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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Taco Bell’s Vision of the Future Includes High-Tech Dumbwaiters & Lots of Drive-Thru Lanes

I’ve always been fascinated with dumbwaiters. An elevator built specifically to deliver food between floors of a building, the dumbwaiter is an idea that is both ridiculous and fascinating.

And while I can’t be sure that someone like Donald Trump or Jeff Bezos doesn’t have dumbwaiters built into their homes (though Bezos would probably prefer robots and Trump manservants he could yell at), what I am sure of is the dumbwaiter has, for the most part, largely gone extinct as part of modern life.

The lift (aka “dumbwaiter”) built into the new Taco Bell Defy prototype

Until now. That’s because Taco Bell sees them as a potentially integral part of their restaurant of the future. Called Taco Bell Defy, the taco chain’s new restaurant concept includes an elevated restaurant with multiple drive-thru lanes, food lifts, and a lot of digital integrations.

While I wouldn’t, unlike others, claim this new concept possibly “the most ambitious” prototype in restaurant history, I would say it makes a whole lot of sense for a restaurant chain that does most of its business through a drive-thru. While many chains have developed drive-thrus that have multiple order lines, the choke point always comes later when cars zip-up into a single line to get their food. By spreading out the hand-off of food to four lines, the choke point of a single window for food handover is eliminated.

The restaurant and kitchen itself are on the second floor, where workers are making food, taking orders, and, now, putting food into their little lifts to drop down to the drive-thru. Customers are also able to walk into the restaurant and order at the counter or pick up mobile orders on a pick-up shelf. Drive-thru workers interact with customers through video and audio intercom.

Not surprisingly, the new location emphasizes mobile ordering. Customers can pre-order food on the Taco Bell mobile app and scan the QR code at one of the three mobile order lanes. Delivery drivers for UberEats and others will also be able to pick up orders for customers through one of the mobile lines. Those who insist on going old-school will have to stick to the one line reserved for non-mobile orders.

Taco Bell is building the new prototype in partnership with long-time franchisee Border Foods. Taco Bell and Border Foods have said the new concept and technology within could be a template for future locations and that they are considering retrofitting existing restaurants to utilize some of the Defy technologies.

Either way, I’m all for the modern arrival of the dumbwaiter. Like with the comeback of the automat in recent years, I love seeing concepts we once thought were extinct now powering our restaurants of the future.

You can watch a customer get their food via the lift at a Taco Bell Defy (including a camera sent up the tube) in the video below.

Whats Up the Tube at First of its Kind Taco Bell?

Tablz Wants to Metaverse-ize Restaurant Reservations and I am on Board With It

A couple of weeks ago, my wife and I went out for our anniversary dinner.

I’d made reservations for two with OpenTable at a nice little steak place and mentioned it was our anniversary in the ‘special occasion’ field. When we arrived, the staff was friendly and gave us special treatment.

Overall it was a great experience, except for one little thing: the table. We’d have preferred a window seat, not one in the middle of the room near the entrance. Nitpicky, I know, and something the staff had no idea about since I didn’t tell them and I wasn’t able to pick a specific table when I made reservations

But what if I could have? What if I could have picked my table location like I would when buying a ticket on an airplane or for a concert? Better yet, what if I could have walked around a virtual version of the restaurant and seen the table and the view before making the reservation?

That’s the future a startup called Tablz is hoping to make possible. The San Francisco-based company has created a table reservation platform that allows prospective diners to virtually tour a restaurant and pick their table. As you can see in the video below, the experience is not unlike moving through a video game like The Sims or touring a home with a 3D walkthrough on Zillow.

Finding a Table With Tablz Reservation Technology

In other words, the company has shown us what the restaurant reservation experience will look like in the metaverse, and I am here for it. The first description I heard of Tablz was that it allows you to pick a seat like you would on an airplane. That’s accurate, but it doesn’t really do it justice. By being able to walk around the restaurant and pick a table, see where it is on a 3D floorplan or dollhouse view, and look around from your prospective seat with a 360-degree view is a game-changer when it comes to making a reservation.

