GoodBytz, a robotic kitchen startup based in Germany, debuted its new kitchen robot last week in its hometown of Hamburg at the INTERNORGA 2023 trade fair.
The GoodBytz food robot is a modular system that can be tailored around different food types and menus:
- The refrigerated storage module can hold up between 24 and 72 different ingredients and sauces and feeds into different food assembly robots.
- The food assembly robot modules can measure ingredients, fill bowls, place toppings, and perform cleaning functions.
- A separate topping module can plan up to 24 ingredients and sauces into the bowls. GoodBytz offers a ‘cooking zone’ module that can output up to 3,000 meals per day if an operator wants a system set up for hot food.
- The serving module makes up to four different types of bowls available for serving, and the output module presents the finished food ready for delivery to the customer.
- A dishwasher module
Below is a schematic that shows the standard GoodBytz system. At 12.75 square meters – a little less than 200 square feet – the system has quite a large footprint, but that’s not that surprising given it’s essentially a self-contained professional food service kitchen.
The robot is centered around an internal chamber in which a couple of robotic arms maneuver around to gather ingredients, cook and place them into bowls. Once an order is placed, a robotic arm positions a cooking pot under the ingredient dispensing station to gather ingredients, dispense sauces and then place the pots on a shelf where they are rotated and cooked. The cooking shelf is reminiscent of the Spyce cooking system, in which the pots are spun in place to ensure proper heat and ingredient distribution.
Once the food is finished, the robotic arm picks up the cooking pot and pours the finished food into the bowl. From there, a separate robotic arm maneuvers the bowl under a dispensing station that puts vegetables and other items to complete the bowl and then places the bowl onto a conveyor belt so it can be rolled out to be picked up for serving.
The cooking robot’s sensors measure ingredients and adjust cooking times based on the dish being prepared, and the system features a touchscreen control module that allows for recipe customization. GoodBytz claims that the system, which can integrate with different ERP systems, can monitor food ingredient inventories and track ingredient freshness.
GoodBytz CEO Hendrik Susemihl told The Spoon the company uses a robotics-as-a-service business model, where the customer pays a fixed monthly service fee for the robots and an additional price-per-produced dish. The pricing varies depending on the configuration, with a cold bowl configuration differing from a configuration where meals are cooked in a convection oven.
The company’s prototype robotic kitchen was operational just three months after the company was founded in August 2021 and opened up a ghost kitchen in June 2022 to test the robot under natural conditions. GoodBytz plans to start cooking meals for its first big customer, Sodexo, in Q3 of this year. At INTERNORGA 2023, GoodBytz announced partnerships with system suppliers Palux and Winterhalter.
GoodBytz is first targeting the European market, but Susemihl said the company is eyeing expansion into the Asia and North American markets next year. The company has raised a €4 million seed round and is starting to raise its series A.
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