this fall and hopes to have a fleet of 50 robots running around the streets of the city at some point.

Report: Amazon Still Working on a Robot for Inside the Home

Amazon is still hard at work building an actual Rosie the Robot-type robot for your home, according to a report today in Bloomberg.

We first heard about this robot a little more than a year ago, but this latest report indicates Amazon has not given up on the project and has actually increased work on it — though details remain scant. We know it’s called “Vesta” internally at Amazon, and Bloomberg’s sources say prototypes have wheels and “are about waist-high and navigate with the help of an array of computer-vision cameras.” It also can be summoned with voice commands a la Echo and Alexa.

Evidently, Amazon had wanted to debut the robot this year according to Bloomberg, but it’s not ready for scaled up production. The robot could also never see the light of day, projects get killed all the time at large companies, but Bloomberg writes that Amazon has added engineers to the project, which could mean it plans to sell Vesta at some point.

Beyond all this, we still don’t know what this robot is for. It could be some type of mobile Alexa that follows you around, and, for our purposes here at The Spoon, potentially help you by controlling various connected kitchen gadgets or ordering groceries, but without more information, we’re just guessing.

When we first wrote about Vesta, I was skeptical that it would be just a mobile virtual assistant. First, we don’t know if the robot can do things like climb stairs, which is kind of important in a lot of houses. Second, Echos are so cheap, if you need a ubiquitous Star Trek-like computer assistant, you could just get a bunch of Dots and place them all throughout the house.

Others disagreed, however. Last year friend of The Spoon, Kevin Tofel, wrote:

So maybe Vesta is more of a roving Echo than a robot that can fold laundry or make your coffee.

I’m OK with that and here’s why. I’d rather have one smart speaker that also has a camera than speakers and cameras — think Echo Show and Echo Spot — in every room of the house. If that one device can either follow me around the house or be within earshot, I don’t need multiple devices that basically do the same thing. And I can send a camera-enabled device away if that device is a robot.

But again, without more information, it’s hard to say how useful this robot may or may not be.

What we do know, however, is that we have reported on three different versions of home-related Amazon robots over the past year. In January, Amazon launched Scout, a squat cooler-looking rover bot that deliver packages. And in February, The Spoon uncovered a patent for an Amazon autonomous ground vehicle that would live in a persons garage and go out to fetch packages.

In addition to the robot news, the Bloomberg story also reported that Amazon is also prepping a new version of its Echo with improved sound.

Refraction Launches Three-Wheeled Delivery Robot That’s Bigger Than a Rover, but Smaller Than a Car

When it comes to autonomous delivery robots, size matters. Full-sized self-driving cars can travel on most major roads and go long distances, but may not work well in dense, traffic-congested cities. Little rover robots are nimble enough to zip along on sidewalks, but have a pretty limited range.

Refraction AI, an autonomous robotics startup that just came out of stealth today, is looking to split the difference with its REV-1 delivery vehicle. The REV-1 is a three-wheeled vehicle that stands 5 feet tall, 4.5 feet long and 30 inches wide. It weighs 100 pounds and has a top speed of 15 mph (Starship’s small rover bots have a top speed of 10 mph). The inside holds roughly 16 cubic feet, which translates to four to five grocery bags. There’s also an on-board touchscreen customers use to enter a code to unlock the REV-1 to retrieve their goods once they arrive.

The REV-1 has a stopping distance of just 5 feet, and to navigate around humans and other objects, Refraction has forsaken LIDAR used by other robots for a system combining 12 cameras with radar and ultrasound sensors. Refraction says that its LIDAR-less setup will allow it to travel better in inclement weather.

The REV-1’s in-between size and speed allow it to travel on both the roadway and in bike lanes, which, Refraction says, will open up new delivery route possibilities. And by not using LIDAR, Refraction can keep the cost of the REV-1 to $5,000 (though, LIDAR is getting cheaper).

Refraction AI introduces the REV-1

Refraction is based in Ann Arbor, MI, and is the brainchild of University of Michigan professors Matthew Johnson-Roberson and Ram Vasudevan. The company is backed by eLab Ventures and Trucks Venture Capital and will start with restaurant food delivery before expanding into other last-mile logistics.

Refraction is certainly launching at the right time as delivery robots are hot right now. Starship and Kiwi‘s rovers are spreading across college campuses in the U.S. Udelv is piloting self-driving cargo vehicles with grocers like Farmstead and HEB. And Domino’s is testing Nuro’s pod-like autonomous low-speed vehicles for pizza delivery as well.

