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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Food Robot

South Korea: Lounge Lab Opens Brown Bana Robot Ice Cream Shop

South Korean robotics company Lounge Lab announced today that it has opened Brown Bana, a robot-powered ice cream store in Seoul.

Technically, Brown Bana is more of a co-botic setup, as the articulating robot arms just move cups and capsule-based ice cream around while a human adds the toppings (see the video below) and serves the finished product. But based on the information Lounge Labs sent to The Spoon, the robots are equal parts labor and entertainment.

From Lounge Labs’ press announcement:

Brown Bana’s ice cream robot Aris provides an interactive experience in which customers and robots communicate through emotional motion functions and animated characters that express various emotions with faces. A total of seven motion contents, including ‘greeting,’ ‘calling,’ ‘rest,’ ‘drowsy,’ and various dance movements, are applied, as well as facial expressions suitable for each motion through a mounted display with character animation.

로봇이 아이스크림을?! 한국 최초의 로봇 아이스크림 스토어 '브라운바나' 오픈!

Theatricality is certainly part of a food robot’s appeal, especially since the technology is still novel for most audiences. Watching a robot make you food is still enticing enough to make passers-by stop and watch. Cafe X added waving and other gestures to its articulating robotic barista arms, and even set up its see-through kiosk on a busy downtown San Francisco street corner (though, those locations later shut down).

Lounge Labs believes Brown Bana’s robot hook will be appealing to both millennials and gen z customers, and is targeting cafes, amusement parks and pop-up spaces as target installation locations.

Brown Bana is just one of the automated experiences that Lounge Labs has developed. The company also makes the LOUNGE’X robot barista that makes pourover coffee, as well as the MooinSangHoei AI-powered vending machine.

Wavemaker Labs Working on Nommi, an Automated Kitchen Robot

Corporate product development investor and incubator Wavemaker Labs is adding Nommi, an “automated delivery kitchen” robot to its portfolio. Wavemaker CFO Kevin Morris shared the previously unknown endeavor during a presentation at our ArticulATE food robotics summit yesterday.

Morris didn’t reveal much about Nommi other than an early rendering of a robotic kiosk and that it was being developed in partnership with a large hospitality company. Judging from the size of the machine in the rendering, Nommi appears to be something in between Chowbotics’ Sally and Spyce’s Infinite Kitchen. It holds a number of ingredients which are automatically dispensed and heated. Other renderings Morris showed illustrated how Nommi could also be installed in the back of a van, making it mobile, and inside a shipping container (a la Mezli).

Nommi is the latest food robot to be added to Wavemaker’s growing roster of automated food machines, which also includes Miso Robotics, Piestro, and Bobacino. As Morris explained during his talk yesterday, Wavemaker begins its process by identifying a problem in the food tech sector and then finds corporate partners to develop a specific solution. This approach helps hedge Wavemaker’s investment bets because there is already a customer for the robot in place once the product is done. In the case of Miso Robotics, for example, a fast food chain (presumably Caliburger) was looking to automate burger flipping and thus Miso Robotics’ Flipppy was born. Nommi is being developed in partnership with an undisclosed hospitality company which will help develop the menu, robotic capabilities and act as a first customer once the robot is done.

While Wavemaker is investing in and helping initially develop the Nommi, history suggests that at some point the bowl food bot will be turning to equity crowdfunding when it comes time to raise capital. Wavemaker companies Miso Robotics, Piestro, and Future Acres have all run equity campaigns over the past year.

Given the scant details that Morris shared with the ArticulATE virtual crowd, Nommi is probably still a couple years out from coming to market. But The Spoon will surely be covering it as it becomes a real thing.

Ocado-backed Karakuri Unveils DK-One Meal Assembling Robot, Raises £6.5M

Karakuri, a London-based food robotics company, today unveiled its DK-One meal assembly robot. The company also announced that it has raised £6.5 million (~ $8.68M USD) in new funding led by firstminute capital with participation from Hoxton Ventures, Taylor Brothers, Ocado Group and the Future Fund. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Karakuri to £13.5 million (~ $18.3M USD).

Karakuri first popped on to our radar in May of 2019 after Ocado, a robot-forward grocer based in the U.K., led Karakuri’s Seed round of funding. At the time, we knew Karakuri was working on the DK-One but didn’t know what the machine looked like or what it was capable of.

Meant for QSRs, catering companies and grocery retailers, the DK-One is an all-in-one enclosed 2m x 2m kiosk that assembles various cold and hot ingredients into prepared meals. The DK-One doesn’t cook any food, but rather holds ingredients at proper temperatures until the order is placed.

