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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Here’s The Spoon’s 2019 Food Robotics Market Map

Today we head to San Francisco for The Spoon’s first-ever food-robotics event. ArticulAte kicks off at 9:05 a.m. sharp at the General Assembly venue in SF, and throughout the daylong event talk will be about all things robots, from the technology itself to business and regulatory issues surrounding it.

When you stop and look around the food industry, whether it’s new restaurants embracing automation or companies changing the way we get our groceries, it’s easy to see why the food robotics market is projected to be a $3.1 billion market by 2025.

But there’s no one way to make a robot, and so to give you a sense of who’s who in this space, and to celebrate the start of ArticulAte, The Spoon’s editors put together this market map of the food robotics landscape.

This is the first edition of this map, which we’ll improve and build upon as the market changes and grows. If you have any suggestions for other companies or see ones we missed you think should be in there, let us know by leaving a comment below or emailing us at tips@thespoon.tech.

Click on the map below to enlarge it.

The Food Robotics Market 2019:

Video: See EKIM’s Three-Armed Pizza Robot in Action

If the Louvre and the Eiffel Tower just aren’t enough to entice you to visit France, perhaps a three-armed pizza making robot will finally get you there.

OK. So perhaps a plane ticket to see a pizza robot is a little too steep for you (and me). Good thing you can check out this video from Global News showing off EKIM‘s pizzaiolo-bot, dubbed Pazzi. This robotic wonder will press the dough, spread the sauce, bake and cut to make a pizza pie in 4 minutes and 30 seconds, and can make 120 pizzas in an hour.

Neither the article nor the video mentions anything about toppings, which is something California-based robot pizza company, Zume says is a job better left to humans. Perhaps that’s a kink EKIM will be working out with the €2.2 million it raised to build out its first autonomous pizza restaurant this year.

EKIM Raises €2.2M for PAZZI the Pizza Robot

If someone were to update The Graduate for modern audiences, it seems like instead of “plastics,” the one word for Benjamin Braddock would be (… are you listening?…) “robots.” Especially if young Braddock wanted to get into the food business.

Pizza-making robots in particular are proving quite popular. Zume has one. Little Caesar’s has a patent for one. And now France, home of brie and baguettes, is getting its own pizza-making robot.

According to EU-Startups, French startup EKIM just raised €2.2 million (~$2.6M USD) to fund the creation of PAZZI, a small, autonomous pizza-making robot restaurant. This was the first institutional funding for the company, and Daphni and Partech were the investors.

Details are slim as the EKIM site is in French, but EU-Startups reports that the PAZZI concept fits in a 45 sq. meter area and has gone through a four year development process. In addition to pizza, PAZZI will offer “drinks, desserts and salads” (and, since this is France, one would presume wine). A pilot project will start in France at the end of this year, and then will be franchised out in 2019.

Even beyond pizza, robots are being recruited throughout the restaurant world. Spyce Kitchen just opened up their robot restaurant in Boston. Bear Robotics’ food-shuttling “Penny” showed off its stuff at the National Restaurant Association show this week. Meanwhile, Cafe X and Briggo robots are slinging coffee, while Blendid whips up smoothies.

But all of those operations are going on in the U.S. It’s interesting to think about how European audiences will react to automation. Here in America, we’re used to mass-produced, mass-marketed food. But European countries like France are steeped in proud culinary traditions full of artisan, handmade products. Will European audiences take to robot-produced food?

Because France isn’t the only one on a quest to automate pizza. Down in Italy, researchers strapped a biokinetic suit onto famed pizza maker Enzo Coccia to teach a robot how to make pizza like a master.

Perhaps I’m painting with too broad a brush. People are people, as the song goes. If the food is good and convenient, why not have it prepped by a machine? There does indeed seem to be a great future in robots, to complete this Graduate reference. Hopefully some pizza (or robot) fans in Europe can set me straight in person at our Smart Kitchen Summit in Dublin, Ireland next month.