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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Miso Robotics

White Castle Expanding Use of Flippy the Robot to 10 More Locations

White Castle is adding 10 more Flippy Roars to its roster, Miso Robotics announced today. The expanded order for more Flippy robots comes after a successful pilot at one White Castle location that was announced this past July.

Through a combination of robotics, computer vision and AI, Miso’s Flippy ROAR can operate both grills to cook hamburgers as well as fry stations. The entire system is suspended on rails from above, and White Castle had been using Flippy as a fry cook. According to today’s press announcement, Flippy made an average of 360 baskets of fried food per day during its pilot with White Castle, with a total of roughly 14,580 lbs. of food and more than 9,720 baskets made.

In addition to Flippy making food in a more contactless fashion, something consumers are more aware of than ever during this pandemic, Flippy also creates more social distance among employees in the kitchen, and frees workers up to pay more attention to order fulfillment and delivery. Today’s press release noted that White Castle is open 24 hours a day, which creates its own set of staffing challenges, with late night shifts harder to fill. Because it’s a robot, Flippy can work around the clock without needing a break (or calling in sick).

White Castle’s Flippy expansion comes less than a month after Miso announced the general commercial availability of its robot. In addition to wider availability, Miso is hoping to attract new customers beyond large QSRs with its new financing option, which eliminated the $30,000 up front cost and replaced it with a $2,000 a month subscription.

The pandemic has helped accelerate interest in food robotics, and we’ve seen a flurry of activity even just this month. KFC Korea partnered with Hyundai to develop fried chicken making robots. Walmart added a Blendid smoothie making robot to one of its stores. And Costa Coffee officially took over Briggo and its automated coffee kiosks.

White Castle did not disclose where its new Flippy robots will be located, only saying they will be delpoyed in 2021. For Miso, this new contract — and, by extension, this vote of confidence in its technology — could also help boost the company’s equity crowdfunding efforts. The company is looking to raise a $30 million Series through SeedInvest, and to date has only raised a little more than $9 million.

Miso Robotics Announces Commercial Availability of Flippy ROAR

Miso Robotics today announced the commercial availability of its cooking bot, Flippy Robot on a Rail (ROAR). The company also announced that it is working with TimePayment so restaurants interested in adding Flippy to their kitchens can do so with no upfront cost.

Introduced earlier this year, ROAR literally flipped Flippy upside down. Earlier versions of Flippy were installed on the floor of a kitchen, but the redesign inverted that set up, suspending Flippy on rails above ground, thus adding more mobility and freeing up room for human co-workers.

Flippy ROAR has actually already been hard at work in a pilot program at a Chicago-area White Castle since July, and with today’s announcement Miso is looking to expand its footprint to even more QSRs and beyond.

“We really want to drive Miso to serving mom and pops,” Buck Jordan, President and Chairman, Miso Robotics told me by phone this week, adding that the company has received a lot of inbound interest from restaurants of all sizes. “Now it’s easier,” he said.

It’s easier because Miso isn’t charging $30,000 upfront for Flippy any longer. Through TimePayment’s financing options, restaurants of any size can get their own Flippy for $2,000 a month, which includes the setup maintenance and software.

Still, $2,000 is still a lot for an industry that operates on thin margins, especially when those margins are more uncertain than ever. With the COVID pandemic closing many dine-in options, restaurants have had to rely on delivery. But third party delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats can charge high commission fees that severely eat into any profits a restaurant might see from delivery.

Jordan said the Flippy can help improve the food delivery experience for restaurants. Flippy’s software now integrates with a restaurant’s ordering platform to help process incoming delivery orders from different third party delivery services. So if a restaurant gets orders at various times from DoorDash, Uber Eats and GrubHub, Flippy’s software can look at when orders come in and pickup ETAs to coordinate cook times for each part of each order. The result is that food doesn’t sit for a long period of time under a heat lamp, waiting for the delivery driver, which should result in fresher food for the end customer.

Flippy could also have the ability to alter the labor economics of a restaurant. Yes, $2,000 isn’t cheap, but a robot can work around the clock, won’t get sick, and has the ability to help create more social distance in the kitchen. If a robot can take over the repetitive and sometimes dangerous tasks of operating the grill and fry stations, restaurants might be able to shift human labor to more higher skilled jobs.

In addition to smart cooking workflows, Flippy is now able to learn how to cook more foods faster. Jordan said that it takes roughly a day of data crunching for it to learn to cook a new item. One such new item Flippy added to its roster is the plant-based Impossible Burgers.

Miso’s announcement comes while the company is in the midst of running its equity crowdfunding campaign. The company has so far raised more than $7.8 million from investors so far.