In its current pre-production version, the DK-One holds 18 ingredients (fruits, yogurts, proteins, veggies, etc.), can make between 6 – 12 bowls at any one time (depending on the complexity of the individual orders), and can make 100 bowls an hour.

Once an order is placed either through a mobile app or accompanying tablet, an articulating arm inside the DK-One grabs a container, fills it with the necessary ingredients and deposits the finished meal into a cubby for pickup. You can see it in action in this video:

The DK-One is arriving, of course during a global pandemic, when restaurants, food retailers and customers are all looking for ways to reduce the amount of human-to-human interaction involved with getting meals to customers. In addition to removing the number of people interacting with an order, the DK-One provides additional hygiene in other ways. The ingredients themselves are individually stored in their own compartments, keeping them away from the outside while preventing cross-contamination. The DK-One also provides temperature monitoring and auditing to ensure that the cold ingredients are kept cold and the hot ones hot.

Karakuri’s robot only takes two to three people to operate on-site, and it’s easy to see the DK-One at a grocer or cafeteria, cranking out meals through out the day: Yogurt bowls in the morning, and switching to hot vegetable or chicken dishes in the afternoon.

Barney Wragg, CEO and co-founder of Karakuri, gave me a Zoom demo of the DK-One last month and told me that inbound interest in the DK-One has changed since the pandemic.

“Pre-pandemic the biggest amount of interest was from the challenger brands, the guys trying to come up with new poke restaurant. They had the least legacy systems,” Wragg said. But the pandemic was a huge wake up call for bigger brands and Wragg said they’ve seen a massive surge of interest from large chains in Europe and around the world.

Wragg wouldn’t say how much the DK-One costs, only that Karakuri is exploring different models for different customers.

In addition to being useful during a pandemic, the DK-One also aligns with other food-making robots we’ve seen from an operational perspective. Like Picnic’s pizza assembling robot, the DK-One dispenses a specific amount of food each time, helping to eliminate waste during production. Like Spyce’s new Infinite Kitchen system, the DK-One also allows for customization, so people can order a meal more to their dietary or taste preferences.

The first DK-One will be installed this June at an undisclosed location. With its fresh funding, Karakuri says it will accelerate the development of its technologies and develop new products.

Spyce Kitchen Relaunches with All New Robot Kitchen, Dynamic Menu and Delivery

Spyce, the Boston-based robot-centric restaurant, officially announced its revamped concept today. The new Spyce features an all new automated cooking system, a dynamic, customizable menu, and in-house delivery.

The first Spyce Kitchen restaurant burst on to the scene back in the Spring of 2018. The robot used in that incarnation featured a row of bowls that spun to mix and heat ingredients that were dropped into them. This new version, dubbed the “Infinite Kitchen” aesthetically seems more akin to Creator’s burger creating robot.

Spyce’s new food robot makes both salads and warm bowl food, and holds 49 separate recipes. Serving dishes are placed on a conveyor belt that runs underneath the dispensers, which automatically portion out the proper ingredients for each dish. There is also a plancha searing station to cook and dispense proteins and vegetables as well as a superheated steamer to cook pastas. The Infinite Kitchen can make up to 350 bowls in an hour, with the average bowl costing $11.

Food is ordered either through the Spyce mobile app or via in-store kiosk. The new menus feature real-time customization to meet dietary preferences such as keto or vegan, as well as eight different allergen requirements like gluten-free. The menu also lets you adjust to taste preferences like levels of sauce and spiciness. The new Spyce menu does not, however, offer red meat, which has been left off for environmental impact purposes.

Like just about every other restaurant looking to survive this pandemic, Spyce is also placing an emphasis on delivery. There is no dining room to eat in, though people can walk in to order and take out food. The robot and new ordering system work in conjunction with each other to ensure that food is prepared and ready just in time for delivery.

Spyce is extending its precise operational control to delivery as well. The company is using its own in-house delivery fleet, which will help Spyce retain more of the customer experience (and data) and help ensure a good delivery experience. Drivers are W2 employees and will use electric scooters outfitted with special hot side/cold side insulated containers to carry the food.

The new Spyce is located at 241 Washington St. and is open for lunch and dinner every day between 11 a.m. and 9 p.m.. Delivery is currently to the Back Bay, Battery Wharf, Financial District, North End and West End neighborhoods, with the delivery radius increasing to more neighborhoods in the coming weeks. Spyce also plans to open up a second location in Cambridge’s Harvard Square neighborhood later this fall.

