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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

robot coffee

Singapore: Crown Digital Installing Robot Baristas at 30 MRT Train Stations

Singapore-based Crown Digital announced yesterday that it will be installing its robotic baristas at 30 Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) stations in that country by the end of 2022.

Dubbed “Ella,” Crown Digital’s robo-coffee kiosk is 5 sq. meters, serves a variety of coffee and tea drinks, and can make up to 200 coffees per hour. While Ella uses an articulating arm to make and serve drinks, one of its standout features is its transparent screen that can display information about drinks, orders and even full-motion videos and graphics.

For these MRT installations, Crown Digital has collaborated with Stellar Lifestyle, which has “expertise in property and retail management, media and digital advertising solutions,” according to the Crown Digital announcement blog post. Crown Digital also wrote that Stella Lifestyle has invested an undisclosed sum in Crown Digital’s pre-Series A round of funding.

This is the second rail network that Crown Digital has partnered with, following a pilot deal with Japan’s JR East‘s train stations signed at the end of last year. With their high-traffic audiences looking for refreshment on-the-go, transit hubs like MRT stations and airports are popular target markets for robotic coffee kiosk companies that are just now coming market such as Crown Digital, Smyze, and Cafe X.

Another benefit to robotic coffee baristas in these pandemic times is that they are contactless. Robots don’t get sick, and don’t act as a vector of viral transmission the way that humans do.

While there are a number of robot baristas coming to market, we have yet to see big coffee chains jump into automation. The exception is Costa Coffee, which bought Briggo last year and re-branded those Coffee Hauses into Costa Coffee BaristaBots. Though I suspect that as more deals like Crown Digital’s start popping up, we’ll soon see other big coffee brands like Starbucks and Dunkin add their own robots as well.

Blue Hill Brings Computer Vision to Its Coffee Robot to Recreate the Barista Experience

There is no shortage of robot baristas coming to market. Cafe X, Costa Coffee (née Briggo), Truebird, Crown Coffee, OrionStar, Cafe Rozum, FIBBEE and MontyCafe to name just some of the ones we’ve covered. But Seattle-based Blue Hill aims to differentiate itself from other players in the space by using computer vision to make a smarter machine that recreates the human barista experience.

We should start of by saying that when it comes to computer vision, Blue Hill has the bona fides. Blue Hill Founder is Meng Wang, who was previously CTO and Co-Founder of Orbeus, which developed the Rekognition computer vision/image analysis system. (Orbeus was acquired by Amazon in 2016 and became AWS Rekognition, which has become controversial in its own right.)

Wang is applying his computer vision pedigree to coffee. Like other robo-baristas, Blue Hill’s system (dubbed “Jarvis”) features an articulating arm that grabs cups and operates a La Marzocco espresso machine. But unlike other robots, Blue Hill’s arm is aided by robust computer vision which not only assists with item recognition, but also helps the articulating arm act more like a human barista.

As Wang explained it to me over video chat this week, Blue Hill’s computer vision means that things like milk or cups or spoons don’t need to placed in a specific area in order to be found by the robotic arm. The arm can open a fridge and identify “soy milk” wherever it is placed inside just by looking. Or if the grinder is moved, the arm doesn’t need to be re-programmed because it recognizes the grinder and can still operate it, no matter where it is. As long as the robot knows what to “look” for, the system can be set up to accommodate different shapes and spaces.

But Wang says the other advantage with its computer vision is its ability to train the articulating arm. By examining video of human baristas making coffee, Blue Hill’s robotic arm can replicate those same movements. The high pull, the frothing, the milk blending, even the latte art can be recreated by the robot by watching humans do the same thing. It uses the same coffee equipment used by specialty cafes, it just has a robot handling them.

