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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Back to School for Virtual Food Halls

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We’ve said it once (actually, a lot more than once), we’ll say it again: university towns are the ideal testing ground for new meal delivery-related endeavors. Little wonder, then, that when launching its next virtual food hall, hospitality platform C3 (Creating Culinary Communities) chose Graduate Hotels, which operates more or less exclusively across America’s major college towns.

C3 specializes in delivery-only restaurant brands that cater to many different food types, from burgers to caviar. For this latest partnership, it will take over kitchen operations at Graduate Hotel properties, effectively turning those spaces into ghost kitchens for its virtual restaurant brands from which customers can order digitally.

A key piece of this news is that food will be available to the entire community, not just guests of the Graduate Hotel. For restaurant brands under the C3 umbrella, that means exposure to tens of thousands of individuals from student body populations, many of whom are already partial to digital ordering when it comes to how they get their meals. Just ask companies like Aramark, which acquired order-ahead app Good Uncle in 2019, Grubify, which was developed by Columbia students, and robot delivery company Starship’s college-centric user base. There are also, of course, the usual suspects: third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Grubhub.

Universities, and university towns with them, are an obvious testing ground for meal-related tech. Companies like C3 and those above have something of a captive audience, given that most campuses feature lots of bodies in a relatively small geographical area, people eating at all hours of the day/night, and a younger audience that has grown up using technology. Add faculty, staff, local residents, and hotel guests to that list, and that’s a massive potential customer base for C3 and its restaurant brands to reach when it launches at Graduate Hotels.

That we haven’t seen more of these virtual food halls on college campuses isn’t surprising, since students have been largely absent from their campuses — and therefore from college towns — for nearly a year because of the pandemic. However, as of last check, many colleges plan to reopen in the spring. Behaviors around how consumers get their meals has already shifted towards more digital ordering and to-go-friendly formats like delivery. By the time class is actually back in session, these behaviors will be even more firmly cemented into daily routines.

Side note: it would not be surprising to eventually see a virtual food hall like C3 team up with a robot-delivery company like Starship to further streamline operations, get deliveries out faster, and make them more socially distanced. 

Given all that, it seems C3 picked an optimal time to launch its virtual restaurants in the college town market — before everyone else rushes to do the same.

The Automat Comeback is Getting Legit

Another obvious meal-delivery concept that will in all likelihood hit college campuses one day soon is the net-gen Automat, a point underscored by the recent launch of Automat Kitchen in Jersey City, New Jersey.

These new versions of the mid-century staple are just as they sound: high-tech versions of the old cubby-style system a la Horn & Hardart. The difference nowadays is that instead of dropping a nickel into a slot to retrieve a meal, users can order ahead via an app and use a digitally delivered code to unlock the cubby door.

Towards the end of 2020, I wrote that the Automat would make a comeback thanks both to technology and to the industry-wide change towards takeout meals the restaurant biz has absorbed.

The Automat is well-suited for the pandemic era (which will probably last longer than the actual pandemic) because of it’s quick, cheap, and truly contactless nature. There is no human-to-human interaction involved with either placing a meal in a cubby or scanning a code to remove the food. And as ghost kitchens, delivery-only brands, and virtual food halls proliferate (see above), the Automat format looks increasingly attractive. 

Automat Kitchen’s version of it is a hardware/software combo that features made-to-order meals meant to be healthier takes on the comfort foods of yesteryear. It’s located in an office building connected to a shopping mall, so as the population ventures back to physical workspaces and stores, this location will see a lot of traffic.

Automat Kitchen joins the likes of the forthcoming Brooklyn Dumpling Shop as well as Minnow and Starbucks in bringing the automated cubby system to the restaurant experience. Expect plenty of other implementations to emerge this year.

Starbucks is considering more drive-thru-only stores with zero seating, the company said in its recent earnings call. Other possible future formats include significantly smaller location sizes and the ever-popular double-drive-thru lane concept.

Chipotle is testing out carside pickup at 29 of its locations in California. Customers order via the Chipotle app and, upon arriving at the restaurant, hit the “I’m here” button to get their food.

Mealco, a company that helps chefs create delivery-only brands, raised $7 million in seed funding. The round was led by Rucker Park Capital along with FJLabs and others.

