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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Is LG’s Majority Stake in Bear Robotics a Sign That Food Robotics Is About to Have Its Moment?

Late last week, LG Electronics announced it had acquired a majority stake in Bear Robotics, increasing its ownership of the San Francisco-based startup from 21% to 51%. According to South Korean newspaper The Dong-A Ilbo, LG initially acquired its 21% stake in early 2024 for $60 million. The company values its latest stake at $180 million, giving Bear Robotics an overall valuation of $600 million.

While a 60%-of-a-billion-dollar valuation might not compare to the staggering figures often associated with AI startups—though recent events, such as China’s DeepThink’s troubles, may prompt reevaluations—it’s a really good valuation for a food tech company, especially in the challenging food robotics sector.

Where Are All The Unicorns?

Anyone who’s been following The Spoon (we were the first publication to write about Bear Robotics in early 2018) knows food robotics startups have had a tough go of it the last few years. High-profile flameouts like Zume have dominated headlines, while quieter exits, such as Mezli and Vebu, have underscored how challenging this is.

Vebu, formerly Wavemaker Labs, played a pivotal role in launching Miso Robotics, creator of the Flippy burger bot, along with other food robotics concepts like Piestro and Bobacino. However, by the time Serve Robotics acquired Vebu Labs last fall, its only notable product in the portfolio was the Autocado, an avocado-coring robot adopted by Chipotle.

Bear Robotics, however, has achieved steady traction in the restaurant and food service industry. This success, combined with LG’s strategic plans to develop a service robot platform for commercial and home applications, has driven its higher valuation. As The Dong-A Ilbo reported, LG plans to create an integrated solution platform that “encompasses commercial, industrial, and home robots” using Bear Robotics’ software to manage various robot products through a unified system.

Service Robots Over Food-Making Robots

What Bear doesn’t provide LG with is an actual food-making robot; instead, it offers a fairly open platform for service robotics in restaurants and other hospitality spaces. At this point, it’s still unclear whether there will be the same level of interest in food-making robots. Some players, like Picnic and Miso, continue to make progress, but they face significant competition for what is undoubtedly a limited number of big quick-service and fast-casual chains that have yet to acquire their own solutions.

Could Serve and Starship be next?

As major tech companies and consumer brands increasingly view robotics as critical to their future strategies—in what Nvidia’s CEO has called “physical AI”—it’s likely that we’ll see more acquisitions in the service and delivery robotics space. Companies with limited proprietary IP (and my sense is LG didn’t have much here) may be particularly desperate to snap up firms similar to Bear that have been around enough to create a foundation of discernable IP and a varied set of products and build a customer base.

Potential acquisition candidates include Serve Robotics, known for its sidewalk delivery robots, and Starship Technologies, a leader in autonomous delivery systems. Both companies have gained traction but operate in an environment where consolidation is becoming inevitable.

Shin Starr Brings Robot-Made Korean BBQ to Bay Area With Olhso Food Trucks

A few years ago, the Bay area was the go-to place if you wanted to eat at a robotic restaurant. Whether your meal of choice is burgers (Creator), bowl food (Mezli or Eatsa), or pizza (Zume), chances are if you wanted food made by a high-tech, venture-funded robot, you were in the right place. Fast-forward to today, however, and all of these companies have shut down.

So, where do you go if you’re looking to get a robot meal in what was once the nascent robot restaurant capital of America? If the founders of Shin Starr have any say in the matter, the answer is you stay where you are.

Based in South Korea, the company is operating two fully automated robotic kitchens housed in their mobile Olhso Korean BBQ & Seafood food trucks in the Bay area. If you’d like to order a meal from Olhso, you can download the app and order a meal delivered to your home or office.

The Birth of an Idea

The inspiration behind Shin Starr stemmed from the co-founders’ desire to blend the tradition of Korean barbecue with robotics. The two founders—Jay Shin, a long-time technology investment portfolio manager,and Kish Shin, who previously managed the US franchises for one of the largest Korean barbecue franchises in the country in Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong—got together in 2019 and started working on building a company that would utilize robotics to reduce labor costs and make authentic Korean cuisine.