The reason for all this high-tech robotic re-creation is that at the end of the day, Blue Hill wants to be in the high-end coffee business. It’s not just about the robot, it’s about creating a perfect cup of coffee. Blue Hill even sources and roasts its own beans. To be fair, Blue Hill isn’t the first company to tell me that they want to create a premium coffee experience delivered by robot. Briggo had its own line of coffee beans too, and Cafe X had a human on hand at each kiosk to curate a customer’s coffee choice.

But Blue Hill is more interested in building up its own brand of automated coffee experiences, rather than licensing out the technology to another coffee company. That choice could be a tough hill to climb for the company as people don’t know what a Blue Hill is and robots are still very new. As a result, lots of people will need to learn that a) robots can make coffee, and b) getting Blue Hill’s brand of robotic coffee is a better choice than finding a nearby Starbucks (a drink they’re already familiar with).

Blue Hill sticking with a premium, human-like experience also means that they are sacrificing a certain amount of speed. Right now, Blue Hill is focused on opening its kiosks inside other retailers like the Super Joy Coffee Lab or Swee20 desert shop, both in Portland, OR. But if Blue Hill wants to move into more high-traffic (and more revenue generating) locations like airports and office buildings, having a robot that behaves like a human sacrifices the speed you get with automation. Will people want to wait for a robot to make their latte like a human would? Perhaps, if the coffee is good enough. But people in those situations are typically more about speed than precision drink crafting.

Adding to the pressure, the robot coffee space hasn’t exactly worked out so far for some of the early startups. Briggo was quietly sold off to Costa Coffee with nary a whisper, and Cafe X shut down all of its locations last year (though it re-opening some and shipping machines off to Asia).

Will Blue Hill’s computer vision and premium cup of coffee be enough to bring in repeat customers? We’ll have to wait and see for ourselves.

See (Through) LG’s Transparent OLED Display on Crown Coffee’s Robotic Kiosk

When it comes to robot baristas, the robot itself usually takes center stage. I mean, those articulating arms are doing the actual work of making a latte. But with Crown Coffee’s Ella robot coffee kiosk, the wall in front of the robot is just as cool because it is actually a transparent display.

The transparent OLED display is made by LG, and shows off full motion video and graphics. But because of the transparent nature of the display, you can also see through the video action to watch the robot concocting your drink.

We actually covered Ella and its transparent display last year, but this week, LG Information Display Singapore posted a (promotional) video to LinkedIn giving us a better, more polished look at the technology.

Aside from being cool, it’s easy to see how this type of display could help robot baristas generate additional revenue. The colorful displays will undoubtedly attract eyeballs and could run sales for particular drinks and snacks, upsell items after you place an order, or even run third-party advertisements, without impacting how the actual robot operates.

While robots are very cool, they still have yet to fully prove themselves in the marketplace. Cafe X shut down all of its robot baristas last year (though the airport locations are starting to open back up), and Briggo was quietly sold to Costa Coffee with no fanfare or indication of what the sale price was. That’s typically not a good sign.

I still think there’s a bright future for robotic kiosks (we’re actually hosting a full day virtual summit to discuss food automation — you should join us!), especially in high-traffic areas like airports and malls where people want drinks quickly. Robots can churn out consistent drinks all day and night, and they are also contactless, which will most likely remain important even as the COVID-19 pandemic recedes.

The transparent displays make even more sense for co-branded robotic kiosks. It’s not hard to imagine how a Starbucks branded robot would take advantage of this technology to run a steady stream of ads and promotions.

Right now, the only place to see Ella’s transparent display in action is at its installation in Singapore. As it rolls out more locations, Crown Coffee plans to have a mix of owned and operated machines as well as licensed kiosks. As more robots come online, it’s apparent how cool the transparent display will be.

Briggo’s Coffee Haus Becomes Costa Coffee BaristaBot

It looks like British coffee chain and Coca-Cola subsidiary Costa Coffee has acquired Austin, TX-based coffee automation company, Briggo.

