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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

vending machines

Basil Street Raises $10 Million for its Pizza Vending Machines

Basil Street announced today that it has raised a $10 million round of funding that will help the company begin a multi-city pilot of its pizza vending machines starting this April.

Basil Street’s machines are roughly 20 square feet in size and hold up to 150 10-inch, thin-crust pizzas. The machine serves cheese and pepperoni pies as well as a rotating “Pizza of the month,” each costing between $6.95 and $11.95. Pizzas are made fresh, flash frozen for storage in the machine, and reheated using a patent-pending, non-microwave speed oven that cooks the pies in about three minutes.

Like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is targeting high-volume, high-traffic areas such as airports, military bases, hospitals, college campuses or even inside existing locations like supermarkets.

And also like other vending machine companies, Basil Street is part of a wave of high-tech, haute cuisine automated food kiosks coming to market. Other players — Yo-Kai Express with its hot ramen, Chowbotics with its fresh salads, and Bake Xpress with its pastries (and pizza!) — are all vying to revolutionize what a vending machine is capable of.

But for Basil Street, selling pizza is just part of the equation and really just the start for the company. As we wrote last year, all the machines are IoT-enabled, so the company will have a ton of data to work with:

The company will know what people buy, when and where they buy it, and how often. Basil Street could use this data to target new cuisine offerings or new locations. The company started with pizza because it’s easier to ship and cook, but [Basil Street Cafe CEO, Deglin] Kenealy said the oven’s technology could be used to cook just about anything.

But first, Basil Street has to get its machines up and going, which it will do with this cash infusion (the company had previously raised $3.5 million in family and friends funding). Basil Street will be targeting Texas, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina and Southern California for its first roll-outs.

Chowbotics Looks Beyond Robot Salads and Into the Grocery Store Game

Here at The Spoon, we are big fans of breakfast cereal. We’ve written stories about it, and even devoted an entire podcast to it. So when we learned that Chowbotics, maker of the Sally the salad making robot, was looking to expand into cereal, well we just had to give them a call to learn more.

For those not familiar, Chowbotics’ Sally robot is a self-contained robotic vending machine that serves up salads and other bowls of fresh food like grains and yogurts. There are currently more than 100 Sally robots installed in different hospitals, college campuses and other locations across the country.

Chowbotics CEO Rick Wilmer told me by phone today that his company is looking to broaden its appeal by partnering with CPG brands like cereal companies. Wilmer envisions a scenario where shoppers, faced with a wall of different cereals in a grocery store, can sample cereals via a Chowbotics robot (complete with cold milk!).

This is an interesting direction and could turn the idea of Chowbotics on its head. Right now, Chowbotics locates Sallys in high-traffic areas that lack fresh food options. For establishments like hospitals that operate 24 hours a day, Sally becomes the only fresh food choice available since cafeterias and shops close down. In contrast, supermarkets are filled with fresh food choices.

Sally, then, could become more of a branding tool for CPG companies (like those that make cereal) and less of a mini-restaurant. This, in turn, changes the economics of Sally, which is typically bought or leased by the location. Instead of generating revenue by selling bowls, cereal samples (or whatever) would be subsidized, presumably by the CPG company itself.

It’s basically automating the in-store sample system. Instead of a person with a tray of a new-flavored Oreos or manchego cheese, the robot could dispense them either straight as a sample or as part of a larger recipe of ingredients to showcase how that food could be used at home.

This versatility seems to be one area where Sally has an advantage over other fresh food vending services like Farmers Fridge and Fresh Bowl, both of which serve food in closed jars. Sally can hold up to 22 different ingredients that could be swapped out and reprogrammed to make a variety of different meals out of those ingredients — not just pre-packaged salads.

Having said all that, it’s important to note that right now these are just ambitions for Chowbotics. They still have a lot of work do to convince grocery retailers and big brands to hop on its robotic bandwagon. But it shows that Chowbotics is thinking way bigger than salads. And if they get big cereals on board, we at The Spoon are happy to test out a bowl or two.

Yo-Kai Express Opens up its Automated Hot Ramen Machine at SFO

Yo-Kai Express, which makes hot ramen vending machines, opened up its first airport location last week at the San Francisco International Airport (SFO).

The SFO Twitter account posted a picture of the machine yesterday, and Andy Lin, CEO of Yo-Kai, confirmed to us via Linkedin that the machine went live last week. It’s located in Terminal 3, near gate E4, and from the looks of the picture, it’s right next to the Cafe X robot-barista (more on that in a minute).