“We wanted to create something unique and sustainable,” Jay Shin told The Spoon in a recent interview. “Kish and I saw an opportunity to introduce Korean barbecue to the U.S. market in a way that leveraged robotics to enhance efficiency and scalability.”

The Olhso Korean BBQ & Seafood Food Truck

After five years of development, Shin Starr introduced its first Olhso Korean BBQ & Seafood food truck in May of this year. These trucks, which currently operate in Foster City, are outfitted with robotic woks, known as “auto-woks,” that prepare and assemble meals with minimal human intervention. Shin says the only human employee required is a driver, as the robotic kitchen handles the rest, ensuring that meals are served hot and fresh, timed perfectly through a smartphone app.

“Our trucks are very simple,” says Shin. “There’s only one worker, which is a driver, who is also the store manager. The robotic kitchen does everything else.”

The menu features four dishes, including galbi short ribs and kimchi shrimp with pork belly, with prices ranging from $25 to $55, catering to customers looking for a premium street food experience.

According to Shin, the company has filed for nine patents and has five issued so far.

Moving Beyond Trucks

Shin Starr’s ambitions extend well beyond food trucks. The company plans to open a flagship restaurant in downtown San Mateo by November 2024. This 5,000—to 6,000-square-foot restaurant will incorporate the company’s robotic kitchen technology, particularly for preparing side dishes, while still employing human staff for other aspects of the operation.

In addition, Shin Starr is working on a vending machine version of its robotic kitchen, which it plans to launch by mid-2025. This version will target high-traffic locations such as airports and corporate campuses.

Lego-Block Modularity From The Get-Go

Shin says what sets Shin Starr’s robots apart is their modularity. The company has developed its own robotic refrigeration units, cooking devices, and dispensing systems, which can be assembled to create various kitchen setups. This innovative system has already attracted the attention of major players like Samsung, which has ordered 31 robotic systems for its cafeterias following a successful trial.

“From the beginning, we took a modular approach,” Shin explains. “It’s like Lego blocks—each piece can be integrated to form different kitchen setups, allowing us to adapt to various needs and environments.”

Samsung Takes Notice

Shin Starr’s robotic kitchen technology has caught the attention of major corporations, including Samsung. According to Shin, after a successful trial at Samsung’s headquarters in South Korea, where four robotic systems were initially installed, the tech giant has placed an order for 31 additional units to be deployed across its campuses. These robotic kitchens are designed to operate within corporate cafeterias, preparing meals for Samsung’s workforce.

Market Potential and Future Outlook

With an average ticket price of an eye-popping $90 per order, Shin Starr hopes to position itself as a premium brand in the food robotics space. The company’s focus is on building its own consumer-facing brand, but it is also considering franchising its Olhso trucks, vending machines, and brick-and-mortar restaurants.

If you’re in the Bay area and are craving some good Korean fare, download the app and try the Olhso truck. If you do, let us know what you think.

Smart Kitchen Roundup: Suvie Adds Air Fry to Cooking Robot, Combustion Launches ‘MeatNet Cloud’

It’s been a quiet summer in the world of kitchen tech, but over the past week, some interesting news has dropped. Here’s a roundup of the stories from this past week:

Suvie Rolls Out Suvie 3.0 Plus With Airfry

Suvie, the company behind the multi-zone kitchen cooking appliance with built-in refrigeration, announced today the launch of its Suvie 3.0 Plus. The 3.0 Plus adds air-frying capabilities to the appliance, powered by the addition of dual convection fans, one in each cooking zone. This means users of the new model can air fry in one zone while using any one of the other 15 cooking modes in the other zone.

According to CEO Robin Liss, the addition of air frying was in part due to feedback from the Suvie community. Liss says they’ve added other new features, including a new ‘ Mix & Match’ mode that allows users to to prepare different meals in each zone simultaneously.