We are still hunting down an official announcement, but the Briggo website is now re-branded as Costa Coffee (hat tip to the Food By Robots Twitter account). Briggo’s CoffeeHaus automated kiosk has been replaced with the Costa Coffee BaristaBot. Briggo also made an announcement on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/DrinkBriggo/status/1320725811633283074?s=20

We have reached out to Briggo to find out more.

To date, Briggo had raised $19 million in funding. Its coffee robot was among a new wave of standalone automated kiosks that were looking to re-invent the vending machine by combining robotics with higher-end food. Part of Briggo’s pitch, when it first started out, was that in addition to building its coffee robot, it was also a coffee company that selected and roasted its own beans.

Briggo had Coffee Hauses up and running in a number of locations around Austin, including two at the Austin-Bergstrom Airport and one at the San Francisco International Airport. Briggo had formed a partnership with SSP America last year to open up new kiosks in 25 airports over the course of this year and next. In January of this year, Briggo’s CEO told me that his company was going to open up five new loations in Q1 of this year.

That, of course, was before the COVID-19 pandemic hit and airline travel was decimated. So how many of those locations went up or are still live is unknown. Rival robot coffee kiosk company, Cafe X, shuttered its remaining airport locations and laid off staff. That said, Cafe X has re-focused and has plans to deploy 150 robots across Asia over the next two years.

With its deep pockets, Costa Coffee has the resources to expand and operate more kiosks than Briggo could have on its own. This story is developing and we will update as we learn more.

OrionStar Launched a New Coffee Robot in China

OrionStar, the robotics arm of Chinese company Cheetah Mobile, jumped into the automated coffee making space last week with the debut of its Robotic Coffee Master.

The Robotic Coffee Master combines two six-axis robotic arms, computer vision, and artificial intelligence to replicate the complex brewing techniques of human baristas such as curves and spirals. Right now the robot makes pour over coffees, using its robotic arms to do things like get the grounds into the filter, set the filter on top of the carafe and pour hot water over the grounds. The Robotic Coffee Master can make a cup of coffee in three minutes.

Unlike other robot coffee makers like Cafe X or Truebird or Briggo, the Robotic Coffee Master is not a full-on enclosed kiosk. Rather it is a squat-looking robot that can be set up in more open environments.

Perhaps once seen as more of a novelty, robotic coffee services could find renewed purpose in a post-pandemic world (whenever that will be). Robots can work around the clock without a break, but also remove a human vector of disease transmission to provide a contactless transaction for customer’s morning coffee.

As noted earlier, the automated coffee space already has a number of players like Cafe X, Truebird, and Briggo here in the U.S., but also international competitors such as Rozum Cafe, MontyCafe, FIBBEE, and Crown Coffee.

The good news is that a lot of people drink a lot of coffee all over the world, so there is plenty of opportunity for everyone involved. In China alone, the coffee market is expected to hit roughly $42.3 billion.

In a phone interview this week, Vincent Li, Head of Global Marketing and Sales, Robotic Solution at Cheetah Mobile, told me that his company is focusing on the Asian market right now. The Robotic Coffee Master sells for roughly $50,000 and the company has already sold 200 units.

Just in Time for Social Distancing, Rozum Cafe Launches its Robot Barista

There are two opposing forces during our sheltering in place and social distancing. We are actively avoiding other people, especially those we don’t know, and also actively working to maintain small comforts where they can be found — like in your morning cup of coffee.

While at-home packaged coffee sales have surged during our isolation, sales at Starbucks have dropped precipitously. A massive part of this drop, obviously is that Starbucks had to shut down its walk-in options last month. But once we emerge from quarantine, will those in need of a latté still stand in crowded stores with other people and trust the human hands crafting their drinks?

Perhaps the coronavirus could spur greater interest in robot-powered coffee kiosks. With their lack of humans, consistent product and ability to work around the clock, robo-ristas could become the next hot thing in coffee. Which means that the Rozum Cafe appears to have launched at the right time.

