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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Chowbotics

Podcast: A Challenging Time for Restaurant Tech

In this episode of The Spoon, we are joined by long-time restaurant and restaurant tech journalist Nancy Luna of Insider to compare notes about what’s been a challenging few months for restaurant tech startups.

Some stories we discuss on the show include:

Click play below or find The Spoon podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

Q&A: The Spoon Talks With DoorDash’s Tom Pickett About Why The Delivery Giant Acquired Bbot

Earlier today, DoorDash announced they had acquired Bbot, a maker of order & pay software solutions. We sat down with DoorDash’s chief revenue officer Tom Pickett to hear about the thinking behind the deal. Answers have been edited slightly for clarity.

What motivated you to do this acquisition?

We’ve been watching this space over the course of the last year, and we’ve seen it evolve from this contactless solution to something that we feel is going to be a core part of what restaurants use going forward. In a similar way, online ordering wasn’t that big of a thing before COVID, but as COVID happened and digital commerce started to become a more important thing for the restaurant, we accelerated efforts and built our Storefront product and that’s now part of the arsenal for any restaurant. And so we think the same thing is starting to happen with digital ordering. I’d say we’re still in the early side of that, but we see the same trends, and we want to get ahead of it and make that easy for restaurants to be able to adopt.

Do you plan to sunset the Bbot name and replace that with DoorDash eventually?

We haven’t made final decisions on that yet, so for now, it’s still Bbot.

Anyone who’s gone into a restaurant with any degree of frequency over the past six months has had the option to pay at the table. That just seems like it’s the frequency that is just going up and up and it makes it much more convenient for the customer. I think the waiter is probably pretty happy with that as well.

From the waitstaff perspective, Bbot has told us that there’s more leverage in the model. So waiters can handle more tables and, in the end, that translates to more tips. So the waitstaff generally is happy with this type of solution. The restaurant management staff is generally happy because they can handle more demand.

And what we’ve also found is that customers tend to order more when they have access to a digital solution. That could be just because of the latency of having to wait for a waiter, and if the customer wants to order that extra drink, they can just go ahead and pull it up on their phone and order that. But the ticket size tends to go up with a digital solution.

What will (Bbot CEO) Steve Simoni’s role be post-acquisition?

Steve will be joining our product organization and he will be leading our digital in-store solutions that we continue to build. The first step is we want to integrate the Bbot solution into our broader technology stack. He’ll be driving that. And this will become part of our broader suite; if you think about Storefront, plus digital online, plus a digital in-store ordering solution, we want to make that integrated and easy to onboard and sell into our broader base of restaurants.

You are responsible from a sales perspective for both Bbot and Chowbotics (the bowl food robotics startup DoorDash acquired last year). While these are obviously very different products, they are both a part of an effort by DoorDash to diversify its product offering. Do you see any similarities between these two businesses?

On one hand, they both have to do with efficiency. The digital in-store solution is an efficiency lever, but it’s also a great customer experience addition as well. So it’s really the combination. Restaurants are learning how to operate more efficiently and the Bbot solution definitely helps in that regard. Chowbotics, on the one hand, can be an efficiency lever, if you think about Chowbotics as a back of store model, but the other side of robotics is a front of store model where we put that out to expand the footprint so it’s really more of a sales growth model.

Do you think we’re going to start seeing more of these types of acquisitions, not necessarily from DoorDash, but across the landscape?

I think we already are seeing some of that. Just look across some of the recent announcements, I think we’re early in the ecosystem. A lot of technology players out there, so I think there’s going to be a natural evolution, one way or the other through acquisitions, some of those technologies are just not going to make it over time.

Thank you for your time.

You’re welcome.

Kellogg’s Bowl Bot Cereal Robot, Based on Chowbotics Tech, Debuts at Two Universities

Kellogg’s Away From Home, a division of the CPG giant that works with foodservice operators, announced a joint pilot program with Chowbotics (now a division of DoorDash) that just debuted cereal dispensing robots at two universities. The aptly named Kellogg’s Bowl Bot will dispense a variety of Kellogg’s brand cereals as well as different milks, fruits, yogurts and more.

