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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:

Robot / NotRobot: The Smart Kitchen Edition

Is a dishwasher a robot?

That’s a setting-the-bar question my colleague (and robot expert) Signe Brewster likes to ask when talking to people about robots. There is no definite answer. You could think it just an appliance, or recognize that it is an increasingly smart self-contained mechanism that works to make your life easier.

The robot/notrobot question was one I thought about quite a bit during the recent Smart Kitchen Summit, where there were lots of cooking related “robots” on display.

There was the crepe-making robot which spat out delicious, perfectly cooked crepes. The GammaChef, which is a countertop device that holds, dispenses, mixes and cooks ingredients to make one pot meals.

While these lack an LED-lit face and are not bipedal, they seem to fit neatly into the “robot” category, much like a Roomba does. Once set up, they do all of the manual work of that assigned task.

The distinction between robot and appliance got a bit fuzzier with other devices on display. Bubble Lab describes their DRIP pour-over coffee maker as an appliance, but the way it pops out of a counter and swivels methodically to craft a perfect cup of coffee has undeniable robotic overtones. And with its automated watering, lighting and HD camera to sense plant health, the AVA system doesn’t seem like a robot, but it pretty much does all the work of gardening for you.

Then there is the Kitchbot, which has “bot” in its name, but is it a robot? It’s a smart device that plugs into your existing appliances, like a rice cooker or slow cooker, to automatically precisely control the time and temperature of your cooking. Seems more like a smart monitor to me, but again, there are no wrong answers here.

And the end of the day, it may not matter whether we call something a robot or not. What does matter is that there are a ton of great devices headed for your kitchen to make your life easier. And the best word for that?

Awesome.

Can This Self-Driving Car Pioneer Crack The Code On Cooking Robots?

The home cooking robot market is, shall we say, in the early innings.

Not that folks aren’t trying. Companies like Sereneti and GammaChef are working on creating full home cooking robots, while others like Rotimatic and Bartesian are applying robotics more narrowly to tackle single-function machines to make flatbread or cocktails.

But it’s pretty self-evident at this point we’ve only just thrown out the first pitch.

So when the father of the self-driving car puts out a feeler for a new project he’s working on in the area of home cooking robotics, needless to say it piqued my interest.

According to Business Insider, Sebastian Thrun, the man behind early autonomous car effort Stanley, is building a team for a project that will develop “technology to modernize how we prepare daily healthy and tasty meals at home.” The company’s stealth name is SVFactory.

Thrun’s entry into this market is exciting if for only his proven ability jumpstart new industries through innovation. Not only did his work at DARPA eventually lead to his shepherding Google’s early work on autonomous vehicles, but Thrun also went on to found Google’s so-called ‘moonshot factory’, Google X, and has been instrumental in helping to democratize the education market through the founding of Udacity, a hugely popular online learning site.

But while Thrun clearly has an ability to make futuristic technology concepts more market ready, he has his work cut out for him with consumer cooking robots. It remains to be seen how robotics can be applied to home cooking in a way that makes consumers feel, well, at home. Futuristic efforts like that of Moley are intriguing, but I’m not entirely sure how mass market and practical putting two giant robots arms would be in a normal home.

Still, count me as excited about the entrance of a heavy hitter like Thrun into the market. Let’s hope he can hit a home run or two.

A Conversation Dražen Drnas, CEO of Robotic Chef Startup GammaChef

Late last year, one of Croatia’s biggest packaged food conglomerates, Podravka, invested in a robotic home chef startup called GammaChef.

It’s an interesting move for such a storied company. Podravka, which was founded in 1934, started as a fruit factory before eventually becaming nationalized as part of Yugoslavia in 1947. With the fall of the Soviet Union in the early 90s, Croatia gained independence and soon the company was privatized. Now, nearly 80 years after its founding, the company has invested in its first startup, a robotic home cooking company.

The investment made me want to learn more about GammaChef and hopefully figure out why one of Croatia’s longest-running food companies was interested in consumer cooking robots. I recently caught up with GammaChef’s CEO, Dražen Drnas. Below is my interview edited slightly for readability.

Can you tell me more about the investment by Podravka?

Drnas: Podravka is one of the leading food companies in the SouthEast, Central and Eastern Europe. Unfortunately I can not disclose the financial details but it was in terms of standard seed rounds. This seed round with Podravka is for us more than just a financial investment; it is also a strategic partnership. Podravka is going to actively support GammaChef project with its R&D and know-how. They are also involved in design of disposable food cartridges and ingredients needed for preparing meals in Gammachef.

Is the product mainly for Croatia, or do you have plans to distribute/sell in rest of Europe or USA?

Drnas: The product is planned for a global market. Since Croatia is part of EU, we will probably target EU first. The US market is also in our plans.

Tell me more about the product.

Drnas: GammaChef is robotic chef capable of preparing any one pot meal. At its core is a digital recipe. Based on that recipe, GammaChef will prepare you fresh, homemade and tasty meal at any desired time. It is capable of preparing risottos, pasta, gnocchi, stews, soups, any meal prepared in one pot.

Basically, it follows the steps of a real human chef, adding right amount of ingredients at the right time. It also controlls other parameters of cooking, like stirring and setting temperatures.

It is not a closed machine, you can digitalize your own recipe simply by switching the robot to TeachMe mode, cook your favorite dish on GammaChef and save it. Later you can share it with your friends and they can have your authentic meal prepared your way on their GammaChef.

