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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

coffee robots

Macco Robotics Beer-Pouring Kime-bot has Big Kitchen Plans

Macco Robotics’ Kime robot bartender probably won’t be able to dispense homespun, sage advice like a human, but it can definitely pour you a beer.

Made by Seville, Spain-based Macco Robotics, Kime is a humanoid food and beverage serving robot. Measuring about 2 square meters, the Kime features a robotic head and torso and has two articulating arms that can be used to grab and dispense beverages.

If you’ve ever worked in a bar, you know you can’t just shoot a beer straight into a glass; there is some subtlety to it. The Kime’s hands pull the tap appropriately and angles the glass properly for a correct pour. Macco Robotics CTO, Kish Renganathan, told me by phone this week that the Kime can pour one beer in 23 seconds.

Portugal gas company, Prio, trialed the Kime at one of its gas stations last year. Why you would want to serve up cups of beer to people getting gas and out for a drive is a little beyond me, but hey, Europeans do things a little differently. Renganathan said that for its next phase of testing, Prio is looking to shuttle the one kiosk between different gas stations and have it serve up other beverages like fountain drinks, milkshakes and even grab fresh made food items.

The Kime is also being used by a Spanish beer brand, though Macco actually switched things up a bit for that trial. Instead of being a stationary kiosk, Kime was attached to a cart and used as a rolling robot beer machine for events like festivals.

What’s interesting about the Kime is that the company is sticking with the humanoid form. When it comes to automation, you typically have something like the Cafe X, which also uses articulating arms to add some theatricality as it pours and serves drinks, or you have something that’s more embedded automation like the Briggo, which uses rails and dispensers hidden inside the machine.

Given that the Kime is being used for events and fast service locations like convenience stores, I would assume that embedded automation would deliver the speed and volume necessary to keep up with orders. But Renganathan laid out a bigger vision for me.

“Our vision is to make a humanoid for cooking,” Renganathan said, admitting that swiveling arms might be less efficient. The kiosk, in this case, is a contained environment in which the robot can learn to manipulate different food and drink. “Our goal is to take the robot outside and leave it in the kitchen to assist the chef.”

That’s a pretty big goal. Huge companies like Samsung and Sony don’t even seem to be thinking that big. While their visions of kitchen assistants do feature robotic arms, they are attached to a cabinet, and not to a free-roaming autonomous humanoid.

Right now, Macco is self-funded, and it’ll have to raise a sizeable chunk o’ change to make that vision a reality. Now we’ll have to wait to see if Macco will be raising a glass in celebration of its success, or pouring one out for another food robot demise.

Robot Baristas Aren’t Dead Yet. Briggo to Open 5 New Locations This Quarter

Normally we wouldn’t cover a gonna story. Like when a company says they are gonna do something. The Spoon likes to see actual results, not speculation, thank you very much.

But when robot barista company Briggo reached out to share some of their expansion plans for the coming year, I was intrigued. Whether by luck or rapidly assembled intention, Briggos’ announcement today comes on the heels of rival robo-coffee shop Cafe X shuttering three of its five locations.

There has also been a general sense of doom and gloom cast over the food robot industry in general as Zume shut down its pizza delivery business, and Creator was left stranded and unfunded by Softbank.

But you’d be hard pressed to think anything was wrong with the robot food business in talking with Kevin Nater, the Co-Founder and CEO of Briggo. I spoke with him by phone this week and Nater said five new automated Coffee Haus locations will go live in Q1 of this year, which is as many as the company launched in all of last year. Through its partnership with SSP America, Briggo plans to be in a dozen locations by the end of 2020.

One of the reasons Briggo can accelerate its install base is because it has moved its manufacturing to Foxconn. Previously Briggo was building every Coffee Haus by hand, but now Nater says “The Wisconsin facility can knock them out as fast as we can order them.” Depending on the location and permitting, Nater says they can get a Briggo machine up and running in a matter of weeks.

With SSP America doing business development for Briggo, Nater said that airports will continue to be a “huge focus” for the company. There are currently two Coffee Hauses in the Austin-Bergstrom Airport and one at San Francisco Airport (SFO).

As Briggo focuses on airports, and building out more locations, I asked Nater if that means the company will be pulling back on its own coffee creation ambitions. One part of Briggo’s business has been that it is also a coffee company that roasts its own beans. As it has expanded into new locations, it has also started offering coffees from roasters local to those areas (Sightglass in SFO, for instance). Nater said “Nope,” and that in addition to hosting other brands, Briggo will continue to sell its own coffee.

