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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

SJW Robotics

SJW Robotics Raises $2M as It Eyes Launch of Autonomous Robotic Restaurants This Spring

SJW Robotics, a maker of autonomous robotic restaurants, has raised a $2 million seed funding round, according to an announcement sent to The Spoon. The Canadian startup’s newest round includes investments from Alley Robotic Ventures and celebrity chef Tom Colicchio.

Company CEO and cofounder Nipun Sharma told The Spoon the new investment would be used to fund the rollout of the company’s robotic kitchen system with partner Compass Canada. The two announced their partnership last summer, with Compass disclosing that they had plans to pilot three RJW robotic restaurant kitchens in select markets. According to Sharma, the first Compass autonomous kitchen pilot will launch at a hospital in the Toronto market under Compass’s Bok Choy brand this spring.

Sharma told The Spoon that the Compass deal is indicative of the company’s business model: SJW provides the robotics and AI technology via a robotics-as-a-service mode, and brand partners focus on culinary, menu development, and marketing.

During a walkthrough of the RoWok system last year, we watched as the system dropped pre-cut ingredients such as chicken cubes, green onions, and julienne carrots from segmented storage siloes in customized proportions onto a perforated steel tray. From there, the tray shuttled through a steam tunnel via a conveyor belt (“like a car in a carwash”), and the warmed food was dropped into an oiled wok for cooking. Finally, the cooked food was dropped into a bowl where sauces were added, and the meal was prepped for serving.

The new self-contained includes refrigerated storage for up to 350 meals, including all proteins, vegetables, sauces, and starches, and can make up to 60 meals per hour. According to Sharma, the units are ‘real estate agnostic’ and can be set up anywhere with proper space and utility connections.

You can watch Sharma give a tour of SJW’s RoWok system below.

A Look at the RoWok Robotic Restaurant From SJW Robotics

SJW Robotics Demoes RoWok, a Fully Robotic Wok Restaurant Kiosk

This week, SJW Robotics, a maker of robotic kitchen technology, publicly demoed its robotic kitchen prototype for the first time.

When we first covered SJW earlier this year, the company was still keeping the cooking robot under wraps since patents had yet to be filed. With all their patent applications in the mail, I caught up with company CEO Nipun Sharma on a zoom call to get a virtual walkthrough of the Toronto-based company’s first product, a robotic wok-centered kitchen and consumer-facing kiosk called RoWok.

Sharma started by punching in his order on a large touch screen on the front of the large kiosk. Once entered, the robot got to work by dropping pre-cut ingredients such as chicken cubes, green onions and julienne carrots from segmented storage siloes in customized proportions onto a perforated steel tray. The tray shuttled through a steam tunnel via a conveyor belt (“like a car in a carwash.”). Once warmed, the food was dropped into an oiled wok for cooking. After it was cooked, the food was put into a bowl, sauces added, and then the meal was prepped for serving. Currently the robot has a station for humans to put the bowled food on a counter, but Sharma says the plan is integrate cubbies where the prepared meals can be placed for pickup by the customer.

According to Sharma, it takes about 80-90 seconds for each meal to be prepared and cooked. The current prototype has two woks in it, but the plan is to eventually have six woks and reach a throughput of about 60 meals per hour.

The system can hold enough ingredients in the siloes for up to 320 meals total before they need to be refilled. And because the system is entirely autonomous and can operate without a human, it closely monitors the ingredient inventory levels and can even create special promotions if, say, chicken or another ingredient is set to expire within the next 24 hours.

When I asked Sharma how he came up with the idea for a fully autonomous wok-centered kitchen, he told me the idea came to him after he had trouble finding a skilled wok cook for on a restaurant concept he was developing for Canadian grocery chain Loblaws.

“A wok is a specialized skill, and it’s hard to find people to do it,” Sharma said. “So everything I’ve done, this was my bottleneck. I’m like, I wish there was a way to automate the wok system.”

But there wasn’t, so he decided to build one. And the first thing he did was to start to put together a team of experts and they would build one. His first addition was adding a CTO in Brian Walker, who had been a long-time executive at automotive supplies conglomerate Magna International.

Sharma said they are currently in talks with one of the world’s largest airport food service concessionaires and he hopes to have a RoWok in an airport sometime in 2022. He said now that the company has demoed the RoWok, the company will begin the process or raising its Series A and begin engaging with a manufacturer that Sharma says “will mostly likely be in Atlanta.”

RoWok is the latest in a long-line of fully automated robotic kitchens that are in development. Last month we heard about Nommi, and we’ve also been watching as Hyper Robotics, RoboEatz, Mezli, Now Cuisine, Cala and others slowly but surely bring their robotic kitchen concepts to market. With all this activity, it’s looking like 2022 could be the year of the automated robotic kiosk.

SJW Robotics Aims to Franchise Its Automated Asian Meal Kiosk

One of the emerging trends we’re seeing in food robotics is the fully automated restaurant-in-a-box-style kiosk. These are big, standalone devices that store ingredients and cook up a variety of dishes. Already we’ve seen announcements for such machines from Hyper, Mezli, and Wavemaker Labs with its Nommi. Now you can add SJW Robotics to that list, as the company has plans to franchise its automated restaurant-in-a-box that serves Asian food.

SJW has yet to officially name its automated restaurant concept, but the kiosk itself is 100 sq. ft, holds 36 different ingredients, and uses induction heating. While the outside doesn’t have branding yet, the internal robotics system is referred to as the “RoWok” (robot + wok). It can make one meal in about a minute and a half, though as the machine gets up to speed it can make six meals concurrently, dispensing each one in under a minute. It can make 250 meals before it needs to be refilled.

Nipun Sharma, CEO of SJW Robotics, explained to me by videochat this week that he’s interested in building his own restaurant brand through franchising. People interested in installing one of these kiosks will need to buy the robot for $200,000, pay a $25,000 franchise fee and pay 5 percent royalty.

SJW’s model is different from the approach other players are taking. Hyper plans on licensing its automated pizza technology to bigger brands, while Mezli says that it is more of a food company that plans to open up a number of its own restaurants (which could involve franchising, but Mezli didn’t mention that when I spoke to them earlier this year). SJW’s robot is also a little different in that it appears to be more of an indoor-based system, rather than the ruggedized shipping containers Hyper and Mezli are using that can be installed outside in places like parking lots.

Right now SJW is still developing its prototype. Sharma said that the company has raised an undisclosed round of funding and will be debuting a fully working version of its kiosk this October.