The REV-1’s form factor is interesting for a number of reasons. First, it might be easier for lawmakers to deal with as they make up rules around self-driving vehicles. The small(ish) size of the REV-1, the fact that it’s not on sidewalks and its small stopping distance could make it easier for regulators to allow it on the road (as opposed to full-sized, full-speed self-driving cars). Additionally, its ability to use bike lanes could make it faster than other robot options in urban and suburban environments.

It also seems like robot delivery won’t be a zero-sum game. Restaurants and grocery stores will probably need access to a number of different types of self-driving robots (and drones) depending on where they are delivering to: Rovers for around the block, REV-1’s for a little bit further out, and cars for across town.

Kroger and Common Sense Robotics Each Announce New Grocery Robotic Fulfillment Centers

I get that it’s supposed to be three of something to make a trend, but the fact that two different companies a world apart made robot-fulfillment center opening announcements on the same day is totally indicative of a broader move towards grocery automation.

Here in the U.S., Kroger announced that Forest Park, GA, just outside of Atlanta, will be the next home of its Ocado-powered customer fulfillment center. Kroger will spend $55 million on this “shed,” as Kroger calls the centers, which will feature automated, robot-driven fulfillment of grocery orders. This is the third such shed of a planned 20 that the company plans to build. Other announced sheds are in Monroe, OH and Groveland, FL, with another one coming to the Mid-Atlantic region.

Over in Tel Aviv, Venture Beat reports that Common Sense Robotics has broken ground on a completely underground automated fulfillment center for an unnamed grocer. The new facility will be in a parking structure under the Shalom Meir Tower and will be 18,000 sq. feet. One of Common Sense’s selling points is that its vertically-oriented systems can better maximize available space and thus deliver full grocery store levels of product fulfillment in a fraction of the space.

That both of these stories happened on the same day is a coincidence, but it also highlights the moves grocery stores are making towards automation. Robotic fulfillment centers like these use totes on rails to quickly assemble items from online orders and hand them off to a human who puts them into bags for pickup or delivery. Robots can move faster than humans, they don’t get tired or need breaks, all of which can reduce the order fulfillment time down from hours to as little as a half hour for some systems.

This faster fulfillment is why so many grocery retailers are trying out robots. Takeoff Technologies has partnered with Ahold Delhaize and Albertsons, and Walmart is testing out automatic fulfillment through Alert Innovation. In each of those cases, robot-powered fulfillment centers are being built into the back of existing stores rather than off-site locations like Kroger and Common Sense’s.

These robotic fulfillment centers are very much in the early stages, but you can expect to see more of them over the next year as more grocers test and implement automation to get you your groceries faster.

Newsletter: In-House Vs. Third-Party Delivery App Showdown, The Rise of Personalized Menus

It’s only July 9 and I feel like I’ve already written “delivery is table stakes” this year so many times it’s lost some of its meaning. But it — the phrase and the delivery model itself — is here to stay, and businesses who aren’t at least working towards a strategy in that area will lose competitive advantage as more consumers migrate towards getting their food dropped at the front door.

That’s not a brand-new revelation. Restaurant owners, tech companies, and investors alike have been saying as much for some time. What is new, however, is that there are now more ways for restaurants to do delivery than the two extremes of pay for your own fleet or sign up with a third-party service. The new middle ground starting to get more attention is powered by technology.

A lot of it’s about using tech to drive more users to restaurants’ in-house apps, rather than to a third-party service like DoorDash or Grubhub, since restaurants risk losing some brand integrity and valuable customer data the minute they ink a deal with a third-party service. Companies like ShiftPixy, whom The Spoon talked to recently, are answering this problem by building software platforms that help restaurants drive more traffic and orders through their own mobile apps, but enable them to still take advantage of gig-economy-style driver fleets. ShiftPixy provides its own W-2 drivers to restaurants it works with.

Another company, Olo, offers a similar tech platform with a slightly different model, where they essentially partner with third-party services like Uber Eats and Postmates so that a restaurant doesn’t have to. The result could be the best of both worlds. Teriyaki Madness, for example, works with Olo and says it hopes to have 50 percent of its orders coming through its own mobile app and 50 percent coming through third-party apps by year’s end.

Third-party Delivery Apps Are Still Growing
Teriyaki Madness’ goal is a wise one to strive for right now, because even with increased talk of putting control back into the hands of restaurants, it’s clear third-party delivery services aren’t going away any time soon. That fact was underscored this week by eMarketer’s latest forecast, which predicts third-party food delivery apps will see upwards of 44 million users in the U.S. by 2020.

The forecast includes the usual suspects of third-party delivery and where they stand in the market, numbers that could swap around at any time, given how competitive food delivery is and how difficult attracting and retaining customers actually is, even for the top players.