Automat Kitchen Launches a 21st Century Automat in Jersey City

A digital-age reimagining of the Automat opened this week in Jersey City, New Jersey that combines high-end comfort food via touchless, contactless tech. The company in question is called Automat Kitchen, and according to a press release sent out this week, its first Automat location is in the the Newport Tower, which houses office space and is connected to a shopping mall.

It’s the latest development in the slowly growing movement to reinvent the Automat, which was a mainstay of to-go eating throughout most of the twentieth century. Back then, the coin-operated cubbies contained hot and cold foods, and the server-less concept provided meals for thousands of diners every day.

The march of time put an end to the concept in the 1990s. Tech and a global pandemic have brought it back in the 2020s.

Automat Kitchen’s version is a hardware/software combo. Users order ahead of time at the Automat Kitchen site and select a pickup time. They can also order at the physical location by scanning a QR code posted to pull up the menu. All orders are done digitally. Once the order is placed and paid for, the user receives a code with which to unlock one of the stacked cubbies. 

Besides the the obvious difference of ordering and paying digitally instead of unlocking a cubby with a nickel, the other major change in Automat Kitchen’s system is the food itself. Originally, Automat food was pre-made, so you weren’t exactly getting the freshest burger on the block. Automat Kitchen notes its meals are cooked to order and are meant to be a fresh, healthier take on comfort foods. Actual humans cook the food, but there is no customer-to-staff interaction in Automat Kitchen’s process. 

The pandemic has created the perfect setting in which this type of meal format could become hugely popular. The entire restaurant industry has shifted its focus to off-premises meal formats, with pickup being a major one of them. Menus are simplifying to save on costs and ensure travel-friendly foods. Major restaurant chains are designing the dining room out of their plans, or at the very least minimizing its presence. Finally, a vaccine being circulated doesn’t mean we’re all going to rip off the masks and hit the Golden Corral in droves come spring. Safety and a lessening of human-to-human interactions in the restaurant will be a concern for a lot of customers as they trickle back into some semblance of normality.

Another notable revamp of the Automat is the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, which will open its first location this year and feature a similar temperature-controlled cubbies accompanied by tech. Further south, in Colombia, ghost kitchen network RobinFood has pickup cubbies at its locations, too. Digital cubby systems, meanwhile, have popped up now and again for years in the restaurant industry from the likes of Brightloom, Minnow, Ubo, and others. The list of companies updating the Automat will in all likelihood get much longer this year.   

The Automato Aims to Be a Mobile Automat for Food Pickup

On a podcast a couple months back, The Spoon editorial team asked “Did The Automat Ever Really Go Away?” If they did, then they have returned with a vengeance, and are now poised to hit the streets, if BIB Technologies’ Automato works as promised.

The Automato is an all-electric vehicle that carries an array of temperature-controlled cubbies that can store food orders. It’s only in the protoype phase right now, by creator Deloss Pickett (who also created the all-electric FRO mobile frozen yogurt cart) gave me a video tour of the device.

Right now, Pickett is focused on the prepared meals market, meaning that restaurants would sell basically kits of food through the Automato that a person would grab and assemble and prepare on their own. This may seem a little counter intuitive at first because one of the conveniences of an automat is the ability to grab your food and go, not grab your food and go make it somewhere else.

But the Automato isn’t meant to be a delivery vehicle running back and forth between a restaurant and different neighborhoods. Nor is it a food truck making orders on-demand. It’s meant to go out to a busy area (or multiple areas in a day) and park, with customers coming to it. With that in mind, the first version of Automato only offers cooled cubbies and not heated ones. A refrigerated meal kit can last a lot longer than a fully cooked meal sitting in a heated box all day.

That’s not to say Automato won’t ever offer heated foods, the vehicle is customizeable to different client needs. It’s just starting with this cold prepared meal kit approach.

Pickett has been lobbying his local government officials in LA to get his vehicles sidewalk clearance. That way, a restaurant that’s buying or leasing an Automato could park it on a busy pedestrian area. People would order through the restaurant app, designate the nearby Automato as the pickup location, and use a QR code to unlock the cubby.

