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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Cafe X

Cafe X’s Robot Barista is Now Slinging Coffee in Tesla’s Berlin Giga Factory

This week, Cafe X CEO Henry Hu retweeted Elon Musk, who had tweeted out a video showcasing a flythrough video of Giga Berlin. The reason? Tesla’s newest Giga Factory serves coffee and tea using one of Hu’s robotic coffee shops.

While the robot barista’s arms are painted red with the words Tesla printed on them, anyone familiar with the Cafe X robot coffee shops will instantly recognize them.

Cafe X was one of the early arrivers in robot-powered front-of-house food service, but in the last couple of years, the company’s been quiet as it closed most of its San Francisco locations. In recent months, however, Hu has been tweeting about the company shipping out new Cafe Xs and getting Tesla merch, so it’s probably not too surprising one showed up in a Giga Factory. It probably didn’t hurt that one of Cafe X’s original investors is Jason Calcanis, a close associate of Elon, who has been actively pushing the idea.

Cafe X’s last venture round that was disclosed was in 2020, and it recently raised money via the crowdfunding platform Republic. The company’s disclosure on Republic said its robot cafes at SFO generated $700 thousand in 2022 alone and that the company had shipped five robotic coffee shops in 2022. As of early spring, the company said it had orders for ten more in 2023 and expected to ship a total of 50 this year. The company listed the cost for a Cafe X at $285 thousand with an annual software and service cost of $15 thousand.

Cafe X Re-Opens SFO Robot Barista

Those of you still going to airports can once again grab a robot-made coffee at the San Francisco International Airport. Cafe X re-opened its automated barista kiosk in Terminal 3 at SFO earlier this week.

Cafe X had shuttered both of its airport locations (the other one was at the San Jose Airport) last year as the global COVID-19 pandemic decimated air travel. We reached Cafe X Founder and CEO, Henry Hu via Twitter today. He told us that the SFO location was actually closed by the airport because Terminal 3 was seeing so little use. Hu said SFO gave Cafe X the greenlight to re-open recently, as traffic there has ticked back up.

When we last spoke with Hu in August, he said that despite the SFO and San Jose airport closures, Cafe X was still in talks to place its robo-barista at a number of other airports. Airport installations had been a key go-to market strategy for automated vending services and kiosks like Cafe X and Briggo (which is now Costa Coffee). Briggo had even signed a partnership with SSP America to place its robotic baristas in 25 airports throughout 2020 and 2021.

But as noted, the pandemic closed off airports as high-volume locations. Automated food services had to look elsewhere for places where a lot of people want food and beverages quickly.

However, with multiple vaccines beginning to be distributed this year, we could actually see an increase in airport deals for automated vending companies. There will be a lot of pent up desire to travel as the population gets vaccinated, and those returning to the friendly skies will want/need a fresh hot cup of coffee. Cafe X’s robot barista can not only make a mean latte, it also does so in a more contactless way than traditional coffee shops. Perhaps this combination will help Cafe X take off.

The Food Tech Show: An Almost All Coffee Pod: Spinn, Coffee Robots & Atomo

The Spoon team has a heavily caffeinated conversation for this week’s podcast. Here are the stories we discuss:

I also suggest new names for both Chris and Jenn (let us know what you think of Jenny Donuts).

As always, you can find The Food Tech Show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you listen. You can also download direct to your device or just click play below.

Cafe X Closed its Airport Locations and Laid Off Staff. Now It’s Planning for the Future

Cafe X has shut down its San Jose and San Francisco airport operations, laid off staff and made a number of other market adjustments as the company adapts to the new realities brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Henry Hu, Co-Founder and CEO of Cafe X told us via Twitter messaging that with airport traffic decimated, thanks to the coronavirus, the two airport locations have been closed for months. He is unsure when they will reopen. Hu says that they are still in talks with other airports for new Cafe X locations.

At the same time, however, Cafe X has also started taking pre-orders for machines on its website, which lists the price at $200,000 per robotic kiosk ($5,000 deposit required), and says they will be shipped in Q4 of 2020.

Hu said that Cafe X is not a franchise, the company is just selling the machine and providing support, which can include recipes and menus if the customers wants. Additionally, customers can still choose to purchase coffee and supplies through Cafe X.