What eMarketer does make clear, however, is that giving consumers more choices will be the key to driving growth for restaurants in the future.

Restaurant Menu Personalization Is on the Rise
An avenue for creating more choice in the restaurant will be through the menu itself. It’s a topic The Spoon’s Mike Wolf discusses often, and this past weekend he picked up that thread again on a podcast with Scott Sanchez, CEO of THE.FIT.

THE.FIT uses AI to help diners comb through restaurant menus and find items best suited to their dietary needs and preferences. While THE.FIT’s business is specifically focused on those with a lot of restrictions (e.g., Keto, gluten-free), this trend of using technology to personalize restaurant menus is one we’re going to see a lot more of. Large quick-service chains like McDonald’s are already employing AI-powered tech in some stores, while others, most recently Dunkin’, hint at similar initiatives for the future.

It will almost certainly play a role in the future of delivery. What that looks like, exactly, isn’t clear yet. But companies — whether a third-party service or a multi-unit chain using its own app — which use it to offer customers not just more choice but more relevant choice will be at a competitive advantage. At least, that is, until AI and personalization become table stakes themselves.

Until next time,
Jenn

Connected Robotics Raises ¥850M to Expand its Food Robot Lineup

Connected Robotics, the Tokyo-based startup that makes food robots, announced yesterday that it has raised a ¥850M ($7.8 million USD) Series A funding round. The round was led by Global Brain Corporation, with participation from 31VENTURES Global Innovation Fund, UTokyo Innovation Platform Co., Ltd., Sony Innovation Fund, and 500 Startups JP, L.L.C. This brings the total amount raised by Connected Robotics to ¥950M ($8.73 million USD).

Connected Robotics currently has two food robots: the OctoChef, which makes fried octopus balls known as Tokoyaki, a popular street food in Japan; and the Reita robot, which serves up soft serve ice cream. With the new money, Connected Robotics will accelerate research and development of new products: its automated dishwasher robot, a hot snacks robot for convenience stores, and an automatic breakfast cooking robot service dubbed “Loraine.”

The food service industry in Japan faces many of the same labor challenges as the U.S. Potential workers are avoiding the hard, repetitive, sometimes dangerous jobs at restaurants. Adding pressure to this labor crunch, Japan is facing an aging population, with 20 percent of its populace 65 years or older (and that number is projected to shoot up past 35 percent by 2050).

Robots and other automated systems can help alleviate this human labor shortage, and a number of companies are jumping in with their automated solutions. Sony has partnered with Carnegie-Mellon University to develop food robots. Miso Robotics’ Flippy is grilling and frying. LG is building a Flippy-like robot with CJ Foodville. And Dishcraft just unveiled its high-volume dishwashing robot.

We’ll actually be taking a first-hand look at food robots in Japan at our upcoming Smart Kitchen Summit: Japan next month. If you know of any good robots serving food in Tokyo, drop us a line and we’ll check it out.

Aryballe Raises €6.2 Million for its Digital Nose

Aryballe, the French “digital olfaction” startup that builds a device that essentially mimics the smelling power of the human nose, announced today that it has raised a €6.2 Million ($7M USD) Series B round of funding led by International Flavors & Fragrances (IFF) with participation from Hyundai Motor Company. This brings the total amount raised by Aryballe to €9.3 ($10.43M USD).

Aryballe debuted its NeOse Pro, a handheld device aimed at the B2B market that can be used to detect and identify odors, at CES in 2018. As Mike Wolf wrote last year:

The product works by attracting odor molecules into the device’s chamber where they then interact with chemical sensors. The device lights up the prism with an LED light and the device records optical signal transduction and then analyzes the odor signature and matches it against a database in the cloud.

In addition to the investment dollars, establishing the formal relationship with IFF’s massive database of fragrances will help augment Aryballe’s odor identification capabilities, and give IFF access to another application it can provide to its clients.

Applications for Aryballe’s technology include maintaining product consistency for something like coffee roasting — making sure each batch roasted smells the same, or ensuring authenticity of raw materials — or determining whether the vanilla a food maker received is artificial or natural.

Additionally, Aryballe is already talking with appliance manufacturers to place its digital olfaction into things like smart refrigerators and ovens. An embedded e-nose in these appliances could help detect food transformation, so your fridge would be able to smell when an item starts to spoil, or an oven could better know when something is done or burning. The company says we should start to see those Aryballe-enabled devices appear in 2020.

With the new money, Aryballe is looking to miniaturize its technology even further, perhaps embedding its technology into even smaller devices like food storage containers so they can give you a better sense of when your leftovers or fruits are going bad.

