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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Piestro Adds Pay-With-Your Face Tech and Cubbies for Pickup

Robotic pizza vending startup Piestro announced today that it has partnered with PopID to integrate pay-with-your face technology into Piestro’s machines.

The integration of PopID’s technology will provide Piestro customers a new contactless ordering and payment system. In addition to paying with traditional credit/debit cards, users can create a PopID account to enable payment via facial recognition. Once that set up is complete, users can choose PopID as a payment method on Piestro’s app or on the machine itself. Orders placed ahead of time via the app can be retrieved via the same facial recognition. This pay-with-your-face option will be extended to Piestro’s white label, co-branded machines as well.

That ability to order ahead and pick up your pizza is also a new bit of functionality for the Piestro device. I spoke with Piestro CEO Massimo Noja De Marco by phone last week, who said that nine automat-style cubbies will be built into Piestro machines. This means you’ll be able to order your pizza ahead of time and have it held in a cubby that you unlock with your phone (or face).

That Piestro and PopID are working together isn’t that much of a surprise. PopID is part of the Cali Group of companies, which also includes Kitchen United, which De Marco founded and was Chief Concept Officer at. On a more existential level, in a post-COVID world, vending machine companies are looking to implement more contactless methods of interaction and reduce the number of physical touchpoints. As a result, other vending machine startups that may have been wary about facial recognition over privacy concerns could be more amenable to the technology now.

Piestro is certainly at the vanguard of a number of different technology trends. In addition to being a fully autonomous, robotic pizza restaurant and adopting a facial payment system, Piestro is also working with Kiwibot to allow delivery robots to pick up and deliver orders from its machine, and is embarking on its second round of equity crowdfunding.

We have to wait for all of this high-tech (and pizza) goodness, however. The first Piestros won’t roll out until early next year.

Food Tech News: First Indoor Saltwater Hydroponic Farm + A Boozy Advent Calendar

It’s our weekend food tech wrap-up of stories you might have missed from around the web.

If you celebrate Christmas, we hope you enjoyed the holiday even if it looked a bit different this year. Maybe your loved ones gifted you something from The Spoon’s 2020 gift guide, and you’re busy playing around with your brand new Bonbowl or BEERMKR. Between new gift admiring and leftover cookie scarfing, we invite you to take time to catch up on some Food Tech News. This week we rounded up news on the first indoor saltwater hydroponic farm, Bombay Sapphire’s advent calendar, and a new vegan vending machine in Las Vegas.

Heron Farms is the first indoor saltwater hydroponic farm

Based in Charleston, South Carolina, Heron Farms uses the most plentiful resource on the planet, ocean water, to grow crops in an indoor hydroponic farm. This is apparently the first indoor saltwater hydroponic farm, and it is currently focused on growing sea beans. Sea beans have a crisp, crunchy texture with a flavor close to asparagus, and can be used in dishes such as salads and stirfries. The farm replaces freshwater, which is a resource being drained faster than its being replenished, and uses micronutrient-rich and abundant seawater to feed the crops.

Bombay Sapphire creates an advent calendar

Most advent calendars are filled with chocolate or candies and distributed at the start of December. Bombay Sapphire has partnered with the London Graphic Centre to provide an atypical boozy and artsy advent calendar that celebrates the days between Christmas and the new year. Behind each door of the calendar, there is some type of tool relevant to either making cocktails or art. The calendar comes with a cocktail-making guide, and behind each window of the calendar, there is a QR code that takes you to a website that provides videos and additional instructions.

Las Vegas is getting a vegan vending machine

The Vintage Vegan Diner in Las Vegas, Nevada has been doing catering, curbside pick-up, and delivery of its American-style vegan food since May of this year. The business will now be launching the city’s first vegan vending machine. The machine will contain the most popular dishes from the diner, including tofu bites, sliders, and cookie dough. The retro pink vending machine will pop-up at different areas throughout Las Vegas, eventually settling in one location.

Cheetah Mobile’s FANBOT is a Vending Machine on Wheels

This week, Chinese tech company Cheetah Mobile announced the international availability of its FANBOT mobile vending machine robot.