Miso Robotics Expands Equity Crowdfunding Efforts to the UK

Miso Robotics, maker of Flippy the robot cook, announced yesterday that it has launched an equity crowdfunding campaign in the UK on the CrowdCube platform.

Equity crowdfunding is a way of raising money from everyday investors instead of institutional investment sources. CrowdCube funders can invest as little as £10 to own a piece of Miso.

This is the second equity crowdfunding campaign for Miso, which opened one on SeedInvest here in the U.S. back in April with the goal of raising $30 million. That $30 million seems to be a global fundraising goal (yesterday’s press release states Miso is looking to raise £24 million worldwide, which is roughly $30 million USD). We’ve reached out to Miso to clarify.

According to the CrowdCube campaign page, it looks like Miso has already surpassed its UK-specific goal of £1,201,904 and has raised £2,544,720 (~$ 3.2 million USD) from 292 investors with 20 days still left to go. Coincidentally, $3.2 million is what Miso has raised in the U.S. via SeedInvest so far.

Miso’s UK crowdfunding campaign comes just one day after the company announced that U.S. fast food chain, White Castle, was using Flippy to operate the fry station in a pilot program at one of its Chicago locations. This was the first non-investor customer for Flippy, which has also gone to work at CaliBurger as well as the Dodger and Diamondback baseball stadiums.

Miso has raised $13.1 million in traditional funding, with its last round being a Series B back in February of 2018. There are actually a number of startups that have turned to equity crowdfunding in recent years including Small Robot Company (also on CrowdCube), as well as Winc, Mellow and GoSun. Equity crowdfunding helps alleviate some of the scaling pressures that come with institutional money, but also removes some of the institutional knowledge and connections that come with VCs.

Miso appears to be catching on so far with UK investors, now we need to see how many paying customers Flippy can rack up across the pond as well.

White Castle Hires Flippy the Robot for Pilot Program

Robots are storming White Castle! The pop culturally iconic restaurant chain just announced a partnership with Miso Robotics today to bring Flippy the robot on board as a fry cook as part of a limited pilot program.

White Castle will be using the new Flippy ROAR, which debuted earlier this year. Unlike previous versions of the robot, the ROAR is suspended overhead on a rail, sliding back and forth. Flippy will be manning several frying stations at White Castle, cooking up a variety of foods including fries, chicken rings, onion rings and mozzarella sticks.

Jamie Richardson, Vice President, Government and Shareholder Relations at White Castle, told me by phone last week that Flippy will be “coming soon” to an undisclosed location in Chicago.

The partnership comes amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, which has restaurants of all sizes reconfiguring to accommodate less human-to-human interaction. Robots are one way to reduce human contact with food, but Richardson said that White Castle started talking with Miso 15 months ago, long before the pandemic hit in full. “The unexpected events of COVID made us want to accelerate,” Richardson said, “We do think it’s important to keep marching forward with innovation.”

Robots can also be used to take over more dangerous and repetitive tasks in the kitchen, like operating the fryer. A robot won’t get bored, tired or burned making tater tots for hours on end. “A new hire like Flippy frees us up to have team members do other things like delivery,” said Richardson. Delivery and other forms of off-premises eating, of course, have become more important than ever during this pandemic as dine-in experiences have been forced to close.

For Miso, the White Castle deal comes at a time when the company is trying to raise $30 million through equity crowdfunding. As of now, Miso only has two customers using Flippy, CaliBurger and Compass Group/Levy, both of which are investors in Miso. As well, two current Flippy installation sites are stadiums, which have been shut down because of the pandemic.

With 365 owned and operated restaurants, White Castle represents a big growth opportunity for Miso. Financial terms of this deal weren’t disclosed, but the sticker price on a new Flippy ROAR costs $30,000 upfront with a $1,500 monthly subscription.

Despite having been around for nearly 100 years, White Castle remains remarkably spry. It was among the first restaurant chains to add the plant-based Impossible burger to its menu back in 2018. And as noted previously, it has been active with its third-party delivery program.

With this one installation set to start, we’ll have to see if Flippy becomes king of this particular castle.

Miso Robotics Partners with PathSpot for More Automated Hygiene in Restaurants

If it’s one thing we’ve all learned during this pandemic, it’s the importance of hand washing. And one group of people in particular you want washing their hands frequently are restaurant workers.

To help restaurants ensure that the people handling your food are properly handling their hygiene, Miso Robotics announced a partnership with PathSpot today in a move the companies say will “advance sterile and healthy cooking environments.”