Pickett didn’t provide any specifics around when the Automato would come to market, or where (though LA is a safe bet given that’s where the company is located). The cost for an Automato will be $1,000 down and $3,000 a month ($2,500 a month with a yearlong commitment). This includes the truck, the insurance the app and POS system. There’s also a $1 per order fee as well.

If this idea of a mobile automat sounds familiar, that’s because it’s something Veebie tried a few years back (although in a different fashion) before it eventually became Minnow and pivoted to stationary pickup lockers.

Automats may have never gone away, but they are certainly experiencing a renaissance right now as restaurants explore more contactless food delivery/pickup options during this pandemic. The Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is using automats to create “zero human interaction” in its stores. And as my colleague, Jenn Marston wrote, we could be seeing more automat concepts, especially for ghost kitchens:

By way of a hypothetical example, imagine a virtual deli that has a kitchen space from which it fulfills online orders. It would fulfill delivery orders, but also maintain a cubby system outside to hold any pickup orders. Throw a few tables and chairs near the machine where those who want can eat onsite. Other than the smartphones and the digital ordering, the setup isn’t hugely different from the original Automat concept.

Now we’ll have to see if the Automato can take the automat show on the road.

Ghost Kitchen, Meet the Automat

Inexplicably, I’ve always wished I could have experienced the Automat in its heyday. Created at the tail-end of the Nineteenth Century, Automats consisted of a wall of cubbies containing simple food and beverage items users could unlock for a nickel. It was essentially fast food before fast food existed.

Fast forward to 2020, and it looks like I may yet be able to experience the concept, albeit a higher-tech version of it.

As we chatted on this week during our Editor podcast, the Automat is making a comeback. That’s thanks to restaurant companies launching cubby systems that are equipped with temperature control functionality and that can be unlocked with a user’s own smartphone. Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is the latest to iterate on the old concept, following in the footsteps of Minnow, Brightloom (née Eatsa), and others.

The resurgence makes sense, given the restaurant industry’s sudden shift to off-premises formats and simpler foods that travel well. Which is why I can think of no better location for Automat 2.0 than outside a ghost kitchen.

One of the major selling points for ghost kitchens is that they allow restaurants to operate without incurring the costs of a front-of-house operation. The ghost kitchen as we know it is also specifically designed to serve off-premises formats. Up to now, that’s been primarily delivery, but the pandemic has generated so much interest in ghost kitchens that we’re now seeing different styles of the concept emerge, including those that offer pickup. Kitchen United lists both options on its website, as does DoorDash (for its DoorDash Kitchens facility). Having a pickup option means restaurants can still take advantage of the ghost kitchen format without necessarily coughing up the sky-high commission fees associated with delivery orders.

At the same time, the pandemic continues, and even if it were to magically disappear tomorrow, our heightened expectations around cleanliness and “contactless” restaurant experiences are here to stay. Which is to say, customers are going to want minimized human contact for restaurant transactions for a long time to come. 

It doesn’t get more minimized than the Automat. By way of a hypothetical example, imagine a virtual deli that has a kitchen space from which it fulfills online orders. It would fulfill delivery orders, but also maintain a cubby system outside to hold any pickup orders. Throw a few tables and chairs near the machine where those who want can eat onsite. Other than the smartphones and the digital ordering, the setup isn’t hugely different from the original Automat concept.

Of course, some ghost kitchen companies choose to locate their facilities in former warehouse districts that don’t get much foot traffic. But as we outlined in our recent Spoon Plus report on ghost kitchens, that’s the exception, rather than the norm right now. Most ghost kitchen operators will tell you location matters, and the closer you can locate one to customers, the better.

And actually, we’re already trekking towards this automat-in-a-ghost kitchen future. Besides the above examples, Starbucks launched its Express stores in 2019 that act as ghost kitchens for nearby locations and include a wall of pickup lockers onsite. Other fast food chains have whittled their dining room concepts down to more to-go-friendly formats, and many of these orders are now being fulfilled in ghost kitchens.  

Automats were originally a precursor to fast food. These days, it seems like fast food may yet prove to be the forerunner to Automat 2.0.

This is the web version of our newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

Location-based Picnicking

You may remember a year or so ago when I wrote about Domino’s partnering with a company called what3words to delivery food to street corners, parks, and other non-traditional addresses. 