Picnic Debuts Its Second Generation Pizza Robot

Picnic, the Seattle based pizza robot company, unveiled their second generation pizza robot this week.

The new system, which you can see in action in the video below, is a fully customizable assembly line pizza topper machine that features four different modules: sauce, cheese, pepperoni and the “granular” module, which dispenses up to three pre-cut ingredients. Like the first generation Picnic robot, the system is focused on toppings and doesn’t include a pizza oven.

The system, which like the first gen robot utilizes a conveyor belt and automatic dispenser modules, has a few noticeable differences. The biggest difference visually is that each module now is visible behind a glass casing and you can see the cheese, sauce, pepperoni and other ingredients containers as they dispense ingredients. The ingredient containers are also easily removable for washing and the tops of the modules are also clear, giving the operator a clear view into the how much of each ingredient remains.

The whole assembly line is also behind the glass unlike the first-generation Picnic. Finally, there’s a big red emergency stop shut off button on the front of each module housing.

As with any new product, actually getting them into the hands of users provides lots of useful feedback. I imaging putting the first-gen Picnic into heavy use at the Smart Kitchen Summit 2019 (where it debuted), CES and at T-Mobile Park gave the designers lots of ideas for improvement.

The new robot comes on the heels of a recent fund raise by Picnic. The company had announced a $3 million round earlier this month which it indicated it would use towards hiring and new product development. The new raise and robot come amidst an increasingly hot market for robotic pizza assembly, as companies like Middleby jump in.

One of the features that Picnic emphasizes in their new video is the solution is highly sanitary and allows for pizza assembly with limited human contact. At Smart Kitchen Summit Virtual earlier this month, Picnic CEO Clayton Wood indicated that interest in their pizza robot has actually increased with the pandemic as restaurants have been disrupted and more operators are looking into how to reduce human contact with food.

You can watch the new Picnic pizzabot in action below.

Picnic Pizza System from Picnic on Vimeo.

YPC Raises $1.8 Million (CAD) for its Versatile Robot Cooking Kiosk

YPC Technologies announced today that it has raised $1.8 million dollars CAD (~$1.36 million USD) for its robotic cooking kiosk. The round was co-led by Hike Ventures and returning investor Real Ventures, with participation from Toyota AI Ventures, Uphill Capital, and multiple angel investors.

Like others in the food robot space, YPC is building a standalone, autonomous cooking system. But unlike PAZZI, which makes pizza, or DaVinci Kitchen, which makes pasta, or even Flippy, which works a grill or fry station, YPC aims to build a more versatile cooking robot, one that can make up to 20 different types of meals.

“Our business is unique because our system can produce a large variety of meals,” Dr. Gunnar Grass, CEO and Co-founder, YPC Technologies told me by phone this week, listing “Soups, stews, beef bourguignon, rissotto, steamed asparagus” as a sample of what the YPC robot can make.

This desire for variety was borne out of Grass’ time working in in the kitchen of a retirement home. The kitchen made one type of dish per day and Grass saw many plates come back partially eaten or completely untouched, because residents didn’t like the food or couldn’t eat it because of dietary restrictions (or because they lacked teeth).

YPC has been testing its robot out at a co-working facility in Montreal, Canada over the past year. The articulating arm grabs ingredients and does the cooking and can make anywhere from half a dozen to 20 different types of meals, depending on how it’s stocked. The current version of the robot can make 30 meals in an hour, though Grass said the next version will be able to make 100 meals per hour.

Grass said that the company is targeting business customers such as retirement centers, hospitals and commercial high-rises for installations of its robot. The system does not require additional ventilation be built, which could make the decision to install one a little easier for potential locations.

Of course, another appeal of the YPC system is that it’s a robot that can work all day and removes one human (and possible vector of viral transmission) from the meal prep equation. YPC isn’t completely human-less, since people are still required to stock and final presentations, but reducing the number of human hands preparing and touching food has becoming increasingly important during this pandemic. And this type of hygiene is top of mind for the potential customers YPC is dealing with. “Right now, everyone cares about safety,” Grass said.

As we said earlier, YPC’s robot is unique in the restaurant world. Grass said with the new funding, his company hopes to have a production pilot up and running with an unnamed “multi-national” food company by the middle of next year.

Nymble Eyes 2021 Launch For Its Home Cooking Robot

Looking for a little help in the kitchen? Maybe Julia could help.

No, Julia isn’t your neighbor or a chef matched with you through some online marketplace. In fact, Julia isn’t a person at all.

What Julia is is a robot. A cooking robot.