The Robotic chef will come with some digital recipes, but also you can download new recipes or whole cookbooks from our store, it will be some kind of ‘Kindle for cookbooks’.  It is fully connected via WiFi, so it can be controlled by your smartphone or even Amazon Echo. It has some handy features like personalised taste (more or less salt or spices) or calculation of calories intake.

What about pricing and availability?

Drnas: We still don’t have the final price, but our calculations and plans are setting a price within the price range of a better kitchen appliances, it will not cost more than some good quality oven. We are planning to start with first pilot series next year and later go into serial production.

Robotic cookers haven’t taken off. We haven’t really seen one that really works well. How will the Gammachef differ?

Drnas: Yes, robotic cookers are a new category of devices, not many companies even tried, so far none have really delivered. Unlike some other robotic cookers, we chose somewhat different and more pragmatic approach. GammaChef is designed more like a household appliance, and not like a humanoid robot. That makes it less costly, easier to put in your kitchen, and sometimes less scary.

Also, functioning of GammaChef does not depend on food delivery of prepared ingredients. Yes, we are planning to have food cartridges with our partner, but also you can refill the containers with your own food and cook your favorite recipe. That means we are not constrained and limited with logistic problems of profitable food delivery worldwide in the first phase.

And the final and most important thing, GammaChef is cooks tasty meals. We ran a test where we invited to a cooking contest between the robot and good human chef, after the blind test of meals, shrimp risotto made by robot won human made risotto by 12:6 in votes.

We believe it is time to bring 21st century into our kitchens, but our approach is not to dehumanize kitchen by filling it with automatization like some car factory. We need a pragmatic approach that is going to help us eat healthier. We believe our solution will enable working families to eat homemade meals together. That will unload part of the burden from our working moms like the washing machine did.  But also a device that will unleash our creativity, there is no reason why you couldn’t have your favorite grandma’s stew prepared just in time when you come home from work.

What is your background? Do you have someone (maybe you) who is the robotics lead/expert helping to design?

Drnas: Me and my cofounder Đulijano Nola are both electronics engineers. We’ve been playing with electronics and robots since late 80’s. Later we switched more to software development. We have entrepreneurial experience in setting up and running digital companies. We built some successful products like Gohome.eu, a real estate search engine and CrnoJaje.hr, the no.1 daily deal site in Croatia. For the GoHome project, we raised VC investment for expansion into EU market.

We are both amateur chefs and since we are passionate about technology almost as we are passionate about food. We started building a robotic chef almost for fun as a side project in our free time. When we managed to build the first prototype and discovered how well GammaChef cooked, we decided to go full speed in that direction. When we see how well people are reacting to the food and to the robot, we’re convinced we are on the right track.

To achieve our vision, we’ve continued to build out our team. We’ve added a small agile team of software developers, mechanical engineers, designers and chefs helping the design.

 

Is Robotics The Next Hot Sector For Food Tech Investment?

If you spend any time analyzing the food tech investment landscape, you notice something pretty quickly: the vast majority of funding goes to food delivery.

And while food delivery will continue to be the biggest slice of the investment pie for the foreseeable future, recently there’s been a noticeable uptick in non-delivery related food tech investments.

One area outside of delivery that is piquing the interest of investors is food robotics. In the last year, we’ve seen numerous investments in both professional and consumer focused food robotics.

A few examples from 2016:

Otto Robotics: The Seattle area startup recently raised $1.5 million for its food assembly robot for restaurants.  The company, which is still in stealth, raised its funding from Paul Allen’s Vulcan Ventures and Draper Associates.

Casabots: This company which makes salad assembly robot for cafeterias and restaurants picked up a $100 thousand in spring of 2016. The company is planning on producing its salad robot at scale in 2017.

Zume Pizza: This ambitious startup wants to not only make pizzas using robotics, but also puts them to use in its delivery trucks to help bring fresh pizza to your home. They raised an impressive $23 million late last year.

Drink Robots: Robotic cocktail startups Bartesian and Somabar both recently picked up funding, with Somabar receiving a $1.5 million and Bartesian getting an undisclosed amount from Beam Suntory, the spirits company behind Jim Beam whiskey brand. Early this year pro-cocktail robot company Monsieur picked up $1.2 million.

Gammachef: This Croatian maker of consumer cooking robots is still developing its first product, but Podravka, one of Croatia’s largest and oldest packaged food companies, made news in the country by making Gammachef its first startup investment.

Why all the interest in robots? In the professional markets like back of house food assembly, it’s clear that this technology could help automate repeatable, high-volume tasks such as making a pizza or preparing a hamburger. While automating (and eliminating) jobs with robotics may not be something large restaurant chains want to discuss publicly in today’s political environment, there is no doubt food is an industry that will see a large-scale injection of robotic technology over the next decade.

Consumer food robotics offer a less sure path for investors, mostly because robots excel at tasks that are high-volume and repeatable. Unless you’re planning on feeding your neighbors every day or drinking 30 cocktails after a hard day at work, chances are you don’t need a robot. Still, over time product categories like multicookers (i.e. Thermomix) will incorporate more automation and startups like Gammachef will continue to work on making food assembly in the home easier. At some point, I expect someone to create a compelling and affordable cooking robot that that captures the imagination (and dollars) of consumers.

Will food robotics ever rival delivery as an investment category? Probably not anytime soon. However, just as food delivery was seen as ripe for disruption by the investor class, I think food assembly and creation is now very much on investors’ radar and will take a bigger piece of the pie in coming years.