Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Miso Robotics

Meet Nommi, a Robotic Bowl Food Kiosk Designed by Wavemaker, C3, and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto

Today Wavemaker Labs announced the launch of a new startup and bowl-making robotic kiosk concept called Nommi. Nommi will be “a standalone robotic kitchen that is able to produce and dispense any grain-, noodle- or lettuce-based dish through a fully integrated cooking system.”

Nommi is the latest robot startup concept to emerge from Wavemaker Labs, the food automation incubation studio behind Miso Robotics (Flippy, a back-of-house fry and grillbot), Bobacino (boba drinkbot), Future Acres (farm assistant) and Piestro (pizza kiosk). What’s unique about Nommi is the company is a product of a partnership between Wavemaker, C3 and chef Masaharu Morimoto, each of whom hold equity in the new company.

“As we started developing it, we really wanted to get partners to allow this to scale quickly, and really kind of stack the deck before we start playing,” said Buck Jordan, President and Co-Founder of Nommi and CEO of Wavemaker Labs, in a recent zoom interview with The Spoon.

C3, which has made a name for itself over the past couple of years for its aggressive expansion into virtual food haul concepts, has plans to order up to one thousand Nommi units over the next few years. While Jordan and C3 envision the Nommi augmenting some physical restaurant locations, the primary focus for the bowl food robot will be food delivery.

“We’re building this to be really delivery accessible,” said Jordan. “Delivery is going to double over the next five years, and so we want to be part of that.”

According to Jordan, while the initial machine will be designed to assemble food bowls that can be handed off to humans for delivery, Nommi envisions a future that will be roboticized from end to end.

The system is “designed and go through our system to be picked up by the regular delivery apps by human,” said Jordan. “But in the long term, we are trying to figure out a way to have a robotic transfer system to some of these robotic delivery machines out there to make a full end to end.”

Chef Morimoto will run the first Nommi, featuring menu items from his Sa’Moto restaurant brand. According to Jordan, Morimoto’s input had a significant impact on the robot design.

“Chef Morimoto wants really high-quality food,” said Jordan. “There’s no compromising when it when he puts his name on it.”

Because Morimoto wanted to delicately place ingredients in each food bowl, Nommi’s design team endeavored to build a robot capable of such high-fidelity food-making. This resulted in a wheeled cart system that moves around under food dispensing stations and rotates up to 360 degrees for precision ingredient placement. You can watch the Nommi assembling bowls via its wheeled cart system in the video below.

The Nommi Bowl Making Kiosk

Nommi fills a hole in Wavemaker’s portfolio for a fully automated bowl kitchen kiosk. Wavemaker’s most well-known food robot startup, Miso, makes back-of-house robots for fry and grill work. Piestro makes consumer-facing pizza robot kiosks. With Nommi, the company has designed a flexible bowl-food robot that, according to Jordan, is flexible enough to replicate a variety of menus from high-end chefs.

“There will be brands built from the ground up to be automated,” said Jordan. “And so we want to take the best in class food from Michelin star chefs and bring fine dining to the masses. We want to do in a fully automated way and be able to have a grain bowl made by Morimoto cost the same as a Big Mac.”

Each Nommi machine has a capacity for up to 330 bowls and lids. Each kiosk will come with up to 21 food lockers that hold finished bowls. Customers or food delivery workers can pick up the food at the kiosk using a QR code.

According to Jordan, the company hopes to start shipping its production unit in 2023.

A Conversation With Buck Jordan of Nommi

Q&A With Miso CEO Mike Bell About Building The Company’s Next-Generation Food Robot

This morning, Miso Robotics unveiled their second-generation restaurant kitchen robot, the Flippy 2. Having followed Flippy since the early days, it’s been interesting to watch the different phases and trials over the past few years as the company essentially developed what is arguably the first true high-volume quick service restaurant kitchen robot to hit the market.

Since today’s news essentially marked the culmination of a five-year journey to build a new robot crafted from lessons garnered from thousands of hours of operation in high-volume kitchens, I thought it would be a good time to catch up with the company’s CEO, Mike Bell, to ask him about the achievement and where he sees the company going over the next couple years.

Q: It seems Flippy 2’s out-of-the-gate deployment is the fry station. Do you anticipate also being able to have Flippy 2 be customized to work the grill at some point? 

A: Yes! Flippy is currently automating the fry station but it will, at some point in the future, develop the ability to fry burgers on a grill.  

Q: Are Flippy 2’s going to be deployed primarily in new-build kitchens, existing QSRs, or both in the near future? 