“A lot of people like to have a Chinese takeout night,” Liss told The Spoon. They’ll buy orange chicken and maybe Mongolian beef, and you can cook the orange chicken in the top zone and the Mongolian beef in the bottom zone. Mix and Match mode lets you do that.”

The new Suvie 3.0 Plus will be priced at $429 with a meal subscription plan. The company will also continue to sell the Suvie 3.0 base model, which will remain at $299 with a meal plan. Liss says they hope to ship the new model to customers in late September.

Combustion Adds ‘MeatNet Cloud’ and SafeCook

Combustion, the maker of the Predictive Thermometer, announced this week that they have added two new features to the 8-sensor device: MeatNet Cloud connectivity and SafeCook.

If you’re wondering what the heck MeatNet is, it’s Combustion’s trademarked term for its ad hoc Bluetooth network that connects its thermometer, the Combustion display and the app on a smartphone. With the addition of MeatNet Cloud, Combustion thermometer users can now monitor a cook live and in real-time from anywhere.

To enable MeatNet Cloud, you have to jump through a few set-up hoops. You’ll have to enable a smartphone or table device as a bridge (the Combustion thermometer only has Bluetooth, it needs a Wi-Fi powered device to deliver the cooking data to the cloud), and once your bridge device is connected (and left at home when you leave), users can monitor the state of the cook with another mobile device while they are taking a run to the store to get some BBQ sauce or wood chips for their smoker.

Combustion also announced the addition of SafeCook, which the company says “uses “integrated” or cumulative bacterial destruction to determine food safety. It adds up the bacterial body count at every step in the cooking process.” This means that Combustion has essentially incorporated all the recommended USDA and FDA temperatures into the app for each type of meat needed to ensure that bacteria is effectively killed. Users who turn on the SafeCook feature will be alerted when the food is safe to eat.

Combustion CEO Chris Young often creates elaborate (and fun to watch) videos around specific topics his company is working on, and this mission to kill food bacteria is no exception. You can check out his new video about how to balance the fine line between making sure your food is cooked enough to kill any bacteria and not overly dry.

Nymble Offloads AI to Cloud and Adds New Features as It Inches Toward Manufactuing

Cooking robot startup Nymble sent out an update this week on new features and their plan to start shipping their cooking robot to customers later this month.

According to the update sent by company CEO Raghav Gupta, the company recently enabled the Nymble cooking robot to offload AI compute to the cloud. The company’s AI, which is fairly straightforward machine learning that enables the appliance to optimize cooking and understand specific routines and preferences of users, has up to this point run on a small model embedded in the appliance. Nymble now says that it AI computation can now be run in the cloud on its larger and faster AI model (which it dubs ‘Teacher’). In the case of slow connectivity, Nymble says that AI compute will run locally on the appliance in its scaled-down AI model (dubbed ‘Student’).

In addition to its addition of cloud AI compute, Nymble has also enabled users to find recipes based on dietary preferences and allergen restrictions and to skip instruction steps in a guided recipe (which, according to the company, was a top request among its beta testers).

These updates come as the company nears the ship date for its cooking robot. According to Gupta, the Nymble robot will start mass production later this month.

Watch The Figure 01 Robot Feed A Human, Sort The Dishes, And Stammer Like Us Meatbags

While much of the startup funding for food-centric robots has been for task-specific fast-automation from the likes of Picnic Robot and Chef Robotics, some of the more intriguing – and creepy – action is happening with humanoid robots.

The latest entry into the “watch a humanoid robot handle kitchen tasks” files is from Figure, which just showed off the latest capabilities of the Figure 01 robot by showing how it can identify food and sort through kitchen tasks.

What really stands out to me is the weirdly human voice of the robot, which includes very human-like pauses and slight stammers. As an example, in one exchange, a human interviewer asks Figure 01 to explain why it handed over an apple. Figure 01 responds with a quick “On it” and then goes on to explain, complete with an “uh” pause that makes you almost think there’s an actor behind the curtain spitting out the lines.