According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the Kellogg’s Bowl Bots are now available at Florida State University and the Univeristy of Wisconsin-Madison (which also uses Starship delivery robots!). The Kellogg’s Bowl Bot is basically a re-purposed and re-branded Chowbotics Sally robotic vending machine, which started out as a salad-making robot but has since expanded its capabilities to include other types of parfaits and bowl foods.

We’ve known about Chowbotics’ CPG ambitions since last year, when the company told us it wanted to partner with cereal companies specifically. At the time, the cereal bot use case was more about offering free samples at a grocery store, but branding and placing these machines at colleges makes a lot of sense. For one, colleges have long been a target location for Chowbotics. Prior to the pandemic, it had rolled out Sallys to a number of colleges and universities across the country. Second, the Kellogg’s Bowl Bot is perfect for our pandemic times since it doesn’t require human-to-human interaction and all of the ingredients are store inside closed containers that are themselves stored within the machine.

On top of all that, while my college days are long behind me, I assume cereal remains popular with this younger generation (when they aren’t eating avocado toast).

The Kellogg’s Bowl Bot has a special menu programmed for students that includes:

  • About Last Night with Kellogg’s Frosted Flakes, Kellogg’s Froot Loops, Kellogg’s KraveTM Chocolate, chocolate drops, banana chips, and espresso syrup
  • Hawaii 5-0 with Frosted Mini-Wheats, Bear Naked Fit Triple Berry Granola, pineapple, coconut, and mango
  • Valentine’s Day Vibes with Special K Red Berries Cereal, cocoa nibs, blueberries, strawberries, and whole milk

Or students can create their own custom bowl mixing and matching cereals, milks, nuts, seeds, fruits and more. Prices start at $2.99 and go up to $6.50, depending on selection. Students can even use their campus meal plans to purchase their bowl.

For those interested in checking out the new Kellogg’s Bowl Bots, the one at FSU is located in 1851, an on-campus dining facility and convenience store, and the robot at UW-Madison is situated on Dejope Residence Hall’s main floor, outside The Bean & Creamery.

Low-Tech: Casters Added Mobility to Chowbotics’ Vending Machines

I write about the new wave of smart vending machines a lot. And when I do, it’s almost always in the context of a fixed installation. Airports or corporate campuses and the like can tuck vending machines away in an alcove or corner and just leave them there for customers to find. But what if those vending machines were made mobile using a basic piece of hardware you can find at any Home Depot?

During her talk at our ArticulATE food automation conference this week, Chowbotics/DoorDash Head of Marketing & Design, Mara Behrens, explained how some of Chowbotics’ Sally robots were made mobile by putting them on casters. By literally putting Sally on wheels, the vending machine could be moved around a building to where hungry people are throughout the day and night.

For instance, in a hospital a Sally could be easily moved around when a particular area is closed for the night. Or in an office building, a vending machine could be moved between floors to accommodate different worker shifts.

Throughout the day at ArticulATE, we had discussed drones whizzing across Ireland’s skies to drop off lattes at people’s homes, robots packed with groceries traversing sidewalks and autonomous robot cooks capable of creating hundreds of different dishes — all modern technological miracles. But this basic caster idea stuck with me because of its simplicity.

There are companies like Yo-Kai Express, which is making an autonomous vending machine for college campuses that can be hailed to come to your location. And Fanbot roams malls, fully stocked with snacks and drinks to sell. Those solutions are great and I look forward to using them some day! But they are also expensive to outfit and require a team of people to design and implement.

Industrial casters on the other hand, are around $15 apiece. They are certainly not high-tech solution, but not every solution needs to be.

DoorDash Acquires Salad Robot Maker Chowbotics

Third party delivery service DoorDash has acquired Chowbotics, the company behind salad-making robot Sally. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Chowbotics had raised nearly $21 million in funding since its founding in 2014.

The first question that pops to mind is, Why? Chowbotics’ technology is decidely stationary. Its robot is installed at a location and makes salads, yogurt bowls and more for people that come to it. DoorDash is a company built on mobility, getting food and other goods from other places to you.

Representatives from neither company were made available to comment.

The Wall Street Journal, which appears to have scooped the announcement earlier today wrote how a DoorDash+Chowbotics combo could work:

Ideas include using the technology to help restaurants expand their menu—such as enabling a pizzeria to offer salads—or to allow a salad bar to try out new locations—a kiosk at an airport, for instance—without the need for more manpower.