Miso Robotics is the company behind Flippy, the burger-flipping, fry cooking robot, while PathSpot makes a device that lets restaurants scan employees’ hands to ensure proper washing (i.e. no poop hands). The two might not seem like the most obvious bedfellows at first, but both companies are the in the business of automating kitchen processes.

At first, the Miso/PathSpot relationship will be around cross-selling. So any discussion Miso has with a potential QSR client could include the addition of a PathSpot device. But Dr. Ryan Sinnet, CTO of Miso Robotics told me by phone this week that the agreement is multi-stage and as it progresses there will be opportunities for dataflow and other technological integrations between the two systems.

Today’s announcement follows a partnership Miso announced in March of this year with PopID to install thermal imaging cameras at a Caliburger location (all three companies count Cali Group as an investor). These thermal cameras will take the temperature of customers, employees and delivery people entering the restaurant to detect if anyone has a fever. In addition to these fever scanning capablities, the PopID kiosks can be used for contactless payment which relies only on facial recognition.

While all of these technologies have been around for a couple of years, they could find accelerated interest in a post-COVID-19 world. As restaurants start to re-open in some parts of the country, they are doing so with new regulations meant to help prevent any potential resurgence of the virus. Scanning employees for fevers and their hands for cleanliness, using a robot to cook food and having customers pay with their face may have seemed downright dystopian just a few months ago. But in a post-pandemic world, they may be the new normal to try and protect wary customers and tentative businesses.

Miso Robotics Officially Opens Equity Crowdfunding Campaign to Raise $30M

Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy, the burger grilling, tater tot frying robot, announced today that it is kicking off its equity crowdfunding campaign to raise a $30 million Series C round.

Equity crowdfunding eschews traditional institutional funding such as venture capital and allows everyday people to invest directly in a company. In the case of Miso, a minimum investment of $1,493 per investor is required in order to participate. (And we should interject that any investment is a risk and this post is not an endorsement of Miso.)

Miso announced the equity crowdfunding campaign back in November, but it still required SEC approval before it could officially begin. According to the press announcement emailed to us, Miso says it has already secured $2.6 million in reservations with a pre-money valuation of $80 million.

Earlier this year, Miso introduced its newest generation of Flippy, the ROAR, which has the robot suspended on rails above a cooking space to make more room for any human co-workers.

This jump into equity crowdfunding comes at an interesting time, to say the least. The world is in the throes of a global pandemic that is costing millions of jobs, has sent the stock market reeling and is creating even new levels of uncertainty. How many everyday people impacted by COVID-19 are going to have the money to plunk down at minimum of $1,500 to own a small part of a robot company?

Not to mention the fact that a big driver of food automation in restaurants was a labor crunch. With an estimated 3 percent of US restaurants permanently closed, there will be a lot of human workers suddenly available once this pandemic passes.

On the other hand, the coronavirus outbreak and fear of human-to-human transmission of the virus is sparking all kinds of change throughout the food system. In a post-corona world, robots that prepare food could be seen as a way to make restaurants more hygienic. This, in turn, could spark a boom in food robotics.

Equity crowdfunding has become a bit of a trend in the food tech world. Other companies like Winc, Small Robot Company, GOffee and GoSun have all turned to the everyday investor for their latest rounds of funding. On one level, it provides them with the flexibility to grow as they like without added pressure from scale-seeking VCs, but it also denies companies the networks and knowledge VCs can provide.

Miso has made its choice, and now we’ll see if everyday investors flip for Flippy the robot.

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.

Two Trends to Watch Out for in 2020: Pop-Ups and Equity Crowdfunding

Based on the volume of digital ink I devoted in 2019 to cashierless checkout and robot-related startups, you’d think that I would pick those sectors as trends to watch in 2020.

While I think those segments will continue to grow steadily over the coming months, the two trends I’m most fascinated by are the ones I actually wrote very little about this year. If you’re looking for a couple of big, juicy trends I think you should pay attention to, you should explore semi-permanent pop-ups and equity crowdfunding.

Pop-up stores have been around for a while, but there are a number of startups looking to capitalize on their small footprint and easy setup to create new retail experiences. AiFi creates nano-stores are small, self-contained shipping container-like boxes that house an operation like a convenience store. These stores are cashierless (like Amazon Go), so customers can walk in, grab what they want and go.

Zippin is another company building out cashierless retail experiences, though it’s “Zippin Cube” is more customizable. The Zippin Cube is modular, so it can fit into existing, odd-shaped real estate. The Cubes can also hold coolers and come pre-wired, so they can be assembled and up and running in as little as three weeks.