You can watch for yourself below. The exchange I am talking about happens 48 seconds into the video.

Figure Status Update - OpenAI Speech-to-Speech Reasoning

According to Figure, the latest release showcased in the video illustrates how it has put OpenAI’s large language models to work to provide high-level visual and language intelligence, while its neural networks are responsible for powering the almost human-like dexterity of the robot. The company has raised an eye-popping $754 million in funding.

Tech-Powered MOTO Pizza Raises $1.85M as It Eyes Drone Delivery & Expansion to California

Before the pandemic, Lee Kindell ran a travel hostel in Seattle, where he was known for the tasty pizza he served his guests. A couple years and a pandemic later, he’s running Seattle’s hottest restaurant and has just closed his first round of funding.

In an interview with The Spoon, Kindell has revealed that MOTO Pizza has raised $1.85 million in funding from what he describes as strategic, private “non-venture capital” funding. He says the new funding will help the company execute on its plans for the next twelve months, plans which include the chain’s first move outside of Washington State.

According to Kindell, MOTO will open its first location in California in Indian Wells, a city in Coachella Valley nestled between Palm Desert and La Quinta. California’s first MOTO will reside within the Indian Wells Tennis Garden tennis facility, where it will serve up pizza at big events such as the Indian Wells Tennis Open in March 2024. The company also has plans to expand to new locations within Washington State, including up north to Bellingham and over on the east side in Bellevue.

Beyond store expansion, MOTO is expanding its technology portfolio, including trialing a salad-bowl robot from Vancouver’s Cibotica. For Cibotica, which publicly debuted its bowl food robot last week, MOTO is their first announced trial partner in the US.

Kindell told The Spoon that MOTO will also start delivery via drone in 2024, signing a deal with Zipline to deliver pizza by the end of next year. Last month, Zipline achieved a significant milestone when it launched its first “beyond visual line of sight” (BLVS) delivery. MOTO is the second pizza partner for Zipline in Washington state after the company announced it was working with Pagliacci in May.

Kindell said that while he’s heard from several VCs interested in investing in MOTO, a modest investment felt right for the coming year.

“We felt like it was too early for us to raise through VC,” said Kindell. “We wanted to take advantage of the demand and attention for MOTO and use it to grow, while implementing the new technology into our growth. I think we will have the model we’ve been working hard towards next year, and then we can put together a big raise. We’ve already captured some attention with some VC, and that’s pretty exciting.”

“My end game is a successful autonomous pizza operation, and I can’t wait for it!”

Hostel Pizzas to Stadium Slices: The Remarkable Growth of MOTO’s Robot-Powered Artisanal Pizza

For most of the past couple of decades, Lee Kindell ran a backpackers hostel and boutique hotel in Seattle where he made pizza for travelers as a way to make them feel welcome and share stories over a good meal.

The pizza was so good that guests often told Kindell he should open his own restaurant. He thought it sounded like a good long-term plan but something he might do after he retired from the hotel business.

But then COVID hit.

“We lost our business, and I said, ‘You know, that retirement plan of making pizzas, we’re going to do it now.'”

Fast forward to today, and Kindell is running one of Seattle’s (and America’s) hottest restaurant concepts. In just two years, MOTO Pizza has expanded from one temporary location to three permanent ones with more on the way and a spot inside T-Mobile stadium where Kindell’s team serves up pizzas to hungry Mariner fans during every home game.

A Visit With Moto Pizza, One of America's Hottest New Restaurants.

If you want to get your hands on one of MOTO’s craft pizzas, you must arrive early (in other words, just after opening or, in the case of T-Mobile, the first couple of innings) and have a little luck. If you’re okay with waiting, you can add your name to the month-long waiting list MOTO announces on its website and socials every few weeks.

When asked if the waiting list is some marketing gimmick, Kindell says it was out of necessity.