One of the big selling points of modern, automated vending machines is that they create, essentially, a restaurant in a box that can be placed anywhere. Chowbotics has co-branded machines with regional restaurant chain Saladworks, for example. DoorDash, with its vast marketplace of restaurants, could leverage those relationships to get co-branded Chowbotics machines in airports, hospitals and other high-traffic locations. Sally itself is versatile, holding 22 ingredients, so it could be easily adapted to different menus.

It’s not too hard to think DoorDash could also install Sallys at their own DashMart delivery-only chain of convenience stores to offer fresh food for delivery along with snacks and sundries.

But the new relationship could work in the other direction. Since the pandemic shut down salad bars, Chowbotics has seen increased interest from grocery retailers. DoorDash could use this as a wedge to get co-branded restaurant Sallys into retail and expand DoorDash’s grocery delivery ambitions.

Or, and this is a little more out there, DoorDash could be working on an autonomous mobile vending unit similar to what Yo-Kai Express is launching soon. A self-driving vending machine could travel around college and corporate campuses being hailed by hungry students and workers.

At the end of the day, the one thing DoorDash does give Chowbotics is scale. DoorDash is a publicly traded company with deep pockets and the largest marketshare of third-party delivery in the U.S. This means Chowbotics can focus on its technology and less on business development.

As they get more technologically advanced, we’re seeing more applications for vending machines. They are selling hot ramen, fresh made pizza, and even fresh dairy on farms. You can learn all about the industry in my Spoon+ market report The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report (subscription required).

Video: Chowbotics’ Sally Makes Salads at Coborn’s Marketplace

As you are well aware, the way we get our food has undergone dramatic changes during this pandemic.

One of the more visible changes we’ve seen is the removal of buffet-style services like salad bars in grocery stores. The thought of trays of lettuce and mushrooms and bacon bits just sitting in the open for lots of people to pick through (and worse) is no longer appetizing, to say the least.

What is slowly starting to replace some of those grocery salad bars is robots. Specifically Chowbotics’ Sally robot. The company recently signed a licensing deal with Saladworks , which will put Sallys in grocery stores. And just last month Chowbotics introduced new features that enabled contactless ordering, as well as a video screen that displays dynamic video advertising, which will make its robot more attractive to potential retailers.

Thanks to a promotional video from Apex Commercial Kitchen posted to Linkedin (see below), we can now take a look at what Chowbotics robots look like in the grocery store. Yes, this video is a little commerical-y and doesn’t provide much detail, but it shows what Sallys look like in the real world, and oh yeah, also is a bit of an announcement that Sallys are being deployed to at least one Coborn’s market.

During different conversations with the company throughout the year, Chowbotics has told us that it has seen increased interest from grocery retailers looking to replace their salad bars. We’re starting to see that interest turn into actual installations. In addition to Sally at the supermarket, Blendid’s smoothie-making robot recently debuted at a Walmart in Fremont, CA.

As retailers (and shoppers) still deal with the ongoing ramifications of the pandemic, we can expect to see more robot deals like Chowbotics and Blendid in the coming months. For more on the automated vending space, check out The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report I did for Spoon Plus earlier this year.

Chowbotics Adds Contactless Features and New Menu Items to Its Salad Robot

In this time of COVID, vending machines are fast becoming a great option for contactless meals. Well, mostly contactless. While the machines are using advanced robotics to make high-end food, many still require users to touch the same screen to place their order — a no-no in today’s hyper hygienic world.

When I talked with Chowbotics for The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report earlier this year, the company knew that this limitation was an issue and was fast-tracking a solution, which is finally here.

Yesterday, Chowbotics announced some new features for its fresh food robot, Sally. Included in the updates are contactless ordering, new menu items and dynamic video advertising, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

Sally’s new contactless ordering feature lets consumers order their meals ahead of time through a new, proprietary app. Customers place their order through the app with their nearest Sally. Upon arrival at the machine, a special QR code generate by the app is scanned and the meal is made and dispensed. (The press release did not mention any new contactless payment features.)