Yo-Kai Express is a self-contained machine that serves up bowls of hot ramen noodles in about 45 seconds. The recipes for the ramen were developed by a Michelin-star chef (they are delicious), and they are stored frozen inside the machine. When you order on the touchscreen, a proprietary process re-heats the ramen and serves it up, complete with utensils.

From the SFO picture, this seems to be the latest version of the Yo-Kai machine, which features dual dispensers. Yo-Kai added this second delivery slot to reduce wait times for customers.

Yo-Kai is part of the emerging cohort of high-end vending machines, which also includes Chowbotics, Bake Xpress, Briggo and Cafe X. These companies are re-imagining what a vending machine can be, serving up fresh food at all hours of the day.

As mentioned earlier, it looks as though this new Yo-Kai is parked right next to the Cafe X at SFO. The two were actually neighbors in downtown San Francisco at the Metreon, before Cafe X shuttered its in-city locations.

But this type of food+drink placement is exactly what I wrote about a couple of weeks back. Because automated vending machines and kiosks have a smaller physical footprint, you can create a 24-hour, mini-food court in smaller corners an airport or hospital or any high-traffic location. Yo-Kai and Cafe X should be talking with one another to do cross-promotions (buy a bowl of ramen, get a coupon for an ice tea!).

These high-end vending machines will probably have a slight adoption curve at first as people get used to the idea of fresh food coming from an automated machine. People are more used to getting a Twix bar from a vending machine than a craft latte or Black Garlic Oil Tonkotsu Ramen. But that will change and soon there will be all types of cuisine waiting for us as we wait for our planes.

New Bake Xpress Robot Vending Machine Makes Croissants and Pizzas

One of the big surprises from my food robot tour of San Francisco last year was just how delicious the bread from the Le Bread Xpress’ eponymous vending machine was. For $4 and a 90 second wait, you got a light and buttery baguette warmed to perfection.

So I’m excited to (eventually) venture back down to the Bay Area to try out the company’s brand new Bake Xpress machine, which doles out between 15 and 18 different items, including croissants, turkey and brie sandwiches and pizzas.

The original Le Bread Xpress machine launched roughly three years ago, and while there were only three locations in the U.S., there were more than 120 in Europe. Baguettes, understandably, are more popular in France than they are here.

While the bread was indeed delicious, the problem with the original Le Bread Xpress was proximity. The one I visited was in the Stonestown Galleria, which, if you’re not familiar with San Francisco, is way out of the way. Far outside the city core, it’s not really imaginable that someone would travel to use it, and even then, that warm loaf of bread would be cold by the time you got home.

Benoit Herve, CEO and Founder of Le Bread Xpress, told me by phone this week that the new machine is meant to offer a more complete meal solution. “We have the ability to provide a food menu from breakfast to dinner,” he said. Croissants in the morning, turkey sandwiches at lunch and pizza for dinner.

The Bake Xpress can hold and refrigerate up to 80 items. Each item is in a box with a special barcode that the machine scans to know exactly where each croissant, sandwich and pizza is located. The food is all parbaked, so when a customer places an order for a hot item, the machine grabs the box and heats the item using a combination of microwave, infrared and convection heating, depending on the item. Food takes anywhere from 60 seconds to three minutes to heat up.

Right now there are eight Bake Xpresses operating. Of those, however, only one at the University of California at Berkeley is available to the public. A second one is coming online next month, either replacing the old machine at Stonestown or going into a unnamed hospital facility, according to Herve.

Bake Xpress has partnered with an undisclosed food service provider to help with the placement and operation of its machines. Le Bread Xpress gets its revenue by renting out the machines and taking a cut of sales.

Bake Xpress is emblematic of the golden age of vending machines that we are entering. Companies like Le Bread Xpress, Chowbotics, and Yo-Kai Express are all looking to level up automated food service by offering high quality fare at a reasonable price that’s available 24 hours a day. All of these companies are targeting college campuses, hospitals, airports and other high-traffic areas where people want something more than chips and soda at odd hours of the night.

What’s more, because these machines have a relatively small footprint, it’s less of a zero sum game. There’s no reason you can’t have Chowbotic’s Sally next to a Bake Xpress if you want a sandwich and a salad.

In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised to see co-location/marketing deals between complementary vending robots pop up as they all gain more traction. Something to look for on my next food robot tour of San Francisco.

Will New Regulations Rain on the Rise of Vending Machines?

From the hot ramen dispensing Yo-Kai Express to fresh salads whipped up by Chowbotics’ Sally, we are entering a golden age of vending machines. Tucked into just about any corner of a busy building and operating autonomously 24 hours a day, vending machines are poised to disrupt what and how we eat. That is, unless regulators disrupt the rise of vending machines first.