Tablz’s technology can be plugged into existing reservation sites like OpenTable and Rezy, which makes it a lot more appealing to prospective restaurant owners who have spent years building followings on those platforms. It also makes it more likely that the entrenched platforms themselves will embrace the technology rather than see it as a competitor. I also wouldn’t rule out the incumbents either creating similar technology or acquiring a company like Tablz as restaurant reservations evolve and move into the metaverse.

Tablz was initially incubated as the first product from a company called Transparent Kitchen. The Transparent Kitchen’s founders saw enough potential with the product to sunset the original company and focus full-time on Tablz. The company has raised a small seed round of funding from Branded Hospitality Ventures and a private investor group, including restaurant advisor Steven Kamali and Bbot founder Steve Simoni.

Tablz technology is being used at a handful of restaurants today like Roka in San Francisco and Dog & Tiger Public House in Toronto, but I expect we’ll see more soon as restaurants look for ways to stand out from the crowd as we come out of the pandemic.

What Do NFTs and Web3 Mean for Small Restaurants?

So while it may not be surprising that a restaurant concept by alpha-adopter and Internet celebrity Gary Vaynerchuk can raise millions of dollars selling NFTs, what about that mom & pop place on the corner?

In other words, how does a small restauranteur that doesn’t have the followers, fame and early adopter advantage of a Vaynerchuk take advantage of web3?

This is a problem Adam Brotman has been giving some thought to. As the former head of digital for Starbucks and CEO of a company that powers digital loyalty programs for restaurants big and small in Brightloom, he’s been imagining what a world looks like when more consumers know what an NFT is and how to hold it.

I asked him how a corner restaurant like the one in my neighborhood called Portofino’s might eventually use an NFT. According to Brotman, local restaurants like the one at the end of my street will eventually be able to put NFTs to use, but not in the same way celebrities as Vaynerchuk can.

“Portofino’s could say, ‘Yeah, we know who our best customers are, either by name or some loyalty program,'” Brotman said on the Spoon podcast. “And they give them an NFT. Say, ‘here’s a code to claim your free NFT. And by the way, we’re only giving there’s only ever going to be 300 customers that can own the Portofino’s NFT.’

Brotman says that there are plenty of benefits popular smaller restaurants can give loyal customers that would make an NFT valuable such as reservations whenever they want, free valet parking, special offers, and events.

Brotman acknowledges some things need to fall into place before small guys can use NFTs, the first of which is to make the onramp for customers to buy and hold NFTs a whole lot accessible.

“99% of their customers wouldn’t even know how to hold an NFT,” said Brotman. “You have to have a crypto wallet today. They ask, ‘what is a crypto wallet? How do I get one?'”

Brotman says the entire crypto tech space is working on this problem and believes big consumer-facing crypto companies like Coinbase will eventually offer easy-to-use solutions.

He also thinks the cost needs to come down, both in terms of transaction fees and the impact on the environment. He believes newer blockchain platforms that claim to be carbon neutral like Solana will help here.

Brotman also admits better tools are needed since offering something like an NFT is beyond the capabilities of most restauranteurs and says that this is a problem that Brightloom is working on.

Brotman also thinks the broader metaverse holds potential for restaurants, but it will be a while before all that is figured out.

“I think we’re a ways off from that,” said Brotman. “NFTs being used multi-purpose loyalty, access identity, digital collectible community formation tool is going to be more relevant first before there’s going a critical mass of people living in some virtual reality.”

But, just in case restaurants are already thinking of moving into the metaverse, Brotman doesn’t think they should be overly focused on being transactional, but instead on enabling experiences that are on-brand.

“If I’m a Starbucks in the metaverse, I’m not just serving coffee. I’m growing coffee. I’m giving people tours of my farm in Costa Rica. What are the things that I wish I could transport people to experiences that I can’t scale in real life because of distance or cost or physics?”

You can hear the rest of my conversation with Brotman in the latest episode of The Spoon podcast.

Would Someone Pay $1 Million For an NFT to Get VIP Access to a Restaurant? We’re About to Find Out

Lots of people would like to walk into a restaurant and get VIP treatment. But is it worth paying $1 million for?