Developed by an India-based startup called Nymble, Julia creates single pot meals using spice and ingredients chambers that dispense food into the cooking bowl, where a robotic arm mixes the meal within the pot. All of this is monitored by a built-in camera.

You can see a video of Julia cooking rice here:

Fried Rice - Julia in-built camera footage

The camera does more than just capture footage. It’s how Julia becomes a better cook.

“The camera provides us with a thermal image of the food which basically represents the temperature of every pixel in the image,” said Raghav Gupta, CEO of Nymble.

Julia uses precise measurements of temperature and location to closely regulate the heat of the food. It also uses the data to create a better quality cook over time.

“It helps us cook food with a repeatable and consistent quality irrespective of the nature and size of ingredient, geography and other external factors,” said Gupta.

Early on, Julia’s programmers hard coded their cook times for specific intervals depending on the recipe. Over time they’ve gathered more data from the camera and heat sensors, and this has helped Julia become of a feedback driven system. The developer team has also created tools for non-technical users, including a “recipe visualizer” that uses camera and sensor data to help create recipes.

While all this technical work is impressive, it remains to be seen if consumers actually want a cooking robot. It’s easy to envision most of us welcoming a high-end cooking bot like that from Moley, Samsung or Sony, but these concepts are still years off from the mass market. And while there have been systems similar in concept to the Julia, the Sereneti never shipped a finished product and Else Labs’ Oliver has yet to ship.

The only cooking bot that’s sold at volume is the Rotimatic from Zimplistic, which is nearing 100 thousand total units in the field. However, the Rotimatic – a unitasker that spits out flatbread over and over – is a much different type of device than the more complex Julia.

In short, since there hasn’t been a product in the market similar to Julia, it’s hard to say if consumers will embrace the idea. My guess is its success will depend on how well it works and how useful it is and whether it makes consumer lives easier. I am particularly curious about how well these systems with pre-loaded ingredient chambers work and if they are easy to clean.

Nymble will try to figure all of this out for themselves as it eyes a 2021 launch. To help do that, the company recently finished some field tests for Julia and is in the process of rolling out additional prototypes to alpha testers in its home market of India (apply here!).

Hopefully Nymble – and we – should know soon.

Creator Temporarily Closes its Robot Restaurant

Creator, the San Francisco restaurant built around a hamburger-cooking robot, announced last night on Instagram that it was temporarily closing its one physical location tomorrow.

The company wrote:

Our restaurant at 680 Folsom Street in SF is going on a temporary hiatus. The stay at home order, combined with extended work-from-home policies (which we support), have emptied out SoMa – as @Eater_SF captured so poignantly. We haven’t seen a coyote or tumbleweeds on Folsom Street yet but it’s getting there.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀

Creator launched in the summer of 2018 around the idea that robots could take over the repetitive restaurant task of grilling burgers, freeing up human workers for more creative tasks like customer service.

Up until the COVID-19 pandemic hit, 2020 had been a year of growth for Creator. In January the restaurant expanded to being open five days a week, and in March it added dinner service. Even when the pandemic forced its dining room to close, Creator put up a good fight and invented what was basically an air lock for hamburger pickup that aimed to keep workers, delivery drivers and food safe.

We don’t know what this means for Creator, which has raised $18 million in funding. Even though the one location is closed, they have a year and a half’s worth of data and experience that could be useful if they wanted to license out the robot technology to other foodservice operators. As the long-term effects of the pandemic remain unclear, restaurants may be more keen on reducing the number of humans involved in preparing and serving food. Having a robot cook could be one less vector of transmission for a restaurant.

We have reached out to Creator to find out more about any future plans.

On a more personal note, Creator was a highlight for me during my robot food tour of San Francisco last year , and whenever I was in town I made a point of going. Not because of the robot, but because the food was delicious and the experience was always great.

LG’s CLoi ServeBot Picks Up Shifts at CJ Foodville in Seoul, South Korea

The restaurant CJ Foodville has a new server clocking in at its Cheiljemyunso location in Seoul, South Korea — though this one probably won’t accept tips. ZDNet writes that LG’s CLoi ServeBot is now autonomously shuttling food to tables and taking away empty dishes.

The CLoi ServeBot is self-driving robot with four vertically stacked trays that can navigate around tables and people (even playing music to give bystanders a heads up that its approaching). The ServeBot also features an LED screen that shows facial expressions.

It’s not a surprise that these ServeBots are working at CJ Foodville. The restaurant chain formed a partnership with LG last year to develop a number of different food robots. This past November, CJ Foodville installed an LG ChefBot at its Veeps buffet restaurant to cook up noodles.