Chowbotics also continues to expand Sally’s menu beyond salads with new options. The company today also announced that has added new chef-designed meal items including Thai noodle salad, Poke, and even a smoked brisket bowl.

Finally, Chowbotics also added new video screen to its robot, which means that operators can insert dynamic ads depending on what they want to promote. For example, the screen could display breakfast bowls in the morning and a BBQ bowl in the evening.

Since the pandemic has forced the closure of buffet-style food options like salad bars, Chowbotics and other vending companies have reporting an uptick in interest from grocery retailers. With expanded menu options, the ability to make meals around the clock and custom upsell and marketing messages throughout the day, retailers may not want to go back to staid salad bars.

UPDATE: A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the video advertising would be on the touchscreen.

Saladworks to Use Chowbotics’ Salad Making Robot for Market Expansion

Fast casual restaurant chain Saladworks announced today that it will be using Chowbotics’ Sally robot to expand into hospitals, universities and grocery stores. According to the press release, the Sally machines will feature Saladworks’ branding and exclusively carry menu items from Saladworks’ menu.

This deal actually makes a lot of sense. First, Sally is compact, coming in at only 3 ft. x 3 ft. This means the robot can be installed almost anywhere, and that Saladworks can extend its brand into high-traffic areas without needing to build out a full store. Plus, vending machines like Sally can run 24 hours a day.

Second, during this pandemic, restaurants (and consumers) have been looking for ways to reduce the amount of human-to-human contact involved in day-to-day foodservice operations. Not only does the Sally robot make the salads sans humans, it also keeps all of its 22 fresh ingredients sealed away in chambers which are themselves sealed up behind glass. Customers can literally see where their order is coming from as it is dispensed.

Finally, and some might say this is the most important thing, Sally makes a good salad. All the convenience and COVID-19 protections in the world don’t make a difference if no one wants to eat what you’re making.

One item of particular note in the press announcement is how Saladworks is targeting grocery stores in its go-to market. Prior to the pandemic, retailers were not too keen on robotic vending services like Sally because they were redundant to what grocery stores already offered. But as the coronavirus has grocery stores removing things like salad bars, those vending machines become more attractive. Just last month, ShopRite partnered with Chowbotics to put a Sally in its Carteret, NJ store. Having the Saladworks brand, which is probably more well known in certain geographic areas than Chowbotics, on the machine and the Saladworks menu could entice more people to try it out.

This is the second such restaurant partnership for Chowbotics, which previously partnered with SaladStation to roll out 50 Sally robots across seven states.

It’s not hard to imagine that Chowbotics has a steady pipeline of similar co-branded restaurant deals in the works. As noted above, the small footprint, low-cost and relatively low-touch aspects of robotic vending machines could make them attractive platforms for restaurants looking for growth opportunities during this pandemic.

I’ve written before that I’m all-in on robotic vending machines and even wrote a comprehensive report on the market landscape for our Spoon Plus premium service.

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.

Chowbotics Deploying 50 New Salad Making Robots to Hospitals Across the Country

Chowbotics announced today that it is deploying 50 new salad making robots to hospitals across the country. The company said that by the end of June, it will have a total of 70 Sally robots in hospitals in the U.S. and Europe, up from 16 at the beginning of February.

The coronavirus pandemic has thrust Chowbotics into a unique position, especially when it comes to feeding healthcare workers. Doctors and nurses are working around the clock and need access to fresh food, and Sally, which can make yogurt, grain and salad bowls, can serve a variety of meals for every daypart , 24 hours a day.

Additionally, open salad bars are being removed from cafeterias, restaurants and grocery stores out of concern that they can spread the coronavirus. So finding and selling a salad will get more complicated. Sally’s 22 ingredients are stored in airtight containers that are held within the robot, providing an added layer of protection from outside contamination.

It’s not a good thing that hospitals represent such a big opportunity for Chowbotics and other robotic vending services right now. The fact that hospitals are busy illustrate a sad and deadly fact about the COVID-19. From a strictly cold, business standpoint, Chowbotics’ ability to sell into the healthcare market right now comes at the same time when colleges, the company’s other big customer segment, have shut down, eliminating those lines of business.