Aryballe is among a wave of companies looking to digitize our senses. Computer vision is used extensively in things like cashierless checkout in stores to see what we buy (and charge us automatically). Over this past weekend, IBM unveiled its Hypertaste platform to identify and classify liquids. Heck, Amazon has even applied for patents for its own refrigerator that smells.

While Aryballe is smaller than most of these other players, the relationship with IFF and its accompanying dataset, along with an actual working product, means it could lead the pack by more than an e-nose.

IBM Develops AI-Powered Hypertaste Tech to Identify Liquids

IBM announced over the holiday weekend that it has developed Hypertaste, an AI-assisted “e-tongue,” which can be used to identify liquids. This, according to IBM, can be helpful for situations where you want to test a substance… without actually putting in your mouth. Examples might be testing water quality at lakes or rivers, or identifying counterfeit wines.

Big Blue said that up until now, the issue with such testing was that portable sensors were too limited in what they could detect, and more powerful sensors were too big to be portable. Read the full blog post for a detailed explanation, but in a nutshell, Hypertaste works using a handheld sensor, a mobile phone app and the cloud. Put the Hypertaste device in a liquid and its electrochemical sensors (covered in polymer coatings) measure voltage in response to different combinations of molecules.

These recordings are sent to a mobile app, which shoots them up to the cloud where they are analyzed. Machine learning algorithms trained to know what that particular liquid should “look” like compare the sample, with results coming back in less than a minute. Hypertaste then can be used to test any liquid, as the algorithms just need to be trained on what to look for.

One of the applications for this technology is authenticating ingredients in food. From the IBM blog post:

…think of the supply chain safety from producer to consumer for packaged food and drinks. At present, once food and drinks are packaged, there is little ability to verify that the package actually contains what is on the label, apart from sending the product to a lab for testing. So, suppliers acting in bad faith may insert lower-quality products into the supply chain with little risk of getting caught, or counterfeiters may even fake a real product by adding the few analytes which are most likely to be tested for in a lab. Fooling a combinatorial sensing system such as Hypertaste is much harder as there is no single substance on which the identification relies, and it is more difficult for wrong-doers to access the sensor training parameters which provide the “key” to interpreting the chemical fingerprints.

E-tasting is becoming quite the cottage industry lately. The Chinese government has been using AI-powered robots to see, smell and taste food to ensure quality and authenticity. And in May, researchers at Washington State University developed an e-tongue for durable spiciness testing.

Right now, the applications for Hypertaste appear to be B2B based, but perhaps it could find its way into consumer products for home testing of water and other liquids.

Vegebot Can Identify and Harvest Lettuce (and More, at Some Point)

Homer Simpson once sang “You don’t win friends with salad,” but he might change his tune if he knew those greens were harvested by a robot.

Well, probably not. But we at The Spoon definitely think its cool that researchers at the University of Cambridge in England have developed a robot that can automatically identify and harvest heads of iceberg lettuce. Dubbed “Vegebot,” the research team announced over the weekend that its robot had successfully completed tests in a variety of field conditions on an actual farm.

Because it grows flat to the ground and is easily damaged, iceberg lettuce can be a challenging crop to harvest. The Vegebot uses an on-board camera and computer vision to identify the lettuce, whether it is mature enough to be harvested, and if it is healthy (diseased lettuce could spread to other lettuce in the harvest). Once identified, a second camera near the cutting blade makes sure the cut is smooth before a robot gripper picks it up.

This high-tech harvesting is cool, but as of now, it is also very slow. You can see just how slow in this video:

Robot uses machine learning to harvest lettuce

However, like with most things robotic, the speed will come. Right now, the robot has proven that its computer vision, cutting and gripping technology can work outside of the lab and under a variety of conditions. Additionally, the robot’s name is “Vegebot” not “Lettucebot” (there already was one of those), and Cambridge researchers say that the underlying technology could be used for a variety of crops.

Automation and robots are on the verge of becoming more mainstream in agriculture as technology like Vegebot’s, Augean Robotics and Agerris improve, and human labor shortages become more of an issue. Working on a farm requires intense physical labor, often in 100-plus degree weather. Having robots on hand can mean continued production without risking human life and health.

Even Homer Simpson can see that’s a winning idea.

FarmBot Launches Two New Robotics Kits to Give Anyone an (Automated) Green Thumb

The idea of growing my own fruits and vegetables is appealing, but the reality of that ever happening is pretty slim. I just don’t have the know-how or the patience to set up and manage a garden properly. But FarmBot, the startup that sells home gardening robot kits, could change all that as the company announced today the launch of its new Express and Express XL robots, and placed them on pre-sale for the month of July.