Developed by Belarus-based Rozum Robotics and announced this past weekend, the Rozum Cafe is an enclosed kiosk with an articulating arm that serves up a variety of coffee drinks. According to its FAQ, the Rozum Cafe can serve 300 drinks “per shift,” though they don’t say specifically how long a shift is. It can also be customized to expand drink menus and even serve up pastries.

There’s no official pricing for the Rozum Cafe, with the web site only saying that anyone buying one should actually get three of them for “optimal results” with the ROI. New owners will also have to pay for shipping, installing and setup of the machines.

The Rozum Cafe is certainly not alone in the robot coffee space. Cafe X, Briggo and MontyCafe have all already been on the market for more than a year.

However, the world has changed drastically in just the past few months and the opportunity for automated coffee could wind up being bigger than ever. In a post-pandemic world where we may no longer shake hands, grabbing a cup of coffee is something we’ll still want to do, just perhaps in a more humanless way.

Cafe X COO, Cynthia Yeung, Departs From the Robot Coffee Company

Cynthia Yeung, now the former COO Cafe X, posted on Linkedin yesterday that as of last Friday she was no longer with the coffee robotics startup after having worked there for a year and a half. Normally we don’t write about executive shuffles, but Yeung was high up at the company, and her departure comes at a time when rival robo-coffee company, Briggo, is scaling up.

Yeung posted the following to Linkedin yesterday:

Friday was my last day as COO of Cafe X Technologies. I learned a lot from growing the company (now 35+ people) through our Series A and am grateful to Henry Hu, Jason Calacanis, and David O. Sacks for giving me the opportunity to be in “the room where it happens”. I’m proud of the upcoming SFO launch of our new machine (in addition to a few other locations), bringing on more experienced engineering talent, and having built some corporate infrastructure to help the team scale. I’m looking forward to seeing where the company goes next.

One thing that caught our eye is that Yeung said “through our Series A,” but so far, the $14.5 million Cafe X has raised has been publicly referred to as seed and “Seed-1” money, not Series A. We reached out to both Yeung and Cafe X CEO, Henry Hu to see if the company has raised a new round or if there is some other explanation. Yeung directed all questions to Hu.

UPDATE: Hu told us via tweet that they renamed the Seed-1 as a Series A.

Regardless, as Yeung also indicates, her departure comes as Cafe X is set to launch its first robot barista at San Francisco International Airport (SFO), the company’s first location outside of the city of San Francisco.

But Cafe X’s robot will actually be the second automated cafe at SFO. Earlier this summer, Austin-based Briggo opened its robot Coffee Haus at that airport. In fact, Briggo was initially awarded the SFO contract, but Yeung was instrumental in the inclusion of Cafe X. As the San Francisco Business Times reported last November:

“We are striving to be a very, very responsible employer in San Francisco bringing trade jobs back to the city,” Cynthia Yeung, COO of Cafe X, told the SFO commissioners at the Nov. 6 [SFO Airport Commission] meeting. “And I want to understand why, with so little transparency, this trial program was awarded to a Texas based company?”

High-traffic locations like airports are perfect for robotic baristas because robots are fast, accurate and can operate around the clock. While there are plenty of airports around the world, they will be a battleground for automated food services like vending machines and robot coffee makers. Yeung left just days after Briggo announced it had entered into an exclusive agreement with SSP America to put Coffee Hauses in an additional 25 airports around the U.S. and Canada over the next two years.

While this was probably more of a coincidence, as Yeung indicated on Linkedin, Cafe X is entering the scaling phase of its startup lifecycle — a time when having steady leadership at the top is especially important.

Here at The Spoon, we kinda hope Yeung stays in food robotics because she’s a great guest to have on stage at our Smart Kitchen Summit and Articulate conferences.

This article originally stated Yeung worked at Cafe X for a year, it was actually a year and a half and this post has been updated to reflect that.