“When we first opened, we had a four-hour wait,” Kindell told me. “Now we’ll do 250 pizzas a night at one location, and it’s all timed.”

MOTO’s POS system enables the scheduling of pizzas, but it’s far from the only use of technology Kindell has embraced as he’s looked for ways to scale his business.

“When I hurt my arm, I had to stop making dough by hand and use a mixer,” Kindell said. “When I started using a mixer, I realized the delta between making dough by hand and machine wasn’t that far apart.”

Kindell started looking for other ways to leverage technology. It wasn’t long before he heard of another Seattle company, Picnic, which makes pizza robots. Now, he uses the Picnic robot to add cheese, sauce, and toppings to hundreds of pizzas daily and is looking for more technology.

“Now, I’ve been reaching out to everybody, drone delivery, sidewalk delivery robots. Everything I can think of.”

According to Kindell, his use of technology has enabled his pizza to get into the hands of more customers. He’s also re-shaped his processes and pizza formats, when necessary, to reach more customers. For T-Mobile Park, where MOTO serves up a thousand pizzas or more per night, Kindell and his team created a new single-serve pizza size that fits in hand like a mobile phone.

“Think about how comfortable that phone is in your hand,” Kindell said, holding his phone. “I wanted a slice to be that comfortable in your hand.”

While much of Kindell’s early success is due to hard work and his embrace of new technology, he’d also be the first to tell you some of it – especially MOTO’s presence at a major league ballpark – has to do with luck.

When Kindell saw a couple of guys eating his pizza in the front yard in West Seattle, he asked how they liked it. After they told him it could survive in New York, he asked what they were doing out here, and they said they worked for the Seattle Mariners.

“I asked one of them, ‘How do I get into the stadium? Who do I talk to?’. He said, ‘me.'”

The long lines and fast growth have drawn lots of attention to MOTO, including from investors. But, while investors “are knocking down the door,” Kindell said he is not in any hurry as he figures out a way to use technology to optimize his processes even further to take his concept nationwide.

“I just want to be one step ahead with everything that I’m doing because when the time comes, I’m going to have my systems in place and ready to go so I can do it in stadiums all over. I can do it in the grocery store. And in urban and suburban spaces.”

Hopefully, by then, there won’t be a wait.

Meet The Dutch Robotic Kitchen That Makes Five Thousand Meals Per Day

Last month, a Dutch startup named Eatch announced they had built a fully automated robotic kitchen that makes up to five thousand meals per day. The company’s new robot, designed to work in a high-production centralized kitchen, has been making meals in the Amsterdam market for food service and catering giant ISS for the past four months.

The Eatch robotic kitchen platform handles the entire meal production flow. It oils the cooking pans, dispenses refrigerated ingredients, adds spices, plates the food, and cleans the cooking pans when everything is done.

You can watch it in action in the video below:

Eatch - World's First Robotic Kitchen for Large-scale Cooking - Up to 5.000 meals per day

Eatch’s robotic kitchen uses a pot system similar to those we’ve seen in the Spyce kitchen, Kitchen Robotics’ Beastro, and TechMagic’s pasta robot in Tokyo. The Eatch’s tilted pans rotate and toss the food inside, using an internal peg to push the food into a rotation and then drop from the top, creating a toss fry cooking motion common in stir fry kitchens.

What’s most impressive about the Eatch is the throughput, creating five thousand daily meals (and the company says it has the potential to produce up to 15 thousand per day), handling the entire production flow. Most robotic kitchens we’ve seen have production volumes much lower than this and often don’t incorporate plating and pot cleaning in the automation flow.

Company CEO Jelle Sijm told The Spoon that the company has approximately 10 employees and has raised €4.5 million. The company expansion plan includes working with partners who can handle the daily operations, and Eatch will provide the automation technology, software, and recipes. Sijm sees Eatch working with partners to produce food in centralized kitchens for contact caterers. Sijm says they are eyeing an American market entry and says the company is currently in talks with some grocery chains and contract caterers in the US.

