Foodservice giant Sodexo North America and Israeli food tech company SavorEat announced today that they have partnered on a program that will test out a new type of robotic plant-based cooking appliance to colleges and universities next year.
SavorEat makes a 3D printing robot that simultaneously extrudes and cooks plant-based proteins. The company’s appliance can produce a range of products including plant-based burgers, and in the near future kebabs, steaks and more. Additionally, the settings can be tweaked to create more customized plant-based meat such as a burger with higher fat content. The SavorEat can make three dishes at once, every five minutes.
According to the press announcement sent to The Spoon:
Sodexo will examine the robot chef system and the first product developed by SavorEat, a plant-based protein burger, within higher education institutions across the U.S. In parallel, both parties are working on reaching an agreement for the distribution of SavorEat products.
For its part, Sodexo has certainly become a forward-thinking, tech-friendly company. In this year alone, Sodexo has expanded its partnership with Kiwibot to bring delivery robots to more college campuses, and it has partnered with controlled environment agriculture (CEA) grower Vertical Harvest to source local greens for colleges and hospitals.
That Sodexo is piloting a high-tech program to delivery plant-based meats should come as no surprise then. Sales of plant-based meat grew 45 percent over 2020 and the category is now worth $1.4 billion. Adding this partnership with SavorEat allows Sodexo to reach more vegetarians and flexitarians on college campuses.
This is the second big pilot program for SavorEat, which will be conducting a test of its robot at the BBB hamburger chain in Israel.
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