We’re about to find out. That’s because a restaurant group called Chotto Matte is going to offer up a $1 million NFT to a bidder to get a singular NFT called The Founder.

According to the release, The Founder “collectible chip card grants exclusive membership access with an array of bespoke benefits, redeemable all over the world and ranging from personal invitations to every Chotto Matte restaurant opening around the world, plus first-class flights and five-star accommodations to major sports event tickets for two people per year (FIFA, F1, boxing, etc.); and more! “

A few months ago, the folks behind Flyfish Club launched a successful NFT campaign that drew thousands of bidders to buy NFTs that granted them membership to a new restaurant backed by social media influencer and entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk. At the time, I suggested that Flyfish’s success might influence other restauranteurs to jump into the NFT game, perhaps modeling their NFTs on the membership model designed by the group.

From the looks of it, Chotto Matte is not modeling their NFT on Flyfish, but instead hoping for a big “fish” to drop a million bucks to gain VIP access to benefits at the Chotto Matte restaurant. It’s a riskier strategy since there’s a high probability they don’t find anyone willing to part ways with a million bucks for this NFT.

Don’t get me wrong. Exclusive membership benefits that offer true real-world utility are an absolute must for any restaurant going down the NFT route. I just don’t know if VIP treatment at Chotto Matte is enough to convince someone to part ways with that kind of money.

Either way, we should know soon. The company plans to launch its NFT via a special launch event on April 5th at NFT week in Miami.

Checkers To Roll Out AI-Powered Voice Tech to 267 Restaurant Drive-Thrus By End of 2022

This week restaurant chain Checkers & Rally’s announced a deal with Presto, a maker of restaurant technology, in which the drive-thru focused chain will roll out Presto’s AI-powered voice assistant technology chain-wide by the end of the year.

The announcement comes after early trials showed a 98% order accuracy for the voice assistant technology. And now, according to Checkers President and CEO Frances Allen, the chain plans to roll out Presto’s voice technology to all 267 store-owned and operated locations by the end of 2022. She also indicated that many franchise locations are expressing interest in the technology.

“We had a vision two years ago that we wanted what I would call ‘Alexa at the drive-thru,'” said Allen.

And now, with Presto, they have it. According to Allen, about 80% of the chain’s total business comes through a drive-thru, so the company’s management felt transitioning to a high-accuracy automated drive-thru could significantly impact the business.

“Anything we can do to improve operations, streamline for our guests and our employees, we wanted to do.”

You can hear the Presto voice assistant taking an order at a Checkers drive-thru in the video above. The Presto bot sounds, well, bot-like as it says “Welcome to Checkers, this drive-thru microphone is monitored and recorded for quality assurance.” In fact, the entire exchange sounds like something you might hear on an automated customer service line.

Expedite’s Kristen Hawley thought so too and asked during the press briefing if customers could access live humans at any point during the interaction.

“There are 2% of orders where the system says ‘you know, I don’t quite understand that,'” said Presto founder and CEO Rajat Suri. “If the person is insistent on talking to a staff member or operator, the system will escalate to the human in the restaurant.”

When asked if the broader rollout of Presto’s technology will result in a permanent reduction of headcount, Allen said no. Instead, she said, Presto’s technology helps fill roles left empty by the persistent shortage of workers the entire restaurant industry has been experiencing since the pandemic began.

“Our motivation is to fill the gap between the people that are available to us working in restaurants and where we need to focus that human labor,” said Allen. “In an ideal world, maybe we have five people at any shift right now. We probably have three or four available. And so this (Presto’s voice assistant) is like a fifth person that is coming in to help.”

“Our motivation here is not to replace people with robots.”

Cheetah Now Lets You Buy Prepared Restaurant Meals with Your Groceries

At the height of the everybody-panic-grocery-shelves-are-bare phase of this pandemic, Bay Area-based startup Cheetah pivoted from selling food to restaurants to selling that same food directly to consumers. Today, Cheetah announced that it is going back to its roots, in a way, and selling prepared meals from restaurants.