Sodexo to Deploy SavorEat’s Plant-Based Burger Printing Robot at the University of Denver

This week, food service giant Sodexo and plant-based 3D printing specialist SavorEat announced they will be rolling out SavorEat’s 3D printing robot at the University of Denver. The deployment of the SavorEat Robot Chef marks the first deployment of the Israel-based company’s 3D printing technology in the U.S.

SavorEat, which went public on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in 2021, has been building its plant-based 3D printing technology for half a decade. The printer, which both prints and cooks plant-based burgers, was first rolled out in Israel last fall through a partnership with catering company Yarzin-Sella. The printer enables customers to customize their burger, choosing the size of the burger, doneness, protein level, and cooking style.

SavorEat, which initially pushed its product’s plant-based 3D printing angle, started focusing on promoting its burger printer as a robotic chef over the last year-plus with the launch of its second-generation platform. The company has published several blog posts hailing the benefits of automation in restaurants and says it plans to help restaurants reduce costs through back-of-house automation.

The partnership with Sodexo was inked back in 2021, and at the time, the two companies indicated they would deploy the plant-based meat printer in 2022. From the announcement:

Sodexo will examine the robot chef system and the first product developed by SavorEat, a plant-based protein burger, within higher education institutions across the U.S. In parallel, both parties are working on reaching an agreement for the distribution of SavorEat products.

In 2020, SavorEat CEO Racheli Vizman told The Spoon that their plans extend beyond food service and that the company would someday build a home-based 3D meat printer.

“That’s our goal,” said Vizman. “Where we can also have, next to a microwave, we can have machines that you know can create a variety of products.”

While you may need to wait a while for the home version of SavorEat’s Robot Chef, in the meantime, you can try out a SavorEat printed burger at the University of Denver’s Rebecca Chopp Grand Central Market in Community Commons starting this week.

Barsys Makes Case For Adding Style to Bartender Robot Category With the Barsys 360

Home cocktail-making appliances have gone through lots of phases since we started writing about them in 2016. We’ve seen everything from pod-based systems from Bartesian and Drinkworks to DIY approaches like those from MrBar.io to cocktail robots with names reminiscent of 80s hip-hop artists.

And, if we’re honest, most don’t look that interesting, either presenting as something of an after-dark Keurig or a mini version of the restaurant bar dispensing system.

In other words, cocktail bots nearly always focus on utility over design.

But should that be the case? I mean, shouldn’t home appliances, especially ones focused on entertaining and leisure, actually look good? Barsys, a company that’s been making bartending appliances for the home for the past five years or so, is trying to make precisely that case with its latest product, the Barsys 360. With an interesting-looking ring-shared design allows the cocktail glass to sit within as various ingredients are dispensed from overhead, the Barsys 360 is a significant departure from any home cocktail appliance we’ve seen here at the Spoon

In fact, at first glance, it looked a little heavy on design over function, as I wasn’t sure exactly where the machine’s liquid chambers were located or how to get the liquid inside. According to the specs, it has six, and the company assured me they all sit within the 360’s ring itself. Spirits and mixers are added into the 360 via three holes at the top, using a small adapter called the “spirit funnel” seen in the rendering below. According to the company, each of the six liquid canisters can hold 900 ml in each canister (about 4 cups).

The new Barsys360 looks much different than the previous Barsys 2+, which looks like a 3D printer with a bottle-dispenser mechanism on top. The 360 also comes with a significantly lower price tag (although I’d hesitate to call the 360 cheap) at $475 for pre-orders.

With the 360 succeed? Hard to say, mainly because outside of Bartesian, the home bartender bot market has proven to be a tough market in which to gain traction. Part of the problem is most consumers have a couple of go-to cocktails they like, and, for the most part, they know how to make them. For these folks, introducing a relatively expensive machine to automate the process may seem like an unnecessary step.