Both Zippin and AiFi allow retail brands to quickly, easily and inexpensively set up pop-up stores in sporting venues, office lobbies or even music festivals. Retailers can then extend their brand into new venues without expensive and permanent build out. Think: a mini-Safeway at the base of your office building or a 7-11 at Coachella.

The ability to cheaply squirrel these stores into the nooks and crannies of high-volume but unused space will entice retailers to try them out next year.

Speaking of enticing, I expect startups will sing their siren song next year to entice everyday people to pony up through equity fundraising. Unlike the traditional product crowdfunding on Kickstarter, equity crowdfunding offers investors real equity in the companies they back.

GoSun, GOffee (unrelated “Gos” there) and Miso Robotics all launched equity crowdfunding campaigns this year. GoSun has raised $345,000 with 25 days left in its campaign. GOffee raised $1.07 million, and Miso Robotics aims to equity crowdfund a whopping $30 million.

This is actually GoSun’s second round of equity crowdfunding. The company raised $500,000 in seed money from the crowd in 2017. I spoke with GoSun CEO Patrick Sherwin earlier this year about the reason for crowdfunding and he told me:

“Traditional VC will breathe down your neck,” Sherwin said, “And drive everything towards more profit. This gives us more flexibility and keeps us in charge.”

Greater control over their own destiny is an attractive proposition for startups, and equity crowdfunding also has the benefit of giving companies that aren’t located in major VC hubs access to capital.

There are still plenty of SEC hurdles that a company must go through when equity crowdfunding, but I imagine we’ll see a lot more companies go that route to grow the way they want to.

Miso Robotics Aims to Equity Crowdfund $30 Million

Miso Robotics, creator of Flippy the burger grilling robot, announced today that it is looking to raise a $30 million through equity crowdfunding for its next round of financing. The company’s last round was a $10 million Series B back in February of 2018, and Miso has raised nearly $15 million in total to date.

By going the crowdfunding route, individuals can invest in and receive actual equity in Miso Robotics. As with any investment, there is risk involved and no guarantee of financial return. Miso is using SeedInvest’s (by Circle) equity crowdfunding platform, along Wavemaker Labs, to execute the fundraise.

Miso is most famous for its Flippy robot, an articulating arm that can grill burgers as well as fry french fries, tater tots and chicken tenders. Flippy’s first gig was with fast casual chain CaliBurger, and additional robots have since gone on to work at LA Dodgers Stadium and Arizona Diamondbacks Chase Field.

On the crowdfunding page, the company says that it has a pre-money valuation of $80 million and that individuals looking to buy in must make a $1,500 minimum investment. Also, in a move that seems somewhat comedic, given the money involved, the company lists perks available for different investment tiers. A $3,000 investment gets you a Miso Robotics hat and a voucher for 5 free CaliBurgers. Invest $250,000 or more and you get “10 Miso Robotics hats and voucher for 100 free CaliBurgers, 1 PopID facial recognition scanner installed at your home or place of business, Trip to Los Angeles for 4 people to a regular season LA Dodgers game.” Why someone would want a facial recognition scanner meant for restaurant loyalty programs in their house, I’m not sure.

The fact that Miso is crowdfunding its next round is made all the more intriguing since we learned last month that Miso Robotics Co-Founder and CEO, Dave Zito, as well as COO, Melissa Hampton Burghardt, were no longer with the company. Reasons for their departure were not given. However Zito sent us a statement at that time saying he was still the company’s largest shareholder.

Equity crowdfunding seems to be more of a thing nowadays, with companies like GOffee and GoSun both running such campaigns. But we are curious as to why a company with Miso Robotics’ pedigree would go down the equity crowdfunding path, given the complexity of its technology and earlier fundraising achievements.

With the campaign officially launched, we’ll see if everyday investors will flip over Flippy.

The Co-Founder and CEO of Miso Robotics, Maker of Flippy, Is No Longer With the Company

Dave Zito, who was Co-Founder and CEO of Miso Robotics, is no longer with the company, The Spoon has learned. This is the second high-profile C-level loss for Miso, following COO Melissa Hampton Burghardt’s departure from the company in September.

Miso Robotics is the startup behind Flippy, the burger flipping, fry cooking robot. Flippy is probably best known for being implemented at CaliBurger in Pasadena, CA (both Miso Robotics and Flippy are companies in the Cali Group holding company). Flippy was also employed by Dodger Stadium to fry chicken tenders and tater tots, and Walmart was experimenting with the robot as well.

At this point, we aren’t sure what spurred Zito’s departure. Zito confirmed with us that he is no longer with Miso and provided the following statement that has been slightly edited for length and clarity:

Yes I can confirm I’ve moved on from Miso. As a co-founder and one of the largest shareholders I am still rooting for the team and the vision we set forth. I’m so proud of all we accomplished together.