The FANBOT is a squat, self-driving robot that can carry up to 66 different items including snacks, drinks and other goods in its cargo bay. From the FANBOT promotional materials, it looks like there’s a touchscreen for ordering and shoppers can use a mobile phone to pay.

FANBOT drives itself around high-traffic areas such as malls, stores, gyms, hotel lobbies and airports, and will identify and approach potential customers. So, exactly how does FANBOT know whom to approach? According to the press release:

Through its proprietary multi-sensor fusion environment perception system, the FANBOT uses biometric technology, not facial recognition, to identify potential customers by detecting people’s gender, age range and emotions within a 5-meter radius. Once identified, the FANBOT actively approaches the customer to promote products, engage in voice interactions and complete cash-less transactions.

Huh. Interesting. Exactly how FANBOT picks customers and what biometric data it is using wasn’t immediately explained. We reached out to Cheetah Mobile to find out more details. UPDATE: Cheetah Mobile emailed us the following:

Body temperature is one of the key biometric features the robot is looking for. People of different genders and age groups have different body temperatures; and people that are happy and relaxed also have different body temperatures than those who are down and anxious. Voice is another one. The FANBOT can detect the vocal features of different demographics: men, women, seniors, teenagers, children, etc.

The FANBOT’s multi-sensor fusion environment perception system can detect people’s body temperature, voice and other biometric features within a 5-meter radius, and use algorithms to determine whom to approach.

For example, in a high-traffic area, if one man and a family of three are walking around the robot, it will automatically detect the family of three as the more likely potential customers and approach them instead of the man. Or, if the FANBOT carries beauty products, it’s more likely to approach female customers than male.

FANBOT is already in use in China, and the company says that the sales volume is four times that of a stationary vending machine, selling one beverage roughly every 110 seconds.

We seem to be on the cusp of a mobility trend in food vending. Earlier this week, Yo-Kai Express revealed that it is working on a mobile vending machine that will cruise around serving up hot bowls of ramen. And earlier this month, BIB Technologies unveiled the Automato, which is an electric mobile Automat carrying cubbies full of food.

For indoor settings, it doesn’t make sense to put a big, hulking vending machine like Yo-Kai’s on wheels. That would get pretty obtrusive pretty quick. But something the size of FANBOT actually does make a lot of sense. Making small vending more mobile and bringing snacks to people idling in hotel lobbies and such could really catch on.

Exclusive: Yo-Kai Express to Launch Autonomous Mobile Vending Machine and Countertop Cooking Device

Yo-Kai Express, which started out as a robotic ramen vending machine, is expanding its offerings with the addition of a mobile, self-driving version of its vending machine as well as a countertop cooking device in 2021. Yo-Kai Founder and CEO, Andy Lin, announced the new products during my fireside chat with him at the Smart Kitchen Summit: Japan last night.

Both moves are part of a larger push by Yo-Kai to transform itself into a broader platform. As Lin explained it, Yo-Kai is assembling the pieces so users can get hot ramen wherever they are, whenever they want.

One of the ways it is doing this is by making its vending machines mobile. Lin said that Yo-Kai has been working on a self-driving version of its vending machine. This autonomous restaurant-on-wheels will eventually be able to drive on certain routes and stop when hailed by a mobile phone and, Lin said, even when a person waves at it while the machine passes by.

That vision is still a ways off, but Lin said the first version of this self-driving ramen machine is already being manufactured and should debut at the end of Q1 2021/beginning of Q2. Yo-Kai is currently in talks with the Universities of California at Berkeley and Irvine to have the machine operate on those campuses. Going the college route makes sense for Yo-Kai, as it helps the company sidestep some of the regulatory hurdles around self-driving vehicles on public city streets. This is the same path that Starship took with its autonomous delivery robots.

The mobile machine is just one of many different, err, vehicles Yo-Kai is adopting to dispense its hot ramen. The company is also working on machines built for small or large offices, as well as your kitchen counter. Last night, Lin also unveiled Yo-Kai’s new Takumi, a new cooking device for the home.

