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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Wavemaker Labs

Wavemaker Launches Wing Zone Labs, a Roboticized Rethink of The Popular Chicken Wing Franchise

Today Wavemaker Labs and Wing Zone announced the launch of Wing Zone Labs, a roboticized rethink of the popular chicken wing franchise.

Under the franchise agreement, Wavemaker will have exclusive rights to the Southern California region and has plans to open up to twenty locations in the coming years. According to the announcement, the new Wing Zone Labs will “focus on driving innovation for the company, helping Wing Zone restaurants unlock their full potential with end-to-end automation.”

It’s an interesting approach, one that goes beyond a traditional franchise agreement but falls short of a joint venture. The deal looks like Wing Zone has largely offloaded the financial risk to Wavemaker, who, in a sense, is offloading their financial risk by raising capital through equity crowdfunding. Wavemaker is no stranger to raising funds through equity crowdfunding, as that’s how it (and spinouts like Miso Robotics) have typically raised capital.

Of course, the ability to launch twenty new restaurants will depend on whether the company can raise the funding. The overall equity crowdfunding market has continued to grow over the past few years, but it’s unclear what persistent inflation and what could be a potential recession on the horizon will do to investor appetites.

Regardless, it will also be interesting to watch if Wing Zone begins to implement automation in stores outside of the Southern California market. The announcement makes clear Wavemaker’s new initiative will be the driving force behind automation efforts at Wing Zone, and if the restaurant chain sees positive results with Labs they may begin to encourage other franchisees to consider the use of robotics.

Meet Nommi, a Robotic Bowl Food Kiosk Designed by Wavemaker, C3, and Iron Chef Masaharu Morimoto

Today Wavemaker Labs announced the launch of a new startup and bowl-making robotic kiosk concept called Nommi. Nommi will be “a standalone robotic kitchen that is able to produce and dispense any grain-, noodle- or lettuce-based dish through a fully integrated cooking system.”

Nommi is the latest robot startup concept to emerge from Wavemaker Labs, the food automation incubation studio behind Miso Robotics (Flippy, a back-of-house fry and grillbot), Bobacino (boba drinkbot), Future Acres (farm assistant) and Piestro (pizza kiosk). What’s unique about Nommi is the company is a product of a partnership between Wavemaker, C3 and chef Masaharu Morimoto, each of whom hold equity in the new company.

“As we started developing it, we really wanted to get partners to allow this to scale quickly, and really kind of stack the deck before we start playing,” said Buck Jordan, President and Co-Founder of Nommi and CEO of Wavemaker Labs, in a recent zoom interview with The Spoon.

C3, which has made a name for itself over the past couple of years for its aggressive expansion into virtual food haul concepts, has plans to order up to one thousand Nommi units over the next few years. While Jordan and C3 envision the Nommi augmenting some physical restaurant locations, the primary focus for the bowl food robot will be food delivery.

“We’re building this to be really delivery accessible,” said Jordan. “Delivery is going to double over the next five years, and so we want to be part of that.”

According to Jordan, while the initial machine will be designed to assemble food bowls that can be handed off to humans for delivery, Nommi envisions a future that will be roboticized from end to end.

The system is “designed and go through our system to be picked up by the regular delivery apps by human,” said Jordan. “But in the long term, we are trying to figure out a way to have a robotic transfer system to some of these robotic delivery machines out there to make a full end to end.”

Chef Morimoto will run the first Nommi, featuring menu items from his Sa’Moto restaurant brand. According to Jordan, Morimoto’s input had a significant impact on the robot design.

“Chef Morimoto wants really high-quality food,” said Jordan. “There’s no compromising when it when he puts his name on it.”

Because Morimoto wanted to delicately place ingredients in each food bowl, Nommi’s design team endeavored to build a robot capable of such high-fidelity food-making. This resulted in a wheeled cart system that moves around under food dispensing stations and rotates up to 360 degrees for precision ingredient placement. You can watch the Nommi assembling bowls via its wheeled cart system in the video below.

The Nommi Bowl Making Kiosk

Nommi fills a hole in Wavemaker’s portfolio for a fully automated bowl kitchen kiosk. Wavemaker’s most well-known food robot startup, Miso, makes back-of-house robots for fry and grill work. Piestro makes consumer-facing pizza robot kiosks. With Nommi, the company has designed a flexible bowl-food robot that, according to Jordan, is flexible enough to replicate a variety of menus from high-end chefs.