I’m a firm believer that breakthroughs in Machine Learning, Computer Vision, and Real-time Controls for Automation present the next great wave in disruptive technologies that I believe will radically aid humanity in addressing the most pressing problems of our age. I remain resolutely focused in aiding and supporting this burgeoning ecosystem that is leveraging these technologies to produce teams and products built to make a truly positive and lasting impact.

A spokesperson for Miso also confirmed the news saying the two parties split “amicably” and that Buck Jordan, Founding Partner of Miso will be interim CEO, and helping with the search for a full-time replacement.

The news of Zito’s departure comes a week after CaliBurger announced its 2.0 initiative, which involved adding a second Flippy robot station. Miso Robotics has raised $13.1 million in funding.

CaliBurger Adds a Second Flippy Robot to Make French Fries

Fast food chain CaliBurger announced its new “CaliBurger 2.0” restaurant yesterday, which includes new high-tech features like pay-with-your-face kiosks and the addition of a second Flippy cooking robot.

CaliBurger made headlines last year when it first used Flippy to autonomously grill up burgers at its Pasadena, CA location. The burger chain made even more headlines when it took Flippy offline after just one day on the job because it was too fast for its human co-workers. After some re-tooling Flippy went back on the line a couple months later and has been cooking ever since.

CaliBurger and Miso Robotics, which makes Flippy, are both companies in the CaliGroup portfolio.

While Flippy started its robotic life using computer vision and thermal imaging to make burgers, it has also been taught to work the deep fryer. Since last summer Flippy has been frying up chicken tenders and tater tots at Dodger Stadium, and the robot will bring those skills to make french fries at the new CaliBurger 2.0 locations.

As noted, CaliBurger 2.0 locations will also feature the pay-by-face kiosks. This automated payment system records your face (with your permission), and can keep an order history to immediately surface favorites on the touchscreen interface. We used it last year and it worked just fine.

While robots and interactive kiosks were pretty novel last year, they are quickly becoming more commonplace in fast food restaurants. Just this week, Picnic unveiled its pizza making robot, and Creator‘s burger robot is still hard at work. The global kiosk market is expected to hit $30.8 billion thanks to implementations at QSRs like Dunkin, Shake Shack and Wendy’s.

CaliBurger 2.0 will open its first location this month in Fort Meyers, FL, followed by stores in Seattle, WA, Tysons, VA and Pasadena.

Welp. Robots Have Knives Now, and Know How to Use Them (to Slice Onions)

Well, fellow humans, we had a good run, but our time is over. Robots have their knives out — literally — and know how to use them.

Terminator-esque teasing aside, IEEE Spectrum has a video roundup of some of cutting-edge (sorry) robotics research being done right now. Included among the videos is “Robotic Cutting: Mechanics and Control of Knife Motion,” by Xiaoqian Mu, Yuechuan Xue, and Yan-Bin Jia from Iowa State University, in Ames, Iowa, USA.

You may think that having a robot to slice an onion mainly entails a big mechanical arm slamming a knife down, but you’d be wrong. The researchers created a program that combines and coordinates pressing, pushing and slicing motions. From the research paper’s Introduction:

Cutting skills such as chop, slice, and dice are mostly beyond the reach of today’s robots. Technical challenges come not just from manipulation of soft and irregularly-shaped objects, but more from doing so while fracture is happening. The latter requires planning and force control based on reliable modeling of an object’s deformation and fracture as it is being cut. The knife’s movement needs to be adjusted to progress in terms of material fracture. Its trajectory may need to be replanned in the case of an unforeseeable situation (e.g., appearance of a bone).

Robotic Cutting: Mechanics and Control of Knife Motion

As you can see from the video, this particular robot won’t be wowing crowds at a Benihana anytime soon, but it shows once again that robots are getting more proficient at higher-skilled tasks. Automation is coming for food sector jobs, and while we think of them right now in terms of flipping burgers and bussing tables, robots will be automating more and more tasks in restaurants, like prepping vegetables.

Dishcraft, for example, is still pretty tight lipped around what it’s working on, but the company has talked about building robots to do specific tasks in restaurant kitchens like prep work. Miso Robotics’ Flippy was created in part to take over dangerous tasks like working the grill and deep fryer in the kitchen, and the company has already talked about Flippy eventually chopping vegetables.

While there are still many issues to work through with the rise of robots, having them handle knives in the kitchen (and saving countless fingertips from lacerations) is probably not such a bad thing.