However, by focusing on design and something that might look good in the kitchen or entertaining room, Barsys hopes to appeal to craft cocktail nerds who want to add a little technology-powered flair to their cocktail-making routines. And, unlike the pod-based machines, they are removing any need to rely on proprietary supplies from a startup (another big red flag for this category in the mind of consumers).

If you’re interested in a 360, Barsys is launching pre-orders this week. If you do buy one, make sure to let us know how it goes.

You can watch the hero reel video provided by the company below:

Take a Peek at TechMagic’s Robot Ramen Restaurant in the Heart of Shibuya

Last year when I visited Tokyo, I ate at a fully robotic pasta restaurant called E Vino Spaghetti. from a Japanese startup called TechMagic.

Built by a Japanese startup TechMagic, the restaurant’s pasta robot was able to make a plate of pasta in less than two minutes from the time an order was sent in via the digital order kiosk. The robot prepped the sauces and toppings, heated the noodles (which are pre-cooked and frozen, standard for noodle and pasta restaurants), combined it all in a spinner, and then delivered the meal down along a conveyor belt to the plating station where a human added final garnishes and did a final quality check. The machine also cleaned the prep bowls when it was done.

Building an almost entirely automated restaurant that pumped out a place of pasta in less than two minutes was an impressive trick for a young startup for TechMagic, so much so that I suggested that maybe when I returned to Japan this year for Smart Kitchen Summit Japan, the company may have another robot restaurant in Tokyo to show off.

And lo and behold, they did! The latest restaurant powered by a TechMagic is called Oh My Dot, an automated ramen noodle restaurant in the Shibuya district. The way it works is you order your ramen via a touch screen, choosing from a variety of different flavors ranging from sesame to spicy hot soup to curry. Once your order is entered, the robotic arm starts picking up the flavor modules and dropping them into the ramen cup. From there, the broth and noodles are added, and the last stop for the cup of hot ramen is with the human server to add garnishes and make a final quality check before it’s handed over to the customer.

You can watch it all below in a video shot by The Spoon’s Smart Kitchen Summit Japan partner, Hiro Tanaka:

As I wrote last year, the idea to build food robots first came to TechMagic founder Yuji Shiraki when he visited his 90+-year-old grandmother. Shiraki saw she could not cook for herself and so started to think about how a home cooking robot might help her. However, he soon realized that Japanese kitchens were too small to build the type of robot he envisioned, and he started thinking about building robots for restaurants. It wasn’t long before he quit his job as a management consultant and founded TechMagic.

That was five years ago. Since then, the company has raised $23 million in funding (including a $15 million Series B last September), received a patent for its pasta-making robot, and plans to create its own chain of robot-powered franchise restaurants.

In addition to the ramen robot restaurant, the company also was showing off a new stir fry robot, which you can see below (also shot by Tanaka).

Two Years After Buying Spyce, Sweetgreen Launches Infinite Kitchen Robotic Restaurant

Last week, Sweetgreen opened the company’s first robotic restaurant in Naperville, Ill, a suburb of Chicago.

The new automated restaurant, which the company calls Infinite Kitchen, comes almost two years after the company acquired Spyce Kitchen, a startup building automated robotic makelines.

The Infinite Kitchen name is not new; Spyce first used the name when it launched its second-generation robotic kitchen platform in November 2020 and, like the new Sweetgreen Infinite Kitchen, the system was visually reminiscent of the Creator burger makeline. The system’s conveyor belt runs under ingredient dispensers that drop customized mixes of fresh ingredients into bowls. You can see the Sweetgreen version of the Infinite Kitchen in action below.

In the video and the press release, Sweetgreen takes pains to make clear that while it sees automation as a way to add efficiency to operations and enhance the customer experience, they are not doing away with humans as part of the Sweetgreen experience.

“Every meal begins with human hands,” says the video’s narrator, “from our local farmers to our team members, all there to guide you through the process.”

With the Infinite Kitchen, Sweetgreen has also rethought the customer process flow, integrating digital touchpoints (including self-service kiosks similar to those from Spyce).