The Takumi ties in with the line of mail-order ramen that Yo-Kai launched earlier this year. Currently, Yo-Kai mails out ramen kits that you have to assemble; they take about 15 minutes to fully prepare. In its next iteration, the ramen will be made, frozen and shipped to you in a single-serve container. Users will put the container into the Takumi, which uses steam to reconstitute and heat the ramen in just a few minutes.

In addition to offering more ways to get ramen, Yo-Kai is also opening up its platform to offer customers ramen from different restaurants. Yo-Kai is currently in talks to co-brand and sell meals from well-known ramen houses in Japan. Yo-Kai will work with these restaurants to recreate thos ramen restaurant recipes in Yo-Kai kitchens. Those meal will then be sold via branded ramen machines, and they will also be sold by mail order to consumers, who can cook it in their Takumi.

We’ve seen this type of co-branding elsewhere with automated vending services. Blendid, which makes a smoothie making robot, recently announced a co-branding deal with Jamba, and Chowbotics partnered with Saladworks on a salad making robot. Co-branding will likely be the main strategy for vending services going forward, as it leverages the brand recognition of a well-known restaurant, rather than trying to build up the robot company’s brand.

As Lin explained to me when I first met him last year, in Japanese folklore, Yo-Kais are ghosts that can appear anywhere at any time. With its forthcoming moves, Yo-Kai Express’ ramen will be doing much the same thing.

Farmer’s Fridge Adds Contactless Ordering and Payment

Farmer’s Fridge vending machines have always had a lot of things people were looking for: 24 hour access, a creative menu, and fresh salads served in cute jars. But the one thing Farmer’s Fridge didn’t offer was contactless ordering and payment, features made more important by the COVID-19 pandemic. Customers still needed to touch the machine to place there order and make a payment.

Until recently, that is. I spoke with Farmer’s Fridge CTO, Candice Savino, this week, who told me that the company rolled out contactless reserve and pay functionality to its machines at the end of August.

Like so many other players in the vending machine space, the addition of contactless ordering was on Farmer’s Fridge’s roadmap but was bumped to the head of the feature queue when the pandemic hit. Savino’s team worked quickly, creating an early prototype in May and rolling out the finished product in August to 160 of its 200 machines that are still active (prior to the pandemic, Farmer’s Fridge had 700 machines active in places like office buildings and convention centers).

Farmer’s Fridge contactless ordering works through the company’s mobile app. In the app, the user selects the machine it wants to order from, places the order and pays. That machine then holds the food until the person arrives and punches in a special code generated by the Farmer’s Fridge app.

Savino said the solution allows the company to actually have more accurate inventory management across its entire fleet of machines because it moves stocking data from the edge to a centralized location in the cloud. There are also safeguards in place to prevent remote dispensing, say if you accidentally went to one machine but had ordered from a different machine across town. (If that is the case, the user cancels and re-orders.)

Savino said that adoption of the new ordering system has been good, with 20 percent of Farmer’s Fridge orders going through the mobile app and growing week over week.

With the pandemic still raging, it’s a safe bet that all vending services will adopt contactless ordering and payment going forward. Chowbotics, which makes Sally the robot salad maker, added contactless ordering at the end of last month, and Blendid, which makes a robot smoothie kiosk, has always featured contactless ordering and payment.

Farmer’s Fridge is definitely in touch with the times, especially when it comes to removing touch from its retail experience.

Merlot-M-G! The WineCab Wine Wall is a Robot+AI Sommelier

What do you get for the person who has everything? How about an artificially intelligent robot sommelier that can securely store, manage and suggest wines from your collection?

The Winecab Wine Wall does all that (hat tip to Boss Hunting), acting kinda like a very expensive automated wine vending machine that you’d find in only the poshest 7-Eleven.