In addition to airports, Briggo opened up its first location inside a Whole Foods in Houston last fall. That Whole Foods happens to have 260 condos above it, and Nater said that condo owners are treating the Briggo almost like a personal coffee machine, ordering drinks with their phone in their condo and then coming downstairs to pick it up.

Given the recent setbacks for food robot-based startups, I asked Nater how he refers to their Coffee Hauses. Are they called “robots” or “machines” or something else, entirely? “We use the term robotic barista,” he said “to convey barista level quality.”

So Briggo is still in the robot business. It may strive to serve quality coffee, but we’re gonna have to watch to see if its automated approach translates into a scalable quantity.

Briggo Partners with SSP America to Open Up 25 Robot Coffee Hauses in Airports

Robot barista company Briggo announced today it has entered into an exclusive agreement with SSP America to open automated Coffee Hauses at an additional 25 airport locations over the next two years in the U.S. and Canada.

SSP America is a division of SSP Group, which operates roughly 2,600 restaurants, bars, cafés and marches in across 500 locations representing more than 500 of its own and licensed brands. The SSP America website says the company is “passionate about bringing cool, authentic restaurants to airports that reflect a taste of place.”

Briggo’s robotic Coffee Haus is definitely cool. It’s a self-contained automated coffee shop in a box that offers a variety of hot and iced coffee and teas that can be ordered via the Briggo app or through a tablet built into the machine. Meant for high-traffic areas (like airports!), Briggo says its Coffee Haus can make 100 cups off coffee an hour.

Details were pretty light in the press release emailed to us announcing the deal with SSP America, but the partnership should result in robot coffee experiences similar to the three Coffee Hauses Briggo has opened in the Austin and San Francisco International airports. As with its SFO location, Briggo said that in addition to its own coffee roast, it will “also work with airport teams to select local brands to showcase in their Coffee Hauses.”

When we first covered Briggo last year, the company was building up to be a full-stack coffee company. It selects and roasts its own beans, and would own and operate its machines. Briggo declined to answer questions about the business arrangement between it and SSP, so we don’t know what the financial or operational terms of this deal were.

Having said that, if Briggo is looking to scale quickly, partnering up with companies like SSP might be the most expeditious way. It can leverage their existing operational chains and relationships to more easily break into new markets.

The robo-barista game is not zero sum one. There are plenty of high-traffic locations for all the coffee robots. Having said that, our eyes now turn to the other barista-in-a-box, Cafe X, to see when it will start announcing more of its expansion plans.

Briggo Lands its Robot Barista at the SFO Airport Next Month

If you have an early flight out of San Francisco International (SFO) airport at the end of next month, you can caffeinate up with the help of Briggo’s robot barista. The Austin, TX based company announced today that it will launch its automated Coffee Haus robot-coffee kiosk at SFO on July 28th UPDATE: Briggo informed us after publication that it has changed the date and will be up in the coming month.

The Briggo Coffee Haus is a fully automated kiosk that serves a variety of hot and cold coffee and tea drinks, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customers can order a coffee ahead of time using the Briggo app or purchase one through the machine’s tablet.

The SFO Coffee Haus is the first Briggo machine outside of Texas and will be located inside Terminal 3 next to the security entrance. Though Briggo thinks of itself as a coffee company that sources and roasts its own beans, it will feature rotating blends of Bay Area coffee from Verve and techie-favorite, Sightglass. This will be the second airport location for Briggo’s automated barista: the first one opened at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in July of last year, and a second Briggo machine was added there last month.

Briggo isn’t even the only coffee robot going into SFO this year. San Francisco-based company Cafe X will also be launching its automated coffee kiosk later this summer. We reached out to the company to confirm the installation date and will update when we hear back.

You’ll be seeing a lot more automated eating and drinking experiences at airports in the coming years. Robots like Briggo and Cafe X will be joined by high-end vending machines like Yo-Kai Express, which offer a Michelin star chef-created menu. Food robots will be able to quickly and conveniently feed the high volume of people in a hurry at all hours of the day (and never spell your name wrong on your coffee cup).

To promote its SFO opening, Briggo has hooked up with Lyft to provide Briggo patrons with a 15 percent discount on their next Lyft ride to or from SFO. Normally, we wouldn’t mention marketing campaigns, but this discount is another example of food and beverage companies working with ride-sharing companies to, err, drive traffic. In a similar move, TGIFriday’s has been handing out Uber vouchers to pay for customers’ rides to its restaurants.

We haven’t had Briggo’s coffee yet (haven’t flown to Austin in a while), but it’s got a 4-star rating on Yelp, where customers mostly marvel at the technology. Maybe we’ll need to book a flight down to San Francisco just for a chance to try the coffee.