This is a little different from when Cafe X first started a couple years back, when the company was not only offering robot-made coffee, but also had a human on hand to provide a more curated coffee experience. The plan at that time was for Cafe X to own and operate its own machines.

The actual physical shape of the Cafe X machine has changed as well. Gone are the rounded corners of the kiosk, replaced with more square right angles.

It’s been a tumultuous year for Cafe X. In January, the company shuttered its three downtown San Francisco locations to focus on its airport business, and now those locations are closed as well. Hu said that because of the pandemic, Cafe X laid off most of its staff except for the engineers.

There does seem to be some light at the end of this COVID tunnel for Cafe X, however. Hu posted a photo on Twitter today of one of its robot kiosks being shipped off to Asia. Hu wouldn’t provide many details, but said its part of a big project in Asia that will include 150-plus machines over the next couple of years.

As I’ve written before, I’m all-in on automated vending machines like Cafe X and Briggo, especially during these pandemic times. Businesses and consumers alike will be looking for ways to reduce human-to-human interactions when it comes to getting their food. Robotic kiosks not only remove one human from the equation, but also hold all of their food and other ingredients behind glass walls away from people. Additionally, robots can run all day without taking breaks (or calling in sick). Spoon Plus subscribers can read my full report on the future of vending machines.

The pandemic is far from over (especially here in the U.S.), so we’ll see if COVID, which negatively impacted Cafe X though most of this year, could also come to the company’s rescue.

NOTE: An earlier version of this article said that Cafe-X’s order of 150 machines was happening over the coming year instead of over the next couple of years.

The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report

Thanks to advances in hardware, the internet of things, and food preparation, vending machines today are basically restaurants in a box. They offer high-end cuisine in minutes, require minimal setup time, and have the on-board computing smarts to manage inventory and communicate any issues that arise.

With these capabilities, it’s no wonder the vending machine category was valued at more than $30 billion in 2018, according to Grandview Research, and was anticipated to have a CAGR of 9.4 percent from 2019 through 2025.

Had this report been written even just a few months ago, the main takeaway would have been that vending machines are perfect for high-traffic areas that operate around the clock: airports, corporate offices, college dorms, and hospitals.

But we’re living in a world continuously being shaped and reshaped by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Right now, some form of shelter-in-place orders blanket most of the U.S. Global air travel volume has plummeted, so airports are not busy. Non-essential businesses are closed and people are working from home, not office buildings. And colleges may not hold in-person classes until 2021.

While on the surface, those factors suggest vending machine companies will be yet-another sector wiped out by coronavirus, there has actually never been a better time for the automated vending machine industry. The small footprint and high-end food these devices offer are perhaps more important than ever at a time when minimizing human-to-human contact in foodservice is paramount to doing business. That makes the vending machine market uniquely positioned to capitalize on a post-pandemic world.

This report will define what the automated vending machine space is, list the major players, and present the challenges and opportunities for the market going forward.

Companies profiled in this report include Alberts, API Tech/Smart Pizza, Basil Street, Blendid, Briggo, Byte Technology, Cafe X, Chowbotics, Crown Coffee, Farmer’s Fridge, Fresh Bowl, Le Bread Xpress, Macco Robotics, TrueBird, and Yo-Kai Express.

This research report is exclusive for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.

Between Cafe X, Zume and Creator, Are We in a Food Robo-pocalypse? Nah.

Last April, less than a year ago, The Spoon held its first food robotics summit. Not to toot our own horn, but by any measure it was a success. Sellout crowd. All the cool robot startups attended. And major retailer and restaurant chain buyers came to hear about the future of food automation and strike deals. It seemed, at least then, that the robot revolution had begun.

But the promise of food robots has apparently run headlong into the realities of running a startup. The opening week of the new year and new decade has been brutal for food robot startups. Consider:

And while it happened last year, Miso Robotics, which makes Flippy the robot, lost its CEO and COO in September of last year, and when it wanted to raise more money it turned to equity crowdfunding. This was notable given that Miso had raised $13 million in venture funding previously. Were those institutional funding avenues no longer welcoming?

Given this glut of bad news, it’s easy to think that the food robot revolution is over before it has really begun. But I’m actually a bit more bullish, and think this is more of a growing pains phase and there are some reasons to be optimistic.