A: We’re planning on deploying Flippy in both spaces in the near future and we’re very excited about what will come in the next year. Currently, we have plans to deploy about a dozen additional pilots in the next few months, and we’re also in talks with several top restaurants and QSRs who are interested in bringing Flippy to their kitchens, both in the U.S. and overseas.  

Q: It seems to me Wavemaker products are sold via two purchase models: a full unit purchase with monthly support or a Robotics-as-a-service model where the lease pricing and support are built into the monthly fee. Is this the case for Flippy 2?

A: Yes, that’s correct, we will be offering Flippy 2 through a Robot-as-a-Service model, which allows us to bring our products faster and more efficiently to the back-of-house without an upfront cost. The final cost will really depend on the needs of each restaurant and the specific configuration Flippy 2 requires. 

Q: Are you planning on any potential new robots outside of the Flippy line for Miso, or is this the primary robot model line you will have for the foreseeable future? 

A: When it comes to robotics and automation, anything is possible. We can basically automate any task in the kitchen, and the back-of-house is full of low-hanging fruit.  

At Miso, we want to focus on those tasks that bring the higher ROI for our customers, those that can improve margins and have an immediate impact on their bottom line. So, after years of learning about real kitchen operations, we found that the frying station was in desperate need of automation and optimization. It has alarmingly high churn rates and is the source of many of the burns and accidents that take place in the kitchen.  

Flippy at the fryer was created to solve all those problems – but this doesn’t mean we are stopping there. We will continue to explore and expand our product lines, like we did with CookRight and the Automated Beverage Dispenser we built in partnership with Lancer Worldwide earlier this year, as long as it makes business sense. 

Q: Outside of White Castle, are you looking to deploy Flippy 2s in other QSR chains in 2022? 

A: Definitely! We are grateful for our partnership with White Castle, and we are looking forward to deploying additional units once our pilot is completed. And, as mentioned before, we also have about a dozen additional pilots underway 

Q: How long was the development process for the Flippy 2? 

A: The truth is thatFlippy has been in development for more than five years – we’re truly the only company learning at the level we are learning about real kitchen operations. And Flippy 2 is the result of many conversations and the feedback we’ve received from valuable industry partners, like White Castle, who deployed Flippy for the first time in September 2020.  

Q: Do you have any numbers you can give for total Flippy deployments at this time? Forecasted deployments for 2022? 

A: To date, we’ve had a total of six Flippy units working at different restaurant locations around the country, and we also have around a dozen more pilots underway. We have also been in talks with several top restaurants who are interested in taking Flippy overseas in the next year.   

Q: Do all new deployments now become Flippy 2s, or do you plan on keeping the Flippy 1 as an option for potential customers? 

A: Flippy 2 has been deployed in White Castle’s Chicago 42 location, and it replaced the machine we had working there for over a year.   

We’re confident that, with these new changes, Flippy 2 will help increase White Castle’s efficiency while improving the overall wellbeing of its employees.  

Once we complete the pilot program with this new unit, we have plans to deploy up to 10 additional Flippy 2 units to other White Castle locations throughout the country.  

Flippy The Fast Food Robot Has Its Own National TV Commercial

Flippy’s about to hit the big time.

That’s because the fast food robot from Miso that’s in service in places like White Castle is going to be the focus of a new nationally televised commercial.

The commercial, which can be seen below, is a 30 second ad that introduces Flippy to a TV audience.

Introducing Flippy | National Television Commercial from Miso Robotics on Vimeo.

The ad opens with Flippy making fries in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant while a voiceover actor proclaims “Nothing hits the spot quite like good food, made fast.”

From there the 30 second spot toggles back and forth between a mother and daughter happily eating food and Flippy making fries back in the kitchen.

The voiceover continues: “The taste you grew up on, now made more consistent, more efficient, and dare we say, more delicous. Introducing Flippy, the world’s first AI kitchen assistant.”

The narrator brings the pitch home with the tag line, “Let the robots do the robotic work, so people can do the people work.”

I’m not sure where the ad will play and what the audience will be – I reached out to the folks at Miso and haven’t heard back – but it’s interesting to me that they have decided to pay for a national TV spot introducing a food service robot to a general audience. It’s certainly a new direction for a company that has largely stuck to programmatic social media ads for their crowdfunding campaigns.

Here are a few thoughts as to why the company went in this direction.

The company wants to reach a new audience outside of it traditional marketing campaigns. Miso traditionally uses programmatic cookie-driven web advertising on social media and websites to appeal to potential investors. The TV spot ends with a call to action to visit Meetflippy.com, where visitors get a general overview of the robot, can get on a mailing list, and can hit a “Become a Customer” button for more info. My guess is the company believes they will reach a new audience that is less tech-savvy, but could be potential customers or even potential new investors.