From the release:

When visiting the Naperville Sweetgreen restaurant, customers are greeted by the new “host” position which provides a more personalized connection between team members and guests. To order, customers can utilize self-service kiosks, place an order through the mobile app, or order directly from the restaurant’s host. The new restaurant format also brings in a new Tasting Counter, brand-storytelling digital screens and a revamped merchandising strategy for an authentic Sweetgreen experience at every touchpoint. Customers visiting the store will be able to shop exclusive merch with designs inspired by the new store joining the Naperville community.

According to the company, Sweetgreen will open its second Infinite Kitchen location later this year at an existing restaurant, where the company hopes to learn how to integrate and retrofit the new technology into an existing kitchen.

Long term, expect the company to expand the use of automation to most of its locations. Company CEO Jonathan Neman has said that about half of Sweetgreen’s labor is food assembly. “And this Infinite Kitchen takes the majority of that,” Neman said in November.

GoodBytz Unveils Modular Robotic Kitchen That Can Make up to Three Thousand Meals Per Day

GoodBytz, a robotic kitchen startup based in Germany, debuted its new kitchen robot last week in its hometown of Hamburg at the INTERNORGA 2023 trade fair.

The GoodBytz food robot is a modular system that can be tailored around different food types and menus:

  • The refrigerated storage module can hold up between 24 and 72 different ingredients and sauces and feeds into different food assembly robots.
  • The food assembly robot modules can measure ingredients, fill bowls, place toppings, and perform cleaning functions.
  • A separate topping module can plan up to 24 ingredients and sauces into the bowls. GoodBytz offers a ‘cooking zone’ module that can output up to 3,000 meals per day if an operator wants a system set up for hot food.
  • The serving module makes up to four different types of bowls available for serving, and the output module presents the finished food ready for delivery to the customer.
  • A dishwasher module

Below is a schematic that shows the standard GoodBytz system. At 12.75 square meters – a little less than 200 square feet – the system has quite a large footprint, but that’s not that surprising given it’s essentially a self-contained professional food service kitchen.

The robot is centered around an internal chamber in which a couple of robotic arms maneuver around to gather ingredients, cook and place them into bowls. Once an order is placed, a robotic arm positions a cooking pot under the ingredient dispensing station to gather ingredients, dispense sauces and then place the pots on a shelf where they are rotated and cooked. The cooking shelf is reminiscent of the Spyce cooking system, in which the pots are spun in place to ensure proper heat and ingredient distribution.

Once the food is finished, the robotic arm picks up the cooking pot and pours the finished food into the bowl. From there, a separate robotic arm maneuvers the bowl under a dispensing station that puts vegetables and other items to complete the bowl and then places the bowl onto a conveyor belt so it can be rolled out to be picked up for serving.

GoodBytz Robotic Kitchen

The cooking robot’s sensors measure ingredients and adjust cooking times based on the dish being prepared, and the system features a touchscreen control module that allows for recipe customization. GoodBytz claims that the system, which can integrate with different ERP systems, can monitor food ingredient inventories and track ingredient freshness.

GoodBytz CEO Hendrik Susemihl told The Spoon the company uses a robotics-as-a-service business model, where the customer pays a fixed monthly service fee for the robots and an additional price-per-produced dish. The pricing varies depending on the configuration, with a cold bowl configuration differing from a configuration where meals are cooked in a convection oven.

The company’s prototype robotic kitchen was operational just three months after the company was founded in August 2021 and opened up a ghost kitchen in June 2022 to test the robot under natural conditions. GoodBytz plans to start cooking meals for its first big customer, Sodexo, in Q3 of this year. At INTERNORGA 2023, GoodBytz announced partnerships with system suppliers Palux and Winterhalter.

GoodBytz is first targeting the European market, but Susemihl said the company is eyeing expansion into the Asia and North American markets next year. The company has raised a €4 million seed round and is starting to raise its series A.