While Cafe X did close its three downtown locations, the company launched the third generation of its robot and launched two new locations recently at the San Jose Airport and San Francisco Airport (SFO). Additionally, the company is working on getting its NSF certification so it can operate as a vending machine, allowing the robot to be open longer hours and without a human present (which is handy at airports!).

While everyone pegs Zume as a robot pizza company, the robots only did some things like pull crusts out of the oven. The company was really more about data. It’s just as easy to pin the blame on Zume’s lack of focus as it had acquired a compostable packaging company to launch a whole line of packaging last year as well as a mobile ghost kitchen business.

Creator getting stiffed could equally be attributable to Softbank, which has reportedly backed out of more than one startup funding deal as it wades through its WeWork debacle. Softbank, was involved with Zume, investing $375 million in that company in 2018, with a reported additional $375 million to follow at a later date.

Other food robotics startups seem to be doing alright (though we don’t have access to their books). Picnic just raised $5 million and launched its pizza assembly robot, which can crank out 300 pizzas an hour. Chowbotics released its Sally 2.0 salad robot and is rolling out to college campuses. And Briggo opened up its robotic Coffee Haus at its first Whole Foods, as well as a location at SFO and has a deal with SSP America to launch its robo-baristas at 25 additional airport locations.

This rough patch is probably a good time for everyone in the industry to pause and assess what we really want from robots, or even whether or not “robots” are what we really want. Perhaps we should move away from referring to them as robots and call them machines. The term robots carries too much sci-fi baggage (the Terminator, Rosie the robot, etc.) and artificially inflates expectations among consumers and investors.

“Machines,” on the other hand, strip away that baggage. We know they are meant to work all day, consistently, pretty much non-stop. So they can do jobs at odd hours when humans don’t, or do jobs that a more dangerous for a person (working a deep fryer).

We’re soon going to be surrounded by a new wave of vending machines like Chowbotics, Briggo, Blendid and hot ramen dispenser Yo-Kai Express. These companies are all trying to upend what a vending machine is by serving fresh and well crafted food quickly. They won’t replace restaurants, and they aren’t meant to. They are meant to get a lot of people a tasty meal at a reasonable price quickly.

The automated food revolution is coming, it just might not be roboticized.

Cafe X Shuts Down its Three Downtown San Francisco Locations

Cafe X, the robot coffee chain, shuttered its three downtown San Francisco locations. The San Francisco Chronicle was first to report the news, and Cafe X Co-Founder and CEO Henry Hu confirmed the shutdowns yesterday on Twitter.

Cafe X builds standalone kiosks featuring a robotic arm that serves up hot and cold beverages. It had locations in San Francisco’s Metreon building, a dedicated store on Market St. and a pop-up-style location on Sansome and Bush St.

The downtown SF closures follow the recent launch of two new Cafe X locations at the San Jose Airport and San Francisco Airport. These new locations feature the latest version of the Cafe X robot, which includes an expanded menu and a customizable space for items like baked goods.

As part of that airport push, Cafe X had been working to get its NSF Certification so its robots can be designated as vending machines. In an interview with The Spoon in November, Hu said that this would allow Cafe X robots to operate longer hours and without a human on hand (Cafe X’s SF locations featured a person to help with drink selection and customer service).

In a tweet confirming the downtown closures, Hu wrote:

Our 3 downtown SF locations helped us develop the newest machine that we launched recently at SJC and SFO. Thanks to our amazing customers who supported us in SF over the last 3 years.

We received the following statement from Hu by email this morning:

We launched our prototype robotic coffee bars in San Francisco in 2017, in an effort to perfect our beverage offerings, software, and hardware solution.

We launched our newest V2.1 product at two airports, SFO and SJC, in Q4 of 2019, which now serve thousands of customers every week and is capable of preparing up to six drinks in a minute.

Having learned everything we could from our San Francisco locations, we decided to laser focus on growing Cafe X at airports through partnerships with leading coffee brands and retailers in addition to Cafe X operated units. 

Cafe X has raised $14.5 million in funding, with its last round being $12 million back in August of 2018. The sudden shutdown of its three SF locations and the departure of its COO last August could be seen as some sort of harbinger of more bad news to come.

Food robot startups have hit some tough times recently. Zume, which uses robots to help make pizzas, is reportedly laying off 80 percent of its staff. And according to Axios, Creator, the robot hamburger restaurant also in SF, hit a fundraising snag when Softbank supposedly backed out of an investment deal.