The CLoi ServeBot is among a wave of server robots hitting restaurants in Asia and beyond. Bear Robotics just raised $32 million to scale up its Penny server robot. And PuduTech’s BellaBot, which sports LED feline features instead of human ones, showed off its server robot at CES this year.

All of them, however, do basically the same thing — cart plates around. That’s not to denigrate the engineering feat that a self-driving, dish-carrying robot is. It’s more that these robots are on a path from being a novelty to becoming a commodity. What features can a company add that will really set their robots apart from the competition?

Thankfully for those in the server robot space, there are plenty of restaurants in the world, so there’s plenty of potential robot business to go around.

Flippy Flips Upside Down for QSRs, Will It Impact Miso’s Crowdfunding?

Miso Robotics is taking its cooking robot, Flippy, and uhh, flipping it upside down in a bid to bring in more QSR business. Today the company revealed a prototype of its next version of cooking technology dubbed Miso Robot on a Rail (ROAR).

Rather than being fixed to the ground, the new ROAR is installed on a rail above the cooking surface. It still uses a robotic arm to flip burgers and remove fry baskets, but it now glides back and forth overhead.

According to the press announcement, the new ROAR was developed using market feedback from QSRs that wanted more of a zero footprint solution that doesn’t get in the way of busy human cooks. The current iteration of Flippy is stationary, and surrounding the arm itself, there is a safety zone taped around it to keep human limbs way from automated movements. So it can take up quite a bit of space.

The Flippy brain has also been augmented with new cooking capabilities. In addition to grilling burgers, Miso’s robot can fry up chicken wings, onion rings, popcorn shrimp, sweet potato waffle fries, corn dogs and more.

The ROAR won’t be available commercially until the end of this year. In the meantime, Miso also announced that it is introducing an intermediate model that uses a floor-mounted rail system. Nation’s Restaurant News reports that the new ROAR will cost roughly $30,000. This is about half what the first Flippy’s cost, which was ultimately too high a price for a lot of QSRs.

The news of ROAR also comes as Miso Robotics is equity crowdfunding its next fundraise. While Miso has raised $13 million from traditional VCs in the past, the company is now using the SeedInvest platform to try and raise $30 million. Will the new Flippy sway a few more everyday investors?

The Flippy ROAR also comes in a time of flux for articulating robotic arms. Cafe X closed three of its locations, and Zume shut down its robot-assisted pizza delivery service. Other startups, however, are, like Miso, all-in on robotic limbs. Macco Robotics and Robojuice both believe that a more humanoid-like form factor will connect better with customers.

While Flippy is on display at Caliburger in Pasadena, the new ROAR seems more geared towards production and throughput. With a lower price, we’ll have to see if QSRs put in their order for one.

Robot Restaurant Creator Now Open Five Days a Week, Adds Plant-Based Burger

Creator, the San Francisco restaurant featuring robot-made hamburgers, announced today that it is now open five days a week, and that it has added a plant-based burger to its menu.

Up until today, Creator had only been open Wednesday through Friday. While its hours are still limited to 11 a.m. – 2 p.m., Creator will now be open Monday through Friday.

In addition to being open more hours, flexitarians can rejoice as the restaurant’s menu will now be open to more types of eaters. Creator is adding a plant-based burger made by Hodo, which, according to the Hodo website, is made from tofu.

Creator is bypassing the whole Beyond Meat v. Impossible discussion by going with a smaller player. Creator’s decision could be driven by the fact that its restaurant is such a small player right now, and didn’t want to deal with any potential shortages that both Beyond and Impossible have experienced. Or maybe Creator just preferred the price and taste of Hodo’s burgers.

The introduction of the plant burger seems like it will disrupt the premise of the robot-powered Creator. For meat burgers, Creator’s robot grinds, forms and cooks the beef patty on the spot. But for plant-based burgers, Creator’s robot will assemble the extras on the bun, but a human will grill up and place the patty. Given the rise in popularity of plant-based burgers, one has to wonder how this will impact Creator’s economics.

We spoke with Creator CEO Alex Vardakostas at our Articulate food robot summit last year and he explained that Creator’s robot is meant to do the repetitive boring work of grilling burgers so employees can do more engaging activities like customer service. For now, it seems like humans will be back working the grill.

Creator’s hours of operation and menu expansion comes on the heels of reports that the company was “totally screwed” by Softbank, which was going to become an investor. Food robots in general have been under scrutiny as fellow San Francisco startup Cafe X shuttered three of its locations and Zume pizza shut down its robot-assisted pizza delivery business.

Will this new move and new menu item keep Creator out of the robot dead pool?

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.