The New York Times posted a story yesterday about how Farmers Fridge, which dispenses fresh salads in jars, sparked a change in the way New York City will regulate newer, high-tech vending machines.

The crux of the problem is that like so many things, municipal regulations lag behind technological innovations. Laws on the books around vending machines were made back when vending machines were just pre-packaged snacks and sodas. But vending machines nowadays dispense all manner of fresh food like salads and açai bowls, which are more susceptible to foodborne illnesses.

Given this new vector for potential food poisoning, New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene stepped in and actually forced all Farmers Fridges in NYC to temporarily shut down while the city figured it out, which the two parties eventually did. From the NYT article:

In negotiations over the last month, the department and the company have agreed that each Farmer’s Fridge machine will be treated, for the most part, as a restaurant — or “food service establishment,” per the health code. Every machine will require a permit, inspections and the same kind of letter grade posted everywhere from McDonald’s to Le Bernardin.

Food vending machines already jump through a lot of regulatory hoops just to be able to serve food in the first place. There are plenty of rules about the construction of these machines that include using food safe materials and not having angled corners (so bacteria doesn’t build up). And as Yo-Kai and Briggo have learned, there is also another layer of compliance for things like access for the visually impaired that must be met when installing machines at airports.

But NYC taking note of these newfangled vending machines could spark a new wave of rules across different cities that startups must comply with. City governments, always on the lookout for new revenue, probably won’t pass up the chance to impose new fines on high-tech vending machines. Companies like Chowbotics and Fresh Bowl in particular, both of which dispense fresh salads, will probably face greater scrutiny, but new administrative procedures are likely to impact companies like Yo-Kai and Basil Street as well.

As long as the regulations don’t become too onerous, this new scrutiny is probably a good thing. Even Farmers Fridge expressed empathy for NYC regulators in the Times piece, saying “New York regulators genuinely seem to be acting out the desire to keep people safe and understand a new business model. You always have to manage the chaos when you’re doing something new and different.”

Move fast and break things may work for software startups, but when it comes to the food we eat, slowing down and making sure it’s safe is probably a good thing.

Chowbotics is Sending Sally the Salad Making Robot Off to College(s)

Chowbotics is packing up Sally the salad making robot and sending it off to college. Well, many colleges actually, as the food robotics startup is set to announce next week a bigger push into the higher education market.

Chowbotics told us that this school year, students at multiple colleges and universities in the U.S. will be able to buy salads and breakfast bowls from Sally the robot. Those schools include: Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, OH; College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, MA; the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada; Elmira College in Elmira, NY; the University of Memphis in Memphis, TN; and Wichita State University in Wichita, KS. These schools join Marshall University in Huntington, WV, which installed Sally in 2018.

Students can order from thousands of different custom and pre-made meals Sally can make from the 22 ingredients it stores. Sally will work with campus meal plans and accept credit cards for payment, but unlike the school cafeteria or on-campus restaurants, Sally can fit in the corner of a dorm lobby and feed people 24 hours a day.

Sally is part of two big trends we at The Spoon see accelerating. First it’s emblematic of the golden age of vending machines that we are entering. Advances in robotics and other technologies means that automated vending machines are no longer relegated to sodas and Snickers bars. Machines like Sally and Yo-Kai Express can whip up complex, high-end meals in just minutes and around the clock in high-traffic locations like colleges, hospitals and airports.

But Sally is also part of a bigger wave of robots heading off to college. In addition to the stationary Sally, delivery robots from Starship and Kiwi are rolling around more campuses delivering restaurant made meals to the student masses.

The bottom line is that eating at college is not only vastly different from when I went to school (long ago) — but pretty soon, it will also be a lot different from how people ate at college last year.

Newsletter: Entering the Golden Age of Vending Machines

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On a recent trip to San Francisco, I enjoyed a steaming hot bowl of ramen that was fast, delicious… and came from a vending machine. Last week, PanPacific unveiled a beer vending machine that uses biometrics to verify the age of the buyer. Briggo announced this week that it is opening up a second automated Coffee Haus robo barista at the Austin airport.

We are entering the golden age vending machines, and I am totally here for it. (You will be too.)

No longer dull black boxes with half-filled coils of Doublemint gum and Texas-sized cinnamon buns, vending machines are increasingly complex devices that are equal parts robot and IoT-connected automated storefronts.

All this is to say that vending machines are the new food court. Only this food court 2.0 requires little real estate, no on-site staff, and can operate around the clock in busy places like airports, hospitals and dorms. Need a meal before your 6 a.m. flight? No problem!