The case for Cafe X optimism would be the company’s recent airport launches. Airports are a potentially big market for automated food service that can serve passengers and employees at all hours of the day. Cafe X robot coffee rival Briggo recently launched at the San Francisco airport as well and has signed a deal with SSP America to open up 25 more airport locations.

We have reached out to Cafe X to learn more and will update this story accordingly.

Cafe X to Open its Robot Barista at SFO on Dec. 23

Good news for fans of robots and coffee who are flying either to or from San Francisco’s SFO airport! On Monday, December 23, Cafe X is opening up its latest robot barista location there.

Cafe X’s SFO robot is located in Terminal 3 near Boarding Area E and is the second airport for Cafe X, following the company’s launch at the San Jose Airport earlier this month. Both airport locations sport Cafe X’s new robot design which has three larger pickup windows, an expanded menu, and the ability to make up to six drinks at a time.

Though Cafe Xs typically have a human on hand to help with customer service, the company is in the process of getting its robot designated as a vending machine. This will allow the robot to operate without a human on hand and thus be easier to serve drinks at all hours of the day and night.

Busy travelers will be getting their cups of coffee from even more robots in the coming new year. Elsewhere in Terminal 3 at SFO is Briggo’s robotic Coffee Haus, which also has two locations at the Austin-Bergstrom airport. And Briggo has also partnered with SSP America to open up an additional 25 airport locations over the next two years.

If any avid Spoon readers are flying through SFO next week, stop by one or both of these robo-barista and let us know how you like them!

Cafe X Opens New Version of its Robot Barista in San Jose Airport

If you flew into/out of the San Jose Airport over the past Thanksgiving holiday — bummer! You just missed having a robot make and serve you a latte. Cafe X announced today that its latest automated coffee kiosk is now open for business at the San Jose Airport (SJC).

This is the fourth Cafe X location to open in the Bay Area and SJC is the company’s first airport location (the opening of Cafe X at the San Francisco airport has been delayed due to airport construction).

This also marks the release of a new version of the Cafe X robot that was built in-house and features larger pickup windows, an expanded menu (the robot can now make 6 drinks at a time including four from different taps) and an designated area that can be used for different modules like pastry shelves in the future.

With high volumes of people needing their caffeine fix in a hurry, airports are prime locations for coffee robots like Cafe X’s. The autonomous articulating arm can consistently and quickly make drinks all day without needing to take a break. Cafe X rival Briggo also opened up a location at SFO this summer, and is also at the Austin-Bergstrom International airport.

One difference between Cafe X and Briggo is that Briggo is a standalone coffee kiosk with no humans, whereas Cafe X still has humans on hand to provide customer service and product education. However, I spoke with Cafe X Founder and CEO Henry Hu today, and he told me that the company is in the final process of getting NSF certification so it can operate as a vending machine. Operating as a vending machine means that Cafe X’s will be able to operate 24 hours a day with or without a human.

You’re going to see more high-end vending machines like Cafe X, Briggo and Yo-Kai Express, which makes hot bowls of ramen, pop up in more airports and other high-traffic locations in the future. Vending machines can operate around the clock to feed hungry travelers or employees when other stores are closed. Briggo has partnered with SSP America to open up its Coffee Hauses at an additional 25 airport locations.

Cafe X’s new robot is located in Terminal B, Cafe X at SJC and is open daily from 5:30 AM 10:30 PM for now. Hu said Cafe X will be expanding outside of the Bay Area and into New York next year.

Cafe X COO, Cynthia Yeung, Departs From the Robot Coffee Company

Cynthia Yeung, now the former COO Cafe X, posted on Linkedin yesterday that as of last Friday she was no longer with the coffee robotics startup after having worked there for a year and a half. Normally we don’t write about executive shuffles, but Yeung was high up at the company, and her departure comes at a time when rival robo-coffee company, Briggo, is scaling up.

Yeung posted the following to Linkedin yesterday:

Friday was my last day as COO of Cafe X Technologies. I learned a lot from growing the company (now 35+ people) through our Series A and am grateful to Henry Hu, Jason Calacanis, and David O. Sacks for giving me the opportunity to be in “the room where it happens”. I’m proud of the upcoming SFO launch of our new machine (in addition to a few other locations), bringing on more experienced engineering talent, and having built some corporate infrastructure to help the team scale. I’m looking forward to seeing where the company goes next.