Cheetah’s Restaurant Picks service is open to all restaurants in the Bay Area and is kicking off with Curry Up Now, Hummus Bodega, La Mediterranee, Tartine and Zero Zero SF to sell prepackaged meals through the Cheetah app. As with its grocery service, orders are picked up by customers at one of four locations around the Bay Area. Users are only able to order food from the restaurant in that pickup location (e.g., Curry Up Now meals are only available to people picking up food in the Inner Sunset neighborhood).

Unlike third-party delivery services, Cheetah is not charging a commission for its service, just the standard credit card processing fees.

The lines between restaurant and grocery stores were already blurring pre-COVID-19 as grocery stores offered an array of hot meals to take home. The pandemic not only decimated the restaurant industry, but also shut down that hot bar side of the business for grocers.

Cheetah’s Restaurant Picks take up the mantle of that blurring between grocers and restaurants, but just in a whole new direction. Cheetah went from connecting restaurants with wholesalers, to connecting consumers with wholesalers. In each of those cases, those connections helped keep businesses open and people fed. Now it is doing the same on the other side of the equation by giving restaurants a new revenue source directly from consumers.

With the pandemic showing no signs of slowing down here in the U.S., and Cheetah flush with recent funding, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Cheetah create even more connections across the restaurant meal journey.

NPD: Restaurant Chain Transactions Down From Last Year, Digital Orders Up

New data from NPD Group is a real good news/bad news situation for restaurants. The bad news: for the week ending May 24, total major restaurant chain transactions declined 18 percent compared to the same time period last year. The good news? That’s up 25 percentage points from the biggest decline in transactions during this pandemic (-43 percent for the week ending April 12).

Of course, a big reason for that growth is that more cities and states began re-opening towards the end of May, so more people could once again actually go into a restaurant.

An NPD press release breaks the numbers down further, writing:

  • Major full service chain restaurant transactions declined by -42% versus same time year ago, a +7 point improvement from the prior week’s decline of -49% from year ago.
  • Transactions at quick service restaurant chains were down -17% in week ending May 24 compared to same week year ago, improving from the -20% decline in the prior week.

Another couple of interesting tid-bits from NPD’s recent data is that drive-thru, mostly at QSRs, made up almost half of all restaurant occasions, and that digital orders grew by 106 percent in April compared with last year. NPD says that digital orders now account for 20 percent of all restaurant occasions.

If you’ve been following my colleague Jenn Marston’s writing, this growth in digital orders and off-premises dining shouldn’t come as a surprise. In her excellent weekly restaurant tech newsletter this past Friday, she covered recent Black Box data that showed takeout orders are going back up. As Jenn wrote:

Presumably, people got excited about going back to restaurants instead of ordering takeout, then realized what a pain in the a$$ dine-in service is going to be for a long time to come. Guidelines vary from state to state in the U.S., but almost all of them include reduced capacity, reduced party sizes, no buffets, and in some cases a mask requirement. Add to that the trepidation most of us wear with our masks these days anytime we set foot in public, and it’s not exactly a recipe for a packed house.

As more cities and states ease shelter in place order, and summer gets into full swing, we’ll move from guessing about how consumers will react to restaurants’ re-opening and into hard numbers around what they are actually doing. Data like this from NPD helps chart those movements.

Dishcraft Raises $20M, Adds Reuseable Takeout Container Cleaning as a Service

Dishcraft Robotics, which uses robots and AI to automate dish cleaning for high-volume eating establishments, announced today that it has raised a $20 million “Series A1” round of funding. The round was led by new investor Grit Ventures with participation from existing investors First Round Capital, Baseline Ventures, Fuel Capital, and Lemnos. Dishcraft has raised $46 million in total funding to date.

When we last checked in with Dishcraft in January of this year, the company had just publicly come out with Dishcraft Daily, which is basically dishes as a service for foodservice locations like cafeterias. As we wrote back in January:

Each day, Dishcraft arrives at the end of lunch service, picks up all the dirty dishes that have been stacked into special carts, and drops off clean ones. Dirty dishes are taken back to the Dishcraft facility and loaded into the cleaning robot.