It seems what3words is at it again with food delivery, this time partnering with Honest Burgers in London to deliver to random swaths of grass in the city’s Clapham district.

What3words’ platform divides the entire world into 3m x 3m squares, which are GPS coordinates. An algorithm then converts the coordinates into three-word addresses to give each a unique (and often bizarre) name (see image above). With this technology, you could literally choose a random patch of a park sans any notable landmarks or other identifiable items and get your burger delivered to your exact location.

The program with Honest Burgers is only running for a few days and restricted to Clapham. But with more of the restaurant experience taking place outside the four walls of the business, a technology like this could become huge. That’s assuming the restaurant biz makes it through winter and and once more heads to outdoor spaces.

Cracker Barrel’s gone the ghost kitchen route. The company said at its earnings call this week that it plans to convert one of its locations in Indianapolis, Ind. to a ghost kitchen that will handle large-scale catering orders as well as some individual orders placed via third-party delivery services. The store will also be used to help fulfill delivery orders from other nearby Cracker Barrel locations during busy times, like the upcoming fall/winter holiday season.

Meanwhile, Shake Shack said this week it has expanded curbside pickup to 40 percent of its stores, and that roughly one third of all app orders are being placed for curbside. The company has plans to extend curbside to 50 of its locations by the end of September, and is also exploring the possibility of more drive-thrus and walk-up windows.

The New York City Council passed a bill that lets restaurants add a “COVID-19 surcharge” of up to 10 percent to a customer’s bill for up to 90 days after indoor dining reaches full capacity. In other words, for the foreseeable future. The bill is an attempt to help restaurants generate additional revenue as the struggle to keep the lights on continues.

The Food Tech Show: Did The Automat Ever Really Go Away?

In this week’s episode of The Food Tech Show, we talk about those new contactless systems and compare them to a technology from long ago: the automat.

Yep, that old-school idea born in New York City a century ago is back (or maybe it never left?), showing up everywhere from restaurants to condos.

Jenn Marston waxes nostalgic about the automat and other concepts that seem to be getting a second look as the food system looks to reinvent itself in the wake of COVID-19.

We also talk about these stories in today’s podcast:

As always, you can listen to this week’s podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get podcasts. You can also download the episode direct to your device or just click play below.

A Next-Gen Automat Suggests the Restaurant Biz Should Mine Its Past When Planning Its Future

“Contactless” in the restaurant biz nowadays usually refers to digital order and pay processes that lessen but don’t totally eradicate human-to-human contact. After all, someone has to bring the food out, whether in the dining room or at the curbside, and the robots haven’t totally taken over quite yet. 

But a forthcoming store in Brooklyn has figured out a way to take human beings out of the picture entirely. The Brooklyn Dumpling Shop (BDS) is slated to open in October (confusingly in Manhattan) and will feature what the business calls Z.H.I. — “zero human interaction,” according to QSR magazine.

The fully automated restaurant concept will rely on temperature-controlled food lockers from ONDO and powered by Panasonic. Think of a high-tech version of the classic Automats of mid-20th century NYC. And as it turns out, that’s exactly what Brooklyn Chop House’s Stratis Morfogen, who conceptualized BDS, was going for: 

“The Automat was single handedly the greatest fast food distribution equipment ever designed. The technology we’re bringing to Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is unlike anything seen before, which will allow us to create an Autoflow from a customers’ cell phone, to our touchless ordering kiosks, right to our lockers to bring quick serve restaurants into the 21st century,” he said in today’s press release.

With this automat 2.0, Customers will be able to place an order on their phone or at the restaurant via a touchless kiosk. Once the food is cooked, a runner places it in the food locker and a notification is sent to the customer’s phone. The customer unlocks their designated locker with a code to retrieve their food. Locker temperatures can be set to “hot,” “cold,” and “ambient,” to allow for more precise temperature control during the pickup process. BDS also said its food will be available via the major third-party delivery platforms. 

BDS is one the first “new” restaurant formats we’ve heard of that’s legitimately contactless, which makes it an inherently attractive concept in the midst of a global health crisis. 