Wine Walls come in a variety of sizes, from the more modest Curio Classic model, which holds 130 bottles ($139,000) to the 15 ft. Wine Wall, which holds 600 bottles ($249,900). Each system features:

  • An articulating arm, calibrated with a gentle touch for handling delicate bottles of wine
  • A label scanner to automatically catalog bottles you add
  • An AI assistant to recommend wines and food pairings
  • Security features to gate access to certain bottles

OK. So the Wine Wall might be a bit of pricey overkill for your average oenophile. But, it’s possible to see the Wine Wall in a restaurant or hotel or even a grocery retailer that wants to add high-tech wine recommenation to their offerings without bringing on a full-time sommelier. (Though, admittedly, the interaction with a human sommelier is part of the fun of ordering fancy wine.) Winecab even has a smaller six-foot version of its wall “coming soon” that basically looks like a wine vending machine.

The idea of a vino vending machine isn’t that far fetched. Last year PanPacific unveiled a beer vending machine that could verify the buyer’s age before dispensing. Combine that type of technology with the higher end cuisine vending companies like Yo-Kai Express, Chowbotics and Piestro are trying to create and suddenly the idea of a robot wine sommelier doesn’t seem so silly.

Hmmmm… perhaps I’ll put one on my Christmas list for next year.

Should We Ditch the Term “Vending Machine?”

When I say the words “vending machine,” what comes to mind?

It’s probably a cold, metal box with bags of chips and candy bars lined up in coils behind glass. That metal box is probably tucked away in some poorly lit corner or alcove, and it keeps spitting your perfectly good dollar bill back out at you.

Basically, nothing about that conjured experience screams “fresh,” “high-end,” or even “appealing.”

These established negative connotations could be a problem for the rising wave of high-end automated vending services that are serving up fresh food, sometimes with menus created by Michelin-star chefs.

It’s a topic that we touched on during my Future Fresh: Rethinking the Vending Machine panel today at the Smart Kitchen Summit. Megan Mokri, Co-Founder and CEO of Byte Technologies, Chloe Vichot, Co-Founder and COO of Fresh Bowl, talked with me about a range of topics impacting the unattended food vending services, including COVID-19, machine vandalism, and whether “vending machine” is a good term.

One problem is that managers of potential machine locations — think office parks or higher-end residential buildings — carry with them pre-conceived notions of what vending machines are (see above). Mokri said that there were some locations that wouldn’t even talk with Byte because of the baggage of the phrase”vending machine.” Vichot said that Fresh Bowl doesn’t use “vending machine” in the titles of sales emails or presentations because of how potential customers can react.

As we’ve covered extensively, vending machines today are basically small, automated restaurants that serve up everything from custom salads to spicey bowls of ramen to piping hot pizza. They are not just coils of empty-calorie snacks.

So should we ditch the term “vending machine?” It’s almost the inverse of the question I asked earlier this year about whether we should use the word “robot.” In that instance, I wondered if the term “robot” was setting expectations too high (people were expecting Rosie the robot) and perhaps we should use the term “machine” instead.

Vichot said that while she wasn’t opposed to the term vending machine, Fresh Bowl uses the term “kiosk.” But even that doesn’t seem to capture what today’s vending machines are capable of.

I don’t have the answers, but I think it’s an important question to tackle now. Automated vending services are going to become a more popular vehicle for meal preparation because of their small footprint, lower cost (than a full buildout), contactless nature, and the ability to craft fresh food.

The technology is here, we just need a better name for it to help pave the way for its bright future.

Krispy Kreme Has a Donut Dispensing Vending Machine

In this time of bitter partisan divide, I believe the one thing that can bring us together is donuts. Specifically, access to donuts 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

So I am patriotically pleased as punch to inform you that Krispy Kreme now has a vending machine that will serve you donuts anytime you like. That is, as long as you’re near the company headquarters shop in Charlotte, NC.

It looks like the vending machine actually debuted at the end of August, but we caught word of it through a Vending Times article posted today. The machine features a giant screen to display inventory and even run video, temperature control, and credit card and mobile payment options. It also features a “no-drop” dispenser so that precious cargo — the donut — doesn’t get crushed.

From that Vending Times story:

The machine vends three different standard variety packs: “The Fan Favorites” — one Original Glazed, one raspberry-filled, and one chocolate sprinkled for $4.99; “The Classics” — one Original Glazed, one chocolate iced cream filled and one strawberry sprinkle for $4.99; and “The Original Glazed Lovers” pack — three Original Glazed for $3.99.