The Dishcraft robot uses computer vision, sensors, UV light and AI to detect the cleanliness of each dish as it goes through the machine. This technology, Dishcraft says, makes for cleaner plates because the machine can detect (and clean) any particles remaining that the human eye can’t.

However, the global pandemic hit shortly after the launch of Dishcraft Daily, forcing foodservice operations like corporate and college cafeterias to shut down. But rather than twiddle its thumbs to wait this whole thing out, Dischcraft adapted.

As part of today’s announcement, Dishcraft said it will use the new money to expand its daily dish delivery to now include reusable to-go containers and utensils. The reusable container program had been on the company’s roadmap, but was accelerated because takeout became the main, if only way, for foodservice companies to get meals out. But as anyone who’s ordered meal delivery during this global lockdown knows, restaurant food is packed in single-use plastic containers. That might help people eat right now, but those containers are definitely bad for the environment in the long term.

According to the press release, the reusable containers will allow cafeterias, caterers and restaurants “to offer diners individually portioned takeaway meals in reusable containers that meet health guidelines for sanitization and hygiene.” The program will start with corporate cafeterias and cafes, with to-go container return bins set up around the office. Those full bins will then be collected by Dishcraft to be sanitized every day. It’s easy to see how this could expand to colleges with bins placed around campus.

Dishcraft hasn’t fully worked out how it would integrate its to-go container program into restaurant operations, but Linda Pouliot, Founder and CEO of Dishcraft told me by phone this week that some options could be working with cities to set up designated collection areas, or even possibly Dishcraft creating its own curbside pickup service.

Restaurants and other foodservice companies are only just now coming out of quarantine and only in certain parts of the country. There are still lots of questions about exactly how they will re-open and what that will look like. One thing we do know from a recent Washington State University study is that consumers are nervous about going right back into restaurants and as my colleague Jenn Marston wrote:

Consumers surveyed for the report said that sanitation efforts like masks for servers, hand sanitizer stations, and other visible efforts, like seeing staff clean tables and chairs, will be the most important safety precautions.

Dishcraft’s sanitization service could then be attractive to restaurants looking to entice people back into their businesses. “We have such a closed system,” Pouliot said, “Our goal is that no human hand touches the dishes before it gets to the diner or plated.”

Dishcraft is available in the Bay Area, and currently counts Affirm and foodservice company Guckenheimer among its customers. Dishcraft said that it will expand the size of its dishwashing hub in San Carlos, CA.

Popapp Data Gives Snapshot of COVID-19’s Impact on Latin American Restaurants

Because we are based in the US, we have plenty of data about how the COVID-19 outbreak is decimating the restaurant business here. And while we have a general sense about how restaurants are faring in other parts of the world (bad), we haven’t seen a lot of numbers.

But thanks to Jorge Corona Gutierrez, we have a small glimpse into the impact of the global pandemic across Latin America countries like Argentina, Chile, Perú and Mexico.

Gutierrez is the Founder and CEO of Popapp, a restaurant software startup that helps manage delivery for small to medium-sized restaurants. He pulled together data from Popapp’s 300 customers to provide a snapshot of how COVID-19 has impacted the restaurant business across Latin America. From that report, Gutierrez says:

  • As of March 1 of this year, Popapp had 336 active point of sale (POS) per day. By April 6, that number had dropped to 59 active POS per day, representing an 82 percent churn.
  • During the first week of March, the average cumulative sales per day of Popapp’s customers was roughly $117,000 (USD) per day. During the first week of April, that number dropped to $25,000, an 84 percent loss in revenue.

Obviously this is a small snapshot of the overall state of the restaurant industry in Latin America, but it does give us some numbers to get a sense of the problems there.

Even amidst this gloom, however, Gutierrez points out some optimism. That 59 active POS number above is actually an improvement over the nadir for the company over the past month, when there were just 43 active POS systems per day. And Gutierrez says that his company has been steadily adding more customers suggesting that more restaurants are pivoting to delivery.

The data from Gutierrez’s report does illustrate that this is a truly global pandemic that is hitting the restaurant industry particularly hard around the world.