Miso is beginning the “robots are our friends” messaging. There’s no doubt that as robotics become more mainstream in food service and other jobs, there will be some pushback from those that see them as job-stealers. The tagline, “Let the robots do the robotic work, so people can do the people work” seems intended to possibly get in front of the anti-robot trend.

The company is looking to time ad to coincide with its Hulu spotlight. If you watch the hero reel preview of the upcoming David Chang Hulu food show that is heavily focused on food tech, Wavemaker – the robot-focused investment vehicle closely affiliated with Miso – gets a star turn on the show. The preview features Miso Robotics Chairman Buck Jordan talking to Chang while it shows the Flippy in action. This ad spot might even be intended to play during Chang’s Hulu show.

Whatever the reason, you got to give Miso credit. The launch of a national TV commercial to push a fry-making robot is definitely a first.

Editor Update: Miso Robotics CFO Kevin Morris responded to my inquiry the following comment: “We want to make Flippy as well known to the masses as possible and doing a commercial increases its national exposure exponentially. The more eyeballs that see the commercial, the greater likelihood we can attract additional innovation partners.”

Miso and Lancer Worldwide Aim to Automate Beverage Dispensing for QSRs

Miso Robotics is making moves to expand its restaurant automation beyond fryers and grills into QSR beverage stations. Last week Miso announced a partnership with Lancer Worldwide, a global manufacturer of beverage dispensers, to develop an automated, intelligent system designed to speed up and organize drink orders.

The forthcoming beverage dispenser will integrate with a QSR’s POS system, so when a drink order comes in the machine will grab the right size cup, fill it with ice, pour the ordered drink and seal it. Additionally, the system will intelligently group drink orders together under color-coded LED lighting, so its easier for an cashier to place them with the correct order.

The machine is still in the prototyping stage, so the exact size and form factor are still yet to be worked out. It will, however, hold 24 flavors of carbonated and non-carbonated drinks. Details around pricing and business model (lease versus direct sale) have yet to be worked out as well.

Miso Robotics and Lancer Worldwide automated beverage dispenser demo

Up to now, Miso has been best known for Flippy, the robot that grills burgers and works the deep fryer at restaurants. The company also recently released a camera+software product called CookRight that allows smaller restaurants to get the same precise automated cooking of Flippy without the need for a robot installation. But honestly? While the details still need to worked out, this beverage robot could be a much bigger business for Miso than Flippy.

Not every QSR or restaurant serves burgers or deep fried foods — but they all offer drinks. Flippy requires installation in kitchens (that are big enough to begin with) that can limit exactly where human workers can stand and walk to avoid the robot as it moves about. The Miso/Lancer beverage dispenser will fit on a countertop and, based on how its described, easily slide into a QSR employee’s existing workflow.

The new dispenser is also arriving at the right time. Big QSR brands like Burger King, Chipotle, Shake Shack, KFC and more are pivoting to more drive-thru centric model and long wait times to pick up orders are a “dealbreaker” for customers. Adding automation to the beverage portion of an order could speed up expediting times, and if tied into AI-based ordering systems, human workers could spend less time placing cups under spigots and more time on customer service and other more complicated tasks.

Miso Robotics Launches CookRight to Automate Restaurant Cooking (Without the Robot)

Miso Robotics today announced CookRight, a new software product for restaurants that delivers the artificial intelligence (AI)-powered cooking of its Flippy robot — without the robotic hardware.

The new CookRight platform uses cameras mounted above a grill along with a tablet computer. The cameras look down at the food being prepared and use a combination of computer vision, thermal detection and AI to identify a cut of meat, its thickness and cooking progress. It’s the same software system used by Flippy, only instead of a providing instructions to a robotic arm, its guides a human cook. A display on the accompanying tablet shows what CookRight is “seeing” and gives instructions for each item on the grill. Miso says that CookRight currently works with burgers, chicken, fish, steak, sausage, hot dogs, and more.

Miso Robotics Chairman and President, Buck Jordan, told me by phone last week that using CookRight can help reduce foodborne illnesses by ensuring food is cooked properly, and with the guided cooking, turn just about any cook into an expert griller with no extensive culinary training.

Additionally, CookRight integrates with a restaurant’s POS and ordering systems to automate coordination of meal prep. So if an order comes in for delivery through an app like GrubHub, CookRight will know when the driver is on their way and be able to time the grilling accordingly.

With CookRight, Miso is aiming to expand its market base with a lower cost automated cooking solution than Flippy. Though the price of Flippy has steadily come down from $60,000 upfront to $2,000 a month, that’s still a lot of money for hardware that needs to be installed in existing kitchen spaces, maintained and have workers be trained on. Additionally, smaller mom n’ pop restaurants may not have the space necessary for a Flippy installation. The biggest customer for Flippy at this point has been White Castle, which will be operating the robot at 11 of its locations.