The FarmBot is a cartesian coordinate robot that sits on top of your raised garden. According to the company, each kit comes 95 percent pre-assembled, and should only take an hour to set up. Once that’s done, FarmBot’s software lets you drag-and-drop to map out where you want to plant your different vegetables and fruits. Then FarmBot will sow the seeds, monitor them through its on-board camera, water them properly, and even spot and remove weeds. As is par for the course these days, all of this activity can be tracked via mobile app on your phone.

The new FarmBot models won’t ship until November, but the company has put them on pre-order sale for the month of July. The Express (1.2 metes by 3 meters) will set you back $1,500 now, with the price jumping to $2,300 after the sale, and the Express XL (2.4 meters by 6 meters) will cost $2,000 during the sale, going up to $2,800 afterwards.

The other cool thing about FarmBot is that it’s completely open source — even its financials. All the CAD drawings, software and documentation is online for you to download. In fact, the entire company is open source and transparent about all of its actions and activities.

So far, FarmBot says that it’s shipped more than 1,000 kits to “early adopters” in more than 65 countries. FWIW, in December of 2018, the company reported that it sold a skosh over 800 of its previous Genesis and Genesis XL kits to bring in $2.5 million in revenue.

With its new Express and Express XL models, the company says it is “ready to bring FarmBot to the masses,” which includes not just residential customers, but small scale farmers and places like universities. And while $1,500 isn’t cheap per se, and the machine won’t be of any use for city dwellers because of its size, if the kits are as easy to set up and run as promised, that price point could get those aspiring — but failing — gardeners the robot green thumb they need.

FIBBEE is a Moscow-Based Robot Barista

If I told you that Russian ‘bots were getting more sophisticated and spreading, your first reaction might be one of concern. But what if I told you that those Russian ‘bots served coffee? Well, then you might welcome them with open arms.

Moscow-based Foodtronics has created FIBBEE, a robot barista that serves up all manner of lattes and other coffee drinks. Like Briggo and Cafe X here in the U.S., FIBBEE is an automated kiosk that can be set up in high-traffic areas, and like those American counterparts, the number of FIBBEE locations is expanding.

Moscow is downright hot for robo-baristas right now, as FIBBEE joins another automated coffee service, MontyCafe.

In our quest to chronicle the rise of food robots all over the world, following is an email interview with Foodtronics’ CEO Alexandr Khvastunov about FIBBEE. NOTE: Answers in this post were slightly revised after publication as Foodtronics felt the translations weren’t entirely accurate.

SPOON: What is Fibbee?
Aleksandr Khvastunov: FIBBEE is a robot-barista. We believe that it has a female entity so FIBBEE is her given name. Her personality is bright, easy-going and positive.

Besides the fact that she’s an ideal barista who never fails, FIBBEE may give you emotional recharge. She serves coffee to customer in one of the five colorful cups which are supposed to provoke different moods: boost, energy, balance, insight and fun.

How is Fibbee different from Cafe X, Briggo or even MontyCafe?
We’ve been professionally engaged in coffee for the past 8 years. We’ve opened traditional coffee houses (so-called third wave coffee houses), were engaged in the coffee wholesale and other projects.

At some point we understood that robotic retail may give us an opportunity to grow and scale well our love of coffee as of the lack of human factor – FIBBEE is fast, she’s always in a good mood and ready to meet your needs.

We have developed almost all technical components for FIBBEE, from chips and control systems to our own manipulators (specific system of moving objects).

We also have two coffee machine modules and we can brew two drinks at the same time. One manipulator inserts glasses into the coffee machine and when the drink is ready rearranges it into the waiting buffer. Another manipulator swaps coffee from the buffer to one of the 3 areas of issue.

How many different types of drinks can Fibbee make? Can it do hot and cold drinks?
Current menu includes espresso, americano, lungo, cortado, latte, cappuccino, cappuccino light, and coffee with syrups.

Still our customers can customize any drink. For example, they can add milk to black coffee in the required quantity, adjust the amount of foam and milk in cappuccino and latte, or select milk temperature (cold or hot).

In the nearest future we plan to introduce additional types of milk (soybean, oatmeal), various types of coffee beans and drinks with ice and nitro coffee which are being tested right now.

How many Fibbee’s are there and where are they located? How many more do you plan to roll out?
We have 2 robotic coffee bars now, and in July we’re opening the third. By the end of 2019, we plan to open more than 12 in Moscow. We’re creating our own chain and currently do not sell franchises.

Our ambition is to become the largest robotic chain of coffee houses in Russia and Europe. Because we love coffee and know how to make it delicious.