Pepper Groceries Pivots to Help B2B Food Suppliers Sell Direct to Consumer

There are two consistent stories that we are seeing unfold during this time of global pandemic and massive restaurant closings. First is that the traditional ways of the restaurant business are gone for now and any company that wants to survive in that space needs to pivot into something new. The second is that all the food that would have been used by those now shuttered restaurants needs somewhere to go.

Pepper sits right in the middle of that venn diagram. A few months ago it was a startup that helped restaurants streamline their food buying from multiple suppliers. With restaurants closing, Pepper’s original business plan was kind of shot. But because Pepper was working with food suppliers, it knew even though so many restaurants slowing down or ceasing operations, those suppliers still had food to sell. So Pepper did what any smart startup does in challenging times: it pivoted.

It quickly transformed its platform from business-to-business to direct-to-consumers. Pepper’s first market is the greater New York City area, and people in the five boroughs there can visit PepperGroceries.com to purchase seafood, produce, meat, cheese and even kitchen and janitorial supplies from the companies that used to supply restaurants.

Each of these suppliers has their own delivery trucks, and orders are turned around in a couple of days. Pepper currently works with four suppliers and is in talks to bring on more. For now, all the money a shopper spends on Pepper goes directly to the suppliers.

“All the proceeds are going to pockets of the suppliers,” Bowie Cheung, Co-Founder and CEO of Pepper told me by phone this week. “The general thing is to see how much relief we can provide to these [suppliers]. Drum up as much demand as we can.”

Cheung said that while the service is only available in the New York/New Jersey area right now, the platform can easily scale up and go nationwide. Pepper is venture-backed with an undisclosed seed round investment from Greylock Partners and Box Group.

Like so many things being upended by the coronavirus right now, one has to wonder whether this will be a temporary pivot for Pepper or a new normal both for the startup and the food suppliers it works with. As Cheung summed it up, “How and where does the industry go in a couple of months? I have no idea.”

Restaurants and Partners Innovating to Survive During the Coronavirus

The COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent social distancing are affecting many folks, but one of the groups that’s been the hardest-hit is the hospitality industry, especially restaurants. So we at The Spoon are putting together a list of companies in or adjacent to the food and restaurant space who are offering ways to help foodservice establishments struggling during the coronavirus.

Please feel free to leave any additional companies in the comments section or email us at tips@thespoon.tech. We’ll be updating the list. Stay safe and healthy out there!

SOFTWARE HELPING RESTAURANTS

Photo: Foodetective

Switzerland: Foodetective

Plenty of restaurants are trying to focus more on takeaway and delivery, but third-party delivery services can charge high fees that cut into restaurants’ already razor-thin margins. Foodetective is trying to let restaurants keep more profits in their pockets by offering free takeaway and delivery platform for restaurants — in Switzerland. Swiss restaurants can go onto Foodetective’s website and set up a profile to sell their food online without having to pay commissions to delivery services.

Maybe (more) third-party delivery services here in the U.S. will take note.

Photo: Bbot

Nationwide: Bbot

Steve Simoni, founder of smart ordering software provider Bbot, told The Spoon that they would be providing discounted setups of their software to help restaurants better support delivery and pickup. Simoni said that they won’t charge the monthly fee for their software until June 1.

“We’re trying to make it cost effective and easy for them,” he wrote to us. However, participating restaurants will need to figure out their own delivery service to partner with to actually get the food to diners’ doorsteps.

Photo: Lavu

Nationwide: Lavu

Restaurant PoS system provider Lavu Inc. just released its Corona Virus Relief plan. According to a Linkedin post by Lavu’s CEO Saleem S. Khatri, the company is no longer charging software payments to restaurants that are shut down in response to the outbreak.

Lavu is also waiving fees for Menudrive, its online ordering platform, so restaurants focusing more on delivery don’t have to pay as much to third-party services.

Finally, Khatri wrote that Lavu has partnered with an undisclosed capital partner to help restaurants in dire straits gain access to short-term capital.