While it’s always fun to write about donuts because, well, donuts, the news is noteworthy because it’s another example of how vending machines are proving useful and important to restaurant brands.

By setting up more vending machines, Krispy Kreme can extend its brand into new locations in a low-cost way without requiring any major build outs. Think: inside grocery stores, at airports, on college campuses. It also achieves this expanded reach in a contactless way, something made more important by the COVID-19 pandemic. Vending machines are unattended, so there is no human to interact with, and with mobile payments, actual touching of the machine can be minimized.

We’ve seen this kind of automated brand extension with Saladworks creating branded versions of Chowbotics’ Sally robot. And Byte Technologies is built around making smart vending refrigerators for other market and restaurant brands. I go into this and more reasons why smart vending machines are a smart play in my The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report over on our Spoon+ premium section.

Long story short: If the Charlotte pilot proves successful, you could soon see Krispy Kreme donuts popping up all over. You’ll never be that far from a donut — and that’s something I think we can all get behind.

Blendid’s New Feature Has the Robot Hold Your Smoothie Until You’re Ready

In addition to making your smoothie, Blendid’s robot will now hold it for you until you are ready to pick it up.

The company posted a video to Linkedin yesterday showing a variety of drinks on its counter. Amidst the colorful assortment of drinks are two small, relatively flat U-shaped brackets. In the video (below) you can see the brackets slide around the surface, pushing drinks into the pickup area.

We’re already seeing an acceleration of interest in food robotics like Blendid’s because of their capabilities and contactless nature. Blendid’s robot can make nine drinks simultaneously, up to 45 drinks per hour and work around the clock. All the ingredients are kept behind glass and sealed away from people, and having a robot slinging drinks means that there is one less human to be a vector for viral transmission.

Blendid is a little ahead of its automated vending bretheren when it comes to contactless retail. In addition to the robot preparing the drinks, ordering is done by mobile phone. Other robot vending services like Chowbotics still rely on touchscreens on the machine itself, which is obviously problematic during a pandemic as dozens of people use the machine in a day.

The addition of Blendid’s hold feature adds another nice bit of social distancing to the company’s offering. Being able to order ahead and have the drink held means customers all don’t need to stand around the machine to order and then wait for their drinks at the same time.

Another interesting bit about Blendid’s new hold feature is how it’s similar to the pucks used by Truebird’s robot coffee barista. Rather than having a robot arms pick up and move drinks around, Blendid’s brackets glide across the counter, sliding drinks into place.

Given that the pandemic is still going strong throughout much of the country, I expect we will continue to see small iterations like Blendid’s across the automated vending space to create even more contactless experiences.

For more on the automated vending machine market, check out my recent report on The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report (Spoon Plus Membership required).

Daily Harvest Serves Up Free Ice Cream Through Traveling Vending Machine

During 2020, we have had our fair share of stressful and saddening news. A vending machine that dispenses free vegan ice cream while playing 90’s music is exactly the kind of thing we need to read about right now. 

Daily Harvest is a plant-based meal delivery service that offers pre-made meals such as smoothies, flatbreads, and bowls. Their most recent release, Scoops, is a vegan ice cream made from plant-based ingredients like coconut cream, fruit, black sesame, cacao, and mint, which is now available for purchase in their subscription boxes. To promote the release of Scoops, Daily Harvest recently set up their first outdoor vending machine in Newport, Rhode Island.

The vending machine is regularly sanitized and requires wearing a mask and practicing social distancing while selecting your free ice cream. “Scoops”, an original song written specifically for Daily Harvest by Boyz ll Men, plays as you choose between two flavors: Chocolate + Ooey, Gooey Midnight Fudge, and Mint + Dark, Melty Cacao Chips. The machine has a small sign that reads, “This is not a mirage” because let’s be honest, free ice cream seems too good to be true right now. 

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, consumers want to minimize human contact and interaction when purchasing food. Less hands on your food, the better. We have seen a rise in food delivery pods, robot cooks,  unmanned convenience stores, and smart vending machines. Our food systems have to adapt in the face of a pandemic, and vending machines like Daily Harvest’s could be part of this new normal we find ourselves in. 