With their ability to reduce human-to-human contact, and inability to actually get sick during this pandemic, robots are starting to play a larger role in our meal journey. Robots like Sally are making meals, while delivery robots like those from Starship and Refraction are bringing meals to our doorsteps. As the effect coronavirus has on social distancing continues to ripple long after the virus has receded, we will be interacting with more robots in our day-to-day lives.

Chowbotics Looks Beyond Robot Salads and Into the Grocery Store Game

Here at The Spoon, we are big fans of breakfast cereal. We’ve written stories about it, and even devoted an entire podcast to it. So when we learned that Chowbotics, maker of the Sally the salad making robot, was looking to expand into cereal, well we just had to give them a call to learn more.

For those not familiar, Chowbotics’ Sally robot is a self-contained robotic vending machine that serves up salads and other bowls of fresh food like grains and yogurts. There are currently more than 100 Sally robots installed in different hospitals, college campuses and other locations across the country.

Chowbotics CEO Rick Wilmer told me by phone today that his company is looking to broaden its appeal by partnering with CPG brands like cereal companies. Wilmer envisions a scenario where shoppers, faced with a wall of different cereals in a grocery store, can sample cereals via a Chowbotics robot (complete with cold milk!).

This is an interesting direction and could turn the idea of Chowbotics on its head. Right now, Chowbotics locates Sallys in high-traffic areas that lack fresh food options. For establishments like hospitals that operate 24 hours a day, Sally becomes the only fresh food choice available since cafeterias and shops close down. In contrast, supermarkets are filled with fresh food choices.

Sally, then, could become more of a branding tool for CPG companies (like those that make cereal) and less of a mini-restaurant. This, in turn, changes the economics of Sally, which is typically bought or leased by the location. Instead of generating revenue by selling bowls, cereal samples (or whatever) would be subsidized, presumably by the CPG company itself.

It’s basically automating the in-store sample system. Instead of a person with a tray of a new-flavored Oreos or manchego cheese, the robot could dispense them either straight as a sample or as part of a larger recipe of ingredients to showcase how that food could be used at home.

This versatility seems to be one area where Sally has an advantage over other fresh food vending services like Farmers Fridge and Fresh Bowl, both of which serve food in closed jars. Sally can hold up to 22 different ingredients that could be swapped out and reprogrammed to make a variety of different meals out of those ingredients — not just pre-packaged salads.

Having said all that, it’s important to note that right now these are just ambitions for Chowbotics. They still have a lot of work do to convince grocery retailers and big brands to hop on its robotic bandwagon. But it shows that Chowbotics is thinking way bigger than salads. And if they get big cereals on board, we at The Spoon are happy to test out a bowl or two.

Chowbotics Rolls Out New Sally 2.0 Robot Salad Maker

Chowbotics announced the release of its new Sally 2.0 robot salad making machine today. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, the new machine features a larger tablet display and user interface, wheels for more mobility, and new breakfast menu as well as snack items like açai and yogurt bowls.

As part of today’s announcement, Salad Station, the southern fast casual restaurant chain that already has 11 Sallies in operation, said it would roll out 50 Salad Station-branded Sallies across seven states, though no timeline for that expansion was given.

2019 has been a pretty big year for Chowbotics. In January, the company announced a partnership with French vegetable company Bonduelle to bring Sally robots to Europe. In March Chowbotics shared sales data showing that hospitals were becoming a lucrative location for its robots, selling up to 120 salads a day (at the time Chowbotics said locations only need to sell 7 bowls a day to break even). In August Sally robots were sent off to a number of colleges across North America including Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH; College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA; and the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada. And then earlier this month, the company named Rick Wilmer as its new CEO as Founder Deepak Sekar moved to become president and head of technology, product and strategic partnerships for Chowbotics.

Sally is part of a larger cohort of food robotics companies that are quietly revolutionizing the concept of what vending machines can be. Briggo is putting its robot-barista in its first Whole Foods, and Yo-Kai Express is set to debut a new iteration of its machine that has two hot ramen dispensers so there isn’t as much wait time. These and other standalone food robots are perfect for busy locations like colleges and hospitals because they can serve fresh food around the clock without the need for staff.

As companies like Chowbotics continue to improve their robots, 2020 is shaping up to be a year where automated food literally levels up from 1.0 to 2.0.