RESTAURANTS REINVENTING THEMSELVES

Seattle: Addo

Chef Eric Rivera is known for his wacky, creative theme nights at his Seattle restaurant addo. But in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak, he has started diversifying addo’s offerings to cater to diners who might be cautious to dine out in a group setting.

Seattlites can order to-go meals from addo @ home, which includes three pre-prepped meals plus wine, for pick-up or delivery. Rivera has also created addo pantry, a source of dry goods, hot sauces, and more made in-house which people can pre-order for pickup or delivery (delivery comes with a flat fee). Pick-ups and deliveries for addo pantry start on 3/22.

If you’re looking for a way to pay it forward in these uncertain times, Rivera just launched addo for the people. Through the program you can purchase $9 bowls of take-and-heat food either for yourself or as donations to local charities. The bowls are currently available for pickup at addo and Rivera and his team are in the midst of partnering with charities to coordinate food drop off.

Photo: Canlis restaurant in Seattle

Seattle: Canlis

James Beard Award-winning fine dining restaurant Canlis is completely reinventing itself in the wake of the coronavirus. The restaurant will shut down its dining room starting on Monday, March 16 and will pivot the following day to offer three new dining options: takeout-only breakfast option The Bagel Shed, pickup lunch offering Drive On Thru, and a meal delivery service called Family Meal.

All new offerings will be based on the Canlis restaurant site in the Queen Anne neighborhood of Seattle, and the delivery range for Family Meal will be roughly 7 miles away from the restaurant. “Fine dining is not what Seattle needs right now,” reads Canlis’ new website. “Instead, this is one idea for safely creating jobs for our employees while serving as much of our city as we can. We’ve got this, Seattle.”

CREATOR GOES TAKE OUT

San Francisco’s hamburger restaurant, which already has robots that make its food, has gone to take out and delivery only. The restaurant has also taken on what seems like sci-fi level measures, as the company told us via email:

Our engineers have worked around the clock to create a transfer chamber that protects the inside of the restaurant from outside air yet still allows us to transport completed meals, in their hermetically sealed bags, out to customers. The chamber uses a positive pressure system combined with a self-sanitizing conveyor.

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Do you know of other restaurants/online platforms/services that are helping foodservice establishments survive during the coronavirus outbreak? Comment below or send us a tip at tips@thespoontech!

2ndKitchen Completes $4.35M Seed Round so Places Like Bars Can Serve Food from Nearby Restaurants

2nd Kitchen, the startup that enables establishments with no kitchens like pubs or bars to serve food from nearby restaurants, announced today that it has completed a $4.35 million seed round of funding. The round was led by Hyde Park Venture Partners with participation from MATH Venture Partners, Great North Labs, Bragiel Brothers, and M25.

The seed round actually kicked off in February of this year when 2nd Kitchen raised $1.35 million of the round. Here’s how we described the company back then:

It’s expensive for a bar or brewery to add its own kitchen facilities, so 2ndKitchen creates what could almost be considered a virtual food court. It connects a bar (or other business without a kitchen) with restaurants that are within walking or biking distance to curate a menu of items. Customers can order from this mini-menu via kiosks in the kitchenless establishment or a mobile phone app with the food delivered straight to their table.

Since then, 2ndKitchen has added other kitchenless locales like hotels, hospitals and co-working spaces to the place it serves. It’s free for a location to set up, and 2ndKitchen takes care of the menu, payments, and customer support. According to its website, 2ndKitchen charges participating restaurants a commission for orders it generates and restaurants can either make deliveries themselves or work with 2ndKitchen’s “delivery partner network.”

For anyone who’s ever had to cut short a good time at their favorite pub because it didn’t serve food, it’s easy to understand why this is a good idea. For location proprietors like bars, it keeps butts in seats for longer (ideally ordering more drinks) and adds food without needing to add all the expense of adding a kitchen. For restaurants, it’s easy to see some initial pushback in adding yet one more sales channel to its order tablet roster. But if the orders are placed from establishments close by, then it seems like 2ndKitchen could be a boon for restaurants looking to expand their customer base.

In its press release, 2ndKitchen said that it is rapidly expanding across the U.S. and will use the new funds to go after new business categories beyond bars, breweries, and hotels.