But all the automation and convenience in the world is useless if these machines serve a cruddy product. The good news is, they don’t. Briggo roasts its own high-end coffee. Yo-Kai Express’ menu was created by a Michelin-star chef. And PanPacific’s beer vending machine can be outfitted to serve any kind of craft brew to satisfy even the most discerning of palates.

Vending machines are also poised to change the way we eat. The smaller footprint means more meal choices in a smaller space. The connected devices will provide data on inventory and sales for more accurate and efficient supply chain and logistics. Taken together, this will mean hungry people, especially those in a hurry, will have more and healthier meal choices (and will spend more money).

That sure beats a sad row of Texas Sized Cinnamon Buns.

Elsewhere, it’s felt a bit like the Battle of Winterfell here at The Spoon over the past month, trying to keep up with all the plant-based protein news. While Beyond Meat is set to go public this week, Impossible Whoppers will be available at all 7,000+ Burger Kings by the end of the year. Fake meat is going mainstream, baby! Though, all that demand is generating its own problems, as we learned that Impossible is having a hard time keeping up.

To help you understand the onslaught of plant-based protein news, Catherine Lamb, The Spoon’s own Arya Stark, launched our Future Food newsletter this week. In addition to slaying, she’ll break down all the innovation, deals and developments in the world of alternate-protein you need to know. Sign up for it here!

Also, we’ve been launching our full session videos from The Spoon’s ArticulATE conference last month in San Francisco. Check out talks with Creator, Albertsons, Starship and Auto X, as well as a presentation from the Director of Google Brain.

Finally, with ArticulATE in the books, we’re busy working on our flagship food tech executive summit, SKS 2019, where we’ll be talking about the future of food, the kitchen, food robots and more! You’ll want to be sure to be in Seattle in October, and as a newsletter subscriber you can get 15% off our Ultra-Early Bird pricing by using the discount code NEWSLETTER.

Until next week!

Basil Street Wants to Bring its Automated Pizza Kitchens to Airports, Dorms and Bases

Back in the day, vending machines were simple. For a couple bucks you could get a soda, some chips or cookies, and maybe some gum. But a wave of high-tech innovation is transforming vending machines into mini restaurants that can pump out just about any type of hot food, on-demand, 24 hours day.

Basil Street Cafe is one such company looking to lead this vending revolution with its Automated Pizza Kitchen (APK). These APKs are roughly 20 square feet and hold 150 frozen pizzas. For about $8 (depending on location), customers use a touchscreen to choose between a cheese, pepperoni or seasonal pizza. Pies are then run through the machine’s built-in oven and come out fully cooked in three minutes.

As with companies like Briggo and Cafe X and their coffee robots, Basil Street is looking to bring its APKs to high-volume areas: “Anywhere people want something hot and fast,” Basil Street Cafe CEO, Deglin Kenealy told me by phone. Kenealy believes there are 250,000 such locations around the U.S. where the APK could find a home, including airports, military bases, college campuses or even inside existing grocery or convenience stores.

Basil Street’s business model is to pay places $500 a month in rent to install the APK (Kenealy said they are also open to rev-share models). “We make money selling pizza,” Kenealy said. All other aspects of the operation is controlled by Basil Street. The company will come up with its own pizza recipes, and work with co-packers to make the pizzas and distributors to the load the machines.

This means that Basil Street is also responsible for maintaining the APKs. Kenealy said that thanks to the array of IoT sensors built into each machine, it can remotely be alerted to analyze and diagnose any issues that may arise and pre-emptively send a repair person to fix it before any APK actually breaks down.

Controlling all aspects of the process will also give Basil Street a lot more data to work with, an asset Kenealy believes could become more valuable than the pizza. The company will know what people buy, when and where they buy it, and how often. Basil Street could use this data to target new cuisine offerings or new locations. The company started with pizza because it’s easier to ship and cook, but Kenealy said the oven’s technology could be used to cook just about anything.

As of now Basil Street has raised $3.5 million in friends and family funding and is running two demo machines in the Los Angeles area. The company has 10 test units in production that will be installed sometime in late June/early July of this year. These units will be distributed around the country including LA, the Midwest and Texas.

As mentioned earlier, Basil Street is one of many high-tech vending machines coming to market. In addition to the Briggo and Cafe X, there’s Chowbotics, Fresh Bowl and Byte Foods all delivering fresh meals from a vending machine. Basil Street isn’t even alone in the pizza space as companies like PizzaMetry and Let’s Pizza have similar pizza making machines.

All of these machines coming to market mean more choices for sure, but it also means the hallways of high-traffic areas are going to start crowding out the actual traffic.