One thing that caught our eye is that Yeung said “through our Series A,” but so far, the $14.5 million Cafe X has raised has been publicly referred to as seed and “Seed-1” money, not Series A. We reached out to both Yeung and Cafe X CEO, Henry Hu to see if the company has raised a new round or if there is some other explanation. Yeung directed all questions to Hu.

UPDATE: Hu told us via tweet that they renamed the Seed-1 as a Series A.

Regardless, as Yeung also indicates, her departure comes as Cafe X is set to launch its first robot barista at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), the company’s first location outside of the city of San Francisco.

But Cafe X’s robot will actually be the second automated cafe at SFO. Earlier this summer, Austin-based Briggo opened its robot Coffee Haus at that airport. In fact, Briggo was initially awarded the SFO contract, but Yeung was instrumental in the inclusion of Cafe X. As the San Francisco Business Times reported last November:

“We are striving to be a very, very responsible employer in San Francisco bringing trade jobs back to the city,” Cynthia Yeung, COO of Cafe X, told the SFO commissioners at the Nov. 6 [SFO Airport Commission] meeting. “And I want to understand why, with so little transparency, this trial program was awarded to a Texas based company?”

High-traffic locations like airports are perfect for robotic baristas because robots are fast, accurate and can operate around the clock. While there are plenty of airports around the world, they will be a battleground for automated food services like vending machines and robot coffee makers. Yeung left just days after Briggo announced it had entered into an exclusive agreement with SSP America to put Coffee Hauses in an additional 25 airports around the U.S. and Canada over the next two years.

While this was probably more of a coincidence, as Yeung indicated on Linkedin, Cafe X is entering the scaling phase of its startup lifecycle — a time when having steady leadership at the top is especially important.

Here at The Spoon, we kinda hope Yeung stays in food robotics because she’s a great guest to have on stage at our Smart Kitchen Summit and Articulate conferences.

This article originally stated Yeung worked at Cafe X for a year, it was actually a year and a half and this post has been updated to reflect that.

Video: Cafe X and Byte Technologies on Data Rabbit Holes and the One Thing Your Data Team Must Track

The beauty of running an automated or robot-powered business like the coffee-slinging Cafe X or Byte Technologies smart fridges, is that you generate a lot of data. What people are purchasing, when they purchase it, where, how often, etc. All this data powers demand algorithms that help companies like Cafe X and Byte be more efficient by accurately determining business critical decisions such as products to offer and how much inventory to carry.

The downside of running an automated or robot-powered business like Cafe X or Byte Technologies is that you generate a lot of data. Too much data, actually. You could easily spend most of your time diving down a data rabbit hole, trying to fine-tune demand algorithms and actually wind up making them less useful.

So how do you determine what data to capture and what data to pay attention to?

Glad you asked! Because the role of data was central to my discussion with Cafe X COO Cynthia Yeung and Byte Technologies Founder Lee Mokri during the Forecasting, Personalization & Customer Service Challenges for Robotic Retail panel at our ArticulATE food robotics conference last month.

It was fascinating to sit down and learn from Yeung and Mokri about how their respective companies tackle the data issue, and how they use that data to maximize product variety within the limited square footage of their automated storefronts.

Plus, for all you entrepreneurs out there, Yeung explains the one thing you absolutely need to do when building out your data team and plan.

Watch the full video below, and check back for more of our full sessions from ArticulATE 2019.

ArticulATE 2019: Forecasting, Personalization & Customer Service Challenges for Robotic Retail

Take an Instagram Food Robot Tour of San Francisco! Cafe X, Yo-Kai Express, Creator, Blendid and Le Bread Xpress

One of the reasons we hosted our ArticulATE food robot conference in San Francisco this week is because, well, it’s where most food robots are. So it only made sense while I was in town to go on a Food Network-esque trip around town, enjoying all the robot repasts I could.

My tour did not disappoint. I spent the day walking (and Ubering) around SF visiting Cafe X, Yo-Kai Express, Creator, Blendid and Le Bread Xpress. Because it’s better to show than to tell, we created a Spoon Instagram (follow us!) to give you a glimpse at all the cool food robotics happening right now.