The vending machine popped up in Newport, RI last week for two days, and is now on the move. The Daily Harvest vending machine will pop up in Domino Park in Brooklyn, NY August 21-23rd. According to the website, they will continue to add additional locations, are running an Instagram poll to determine the next site of its vending machine. 

Byte Adds Dynamic Pricing to Its Smart Vending Fridges

Byte Technology added dynamic pricing to its smart fridges this week, giving its clients the ability change prices of stocked items on the fly.

Through a combination of RFID and IoT, Byte makes smart vending refrigerators that allow shoppers to swipe their credit card, take what they want from that fridge and get charged automatically. The company licenses its technology platform to retail operations like supermarkets or restaurants, which brand the fridge to sell their packaged food (or anything really).

Because of the RFID tags and connectivity, a Byte fridge knows exactly what’s in its inventory as well as what items sold, when and to whom. With the addition of dynamic pricing, Byte fridge operators can now automatically discount items for just about any reason.

For example, if a fridge is stocked with fresh sandwiches, the operator can create a 25 percent discount on any of them set to expire. Because the fridge already knows everything about its inventory, it automatically knows which sandwiches this discount would apply to, so the operator doesn’t have to set a specific date or create a new rule each time. It could also run promotions on particular drinks, such as half-off carrot juice after 5p.m. on weekdays, or broader discounts like discounts on cobb salads every Monday.

By giving operators the ability to offer dynamic pricing, Byte hopes to reduce the amount of spoilage and food waste created through its platform. This type of dynamic pricing already exists in grocery stores through solutions like Wasteless, which algorithmically discounts food price based on factors like expiration date. And the Karma app teamed up with Electrolux to create special fridges in grocery stores that sell almost expired food for at least half off.

As I wrote about in my recent The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report, the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing retailers to examine new, contactless ways of selling. Vending services like Byte’s offer the ability to sell products without human-to-human interaction. And though the pandemic has shut down offices, which were a main line of business for Byte’s machines, Byte Founde, Lee Mokri told me by phone this week that it is seeing increased interest from places like residential buildings.

Come to think of it though, having a smart vending machine in the lobby of an apartment building that can automatically discount a pint of ice after midnight might not be the greatest thing in the world.

The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report

Thanks to advances in hardware, the internet of things, and food preparation, vending machines today are basically restaurants in a box. They offer high-end cuisine in minutes, require minimal setup time, and have the on-board computing smarts to manage inventory and communicate any issues that arise.

With these capabilities, it’s no wonder the vending machine category was valued at more than $30 billion in 2018, according to Grandview Research, and was anticipated to have a CAGR of 9.4 percent from 2019 through 2025.

Had this report been written even just a few months ago, the main takeaway would have been that vending machines are perfect for high-traffic areas that operate around the clock: airports, corporate offices, college dorms, and hospitals.

But we’re living in a world continuously being shaped and reshaped by the COVID-19 global pandemic. Right now, some form of shelter-in-place orders blanket most of the U.S. Global air travel volume has plummeted, so airports are not busy. Non-essential businesses are closed and people are working from home, not office buildings. And colleges may not hold in-person classes until 2021.

While on the surface, those factors suggest vending machine companies will be yet-another sector wiped out by coronavirus, there has actually never been a better time for the automated vending machine industry. The small footprint and high-end food these devices offer are perhaps more important than ever at a time when minimizing human-to-human contact in foodservice is paramount to doing business. That makes the vending machine market uniquely positioned to capitalize on a post-pandemic world.

This report will define what the automated vending machine space is, list the major players, and present the challenges and opportunities for the market going forward.

Companies profiled in this report include Alberts, API Tech/Smart Pizza, Basil Street, Blendid, Briggo, Byte Technology, Cafe X, Chowbotics, Crown Coffee, Farmer’s Fridge, Fresh Bowl, Le Bread Xpress, Macco Robotics, TrueBird, and Yo-Kai Express.

This research report is exclusive for Spoon Plus members. You can learn more about Spoon Plus here.