More intriguing, though, is that Morfogen mined the past to help design the future restaurant format — one of them, anyway. The Automat, which was originally developed at the end of the 19th century, became immensely popular during its lifespan because it provided a fast, cheap, efficient way to grab a bite to eat. It served a huge variety of food, and there was zero interaction between customers and those making the food. (Side note: the format wasn’t without its controversies around labor, which should be considered in this day and age.)

Thanks especially to the pandemic, those customer demands for speed, efficiency, and cheap eats are back in full force, so when you stop and think about it, an Automat format seems like a no-brainer. And it’s probably a concept that will make its way into all manner of public settings sooner rather than later, whether that’s a restaurant, the airport, and office buildings, among others. And BDS isn’t the first time someone’s tried to reinvent the automat: Minnow just raised a seed round for its contactless food lockers, which the company is installing residential buildings, and Brightloom (née Eatsa) has been pedaling a high-tech version of the Automat for years now.

In the meantime, it might behoove the restaurant industry to further mine past concepts that, a bit of a digital facelift might very well still make sense today. 

UBO is Using Sushi Burritos to Build an Eatsa-Style Empire in Japan

Unless you live in San Francisco, you may not be familiar with the concept of a sushirito. They are exactly what they sound like: sushi wrapped up like a burrito. A Tokyo-based company called UBO is hoping to leverage those delicious portmanteaus to help restaurant chains build out their own Brightloom (formerly Eatsa)-like experience across Japan.

I met with UBO CEO, Takehiro “Indy” Sato, at Beeat Sushi Burrito yesterday. The restaurant opened last December near the Akihabra district in Tokyo. There are no humans to greet you at the door or take your order. There are just two people tucked away working in the kitchen. To place an order, you visit the Beeat web site (no native mobile app yet), make your selection, tell them when you want to pick it up, and pay with a credit card or Amazon Pay (more on that in a second). Then you go to Beeat Sushi where there are some tables and rows of numbered cubby holes. A screen above tells you when your order is ready and which number box to pick it up from.

But UBO’s goal is not to create a Beeat empire; the restaurant itself is more of a proof-of-concept. Instead of selling sushiritos, UBO has developed the entire system from the software platform to the cameras installed in the cubbies that read the special QR codes that identify each order. UBO wants to license its tech stack to other restaurant chains, who can then integrate the automat style of eating into their own locations.

If that sounds like Eatsa Brightloom, well, you’re not wrong, though Sato said there are some differences between UBO and Brightloom. For one, the cubby holes at Beeat don’t have doors — the Japanese public health department wouldn’t allow them. Sato tried telling officials that other countries like the U.S. and China use doors, but the Japanese government said no.

Second, Sato isn’t repeating Brightloom’s mistake of trying to build his own restaurant chain. “We’re a tech company, not a sushi company,” Sato told me when I visited him at Beeat today.

To that end, the company has already iterated on its system and now offers a smaller version of its cubby system. Instead of taking up a wall, it’s more like a countertop display case with a tablet on the bottom. Sato says this diminutive footprint is better for restaurants in Japan, which are usually smaller. Restaurants could alleviate long lines and crowds by having people order ahead, then simply walk up and grab their food from the cubby.

Sato said UBO is fully self-funded right now, though the company is looking for venture funding to help scale up operations. Right now, UBO’s business model is to rent out its system at $2 per cubby per day with a two-year minimum contract. The company is currently running and planning tests with some unnamed customers.

I learned a few other interesting tid-bits about Beeat while chatting with Sato. Most surprising is that Amazon Pay is evidently super popular in Japan. Sato said that roughly 40 percent of his customers use Amazon Pay when paying for their meal. Additionally, UBO decided early on to not go with kiosk ordering. Sato didn’t think they were necessary after visiting the U.S. and seeing everyone just order with their phone inside Starbucks.

He also said that though they are connected with Uber Eats, only about 20 percent of their Beeat business is delivery right now. That was surprising to me because sushiritos are actually pretty perfect for delivery. They don’t have to stay hot and they come in a compact form factor that keeps the food in shape even when it’s jostled about. Most of all, they are delicious — you can tell they were developed by a Michelin-starred chef, Mizuguchi Kazuyoshi.

But people wanting to try a sushi burrito in Tokyo should do so soon, because if UBO’s licensing business takes off, there won’t be a need to keep Beeat open.