With its minimal hardware setup and a subscription cost of $100 a month, CookRight is a much more affordable option for smaller and medium-sized restaurants looking to automate some of their processes. This, in turn, will allow Miso to scale to more restaurants more quickly.

There are other players in the restaurant tech space like Dragontail Systems, which uses AI to coordinate and optimize order workflow in the kitchen. But with CookRight, Miso is taking that automated integration and optimization a step further into the actual cooking of the food.

If you want to see the future of automated cooking, then you should definitely check out Articulate, our food robotics and automation virtual summit happening on May 18. Buck Jordan will be speaking as will execs from restaurant robot companies like Karakuri, Blendid, Piestro and Mukunda Foods. Get your ticket today!

Miso Robotics Equity Crowdfunds $17M, Extends Campaign to Raise $30M

Miso Robotics, the company behind Flippy the cooking robot, announced today that it raised $17 million during its equity crowdfunding campaign from April through November of last year.

In its press announcement, Miso said that its campaign was the highest-grossing technology deal ever on the SeedInvest equity crowdfunding platform. The $17 million was only a little more than half of the $30 million the company had intended to raise, but Miso will be extending this equity crowdfunded Series C round into this year to try and hit that $30 million milestone. Miso has previously raised $15 million in financing and $3.3 million in venture debt.

Miso’s crowdfunding came during a tumultuous time for the restaurant industry, and running an equity campaign during a global pandemic was both bad and fortuitous for the food robotics company. On the one hand, COVID-19 decimated the restaurant industry, shuttering thousands of restaurants and limiting Miso’s potential customer base. Stadiums, where Flippy was already making in-roads as an automated fry cook, were also shut down.

But this crisis also meant opportunity for Miso. While many restaurants were closed, deep pocketed QSRs were able to weather the tumult and were in more of a position to afford Flippy. In a high-profile example, after an initial pilot in July of last year, White Castle quickly expanded its use of Flippy to 11 of its locations.

Buck Jordan, Co-Founder, President & Chairman of Miso Robotics, told me by phone this week that the pandemic caused a “massive” increase of QSRs interest in Miso’s technology. According to Jordan, that interest is being driven by QSR staffing issues, the ability to create social distancing in the kitchen and the ability to transition workers into roles that more involve cleaning and fulfilling delivery and takeout orders.

With restaurants emphasizing delivery and takeout options, there will most likely be sustained interest in technology that can keep workers engaged with off-premises order fulfillment and customer service.

In addition to the funding news, Miso also announced the appointment of Mike Bell as CEO and Jake Brewer as Chief Strategy Officer. Bell was previously COO at Ordermark and President and COO at Bridg. Brewer was formerly VP of Restaurant Excellence at CKE Restaurants, the parent company of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s.

Brooklyn Dumpling Shop Adds Miso’s Flippy Robot to its Automat Concept

In addition to feeding you, the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop wants to create a “zero human interaction” experience. And as Restaurant Business reports today, the company is removing at least one human from its equation by bringing on Miso Robotics’ Flippy to work in its kitchen.

Brooklyn Dumpling Shop (BDS) co-founder Stratis Morfogen told Restaurant Business, “Miso is executing the full kitchen operation, which will be available in the third quarter 2021. Until then we will be using countertop portable versions in Q1 of 2021.”

What Morfogen seems to be referring to there is that eventually his company will install Flippy ROARs, which run on rails above the fry station. For now, his store will use the ground-based versions.

The Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, which is slated to open its first location in December (and, confusingly, in Manhattan), is bringing back the old Automat concept. Customers will order their meals via a kiosk or mobile app. Once ready, BDS stores each order in its own a temperature-controlled locker until the customer arrives to retrieve it.

The timing is certainly right when it come to having fewer humans involved in the preparation of your restaurant food. The COVID-19 pandemic is more widespread than ever and causing another round of restaurant dining room closures. Creating a restaurant where you don’t have to interact with another person helps reduce the vectors of human-to-human transmission of the virus.

Robots like Flippy are also finding accelerated interest from restaurants because they can work around the clock, don’t get sick and can create more social distance for employees inside a kitchen. White Castle recently announced it was adding ten more Flippys to its roster after an initial pilot earlier this year.

For BDS, the addition of Flippy plays into a bigger expansion plans for the company. As Restaurant Business wrote in today’s post, Brooklyn Dumpling Shop also signed a deal with Fransmart to franchise the brand with the possibility of adding 1,000 locations across North America.

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.