“There will be brands built from the ground up to be automated,” said Jordan. “And so we want to take the best in class food from Michelin star chefs and bring fine dining to the masses. We want to do in a fully automated way and be able to have a grain bowl made by Morimoto cost the same as a Big Mac.”

Each Nommi machine has a capacity for up to 330 bowls and lids. Each kiosk will come with up to 21 food lockers that hold finished bowls. Customers or food delivery workers can pick up the food at the kiosk using a QR code.

According to Jordan, the company hopes to start shipping its production unit in 2023.

A Conversation With Buck Jordan of Nommi

Flippy The Fast Food Robot Has Its Own National TV Commercial

Flippy’s about to hit the big time.

That’s because the fast food robot from Miso that’s in service in places like White Castle is going to be the focus of a new nationally televised commercial.

The commercial, which can be seen below, is a 30 second ad that introduces Flippy to a TV audience.

Introducing Flippy | National Television Commercial from Miso Robotics on Vimeo.

The ad opens with Flippy making fries in the kitchen of a fast food restaurant while a voiceover actor proclaims “Nothing hits the spot quite like good food, made fast.”

From there the 30 second spot toggles back and forth between a mother and daughter happily eating food and Flippy making fries back in the kitchen.

The voiceover continues: “The taste you grew up on, now made more consistent, more efficient, and dare we say, more delicous. Introducing Flippy, the world’s first AI kitchen assistant.”

The narrator brings the pitch home with the tag line, “Let the robots do the robotic work, so people can do the people work.”

I’m not sure where the ad will play and what the audience will be – I reached out to the folks at Miso and haven’t heard back – but it’s interesting to me that they have decided to pay for a national TV spot introducing a food service robot to a general audience. It’s certainly a new direction for a company that has largely stuck to programmatic social media ads for their crowdfunding campaigns.

Here are a few thoughts as to why the company went in this direction.

The company wants to reach a new audience outside of it traditional marketing campaigns. Miso traditionally uses programmatic cookie-driven web advertising on social media and websites to appeal to potential investors. The TV spot ends with a call to action to visit Meetflippy.com, where visitors get a general overview of the robot, can get on a mailing list, and can hit a “Become a Customer” button for more info. My guess is the company believes they will reach a new audience that is less tech-savvy, but could be potential customers or even potential new investors.

Miso is beginning the “robots are our friends” messaging. There’s no doubt that as robotics become more mainstream in food service and other jobs, there will be some pushback from those that see them as job-stealers. The tagline, “Let the robots do the robotic work, so people can do the people work” seems intended to possibly get in front of the anti-robot trend.

The company is looking to time ad to coincide with its Hulu spotlight. If you watch the hero reel preview of the upcoming David Chang Hulu food show that is heavily focused on food tech, Wavemaker – the robot-focused investment vehicle closely affiliated with Miso – gets a star turn on the show. The preview features Miso Robotics Chairman Buck Jordan talking to Chang while it shows the Flippy in action. This ad spot might even be intended to play during Chang’s Hulu show.

Whatever the reason, you got to give Miso credit. The launch of a national TV commercial to push a fry-making robot is definitely a first.

Editor Update: Miso Robotics CFO Kevin Morris responded to my inquiry the following comment: “We want to make Flippy as well known to the masses as possible and doing a commercial increases its national exposure exponentially. The more eyeballs that see the commercial, the greater likelihood we can attract additional innovation partners.”

Piestro Raises Nearly $5M in Equity Crowfunding to Fund Pizza Robot Development

On Thursday, Piestro, a maker of automated pizza-making vending machines, wrapped up a nearly $5M ($4,667,468 to be exact) equity crowdfunding campaign.

According to the funding prospectus for the just-completed campaign, the company plans to use the funds to develop its second-generation pizza robot. The second-generation Piestro, which will be the first pizza robot from the company to be deployed in consumer-facing locations and take payments, will use what the company describes as ‘cold-to-cook’ technology. The company hopes to have its new prototype deployed by December of this year.

While Piestro’s first-generation prototype has largely been completed, the company is iterating on the software and is working to add a conveyor belt system into the product which will enable it to cook a pizza in 3 minutes or less.

Piestro’s use of crowdfunding isn’t surprising given it’s a Wavemaker Labs portfolio company. Wavemaker Labs, which describes itself as a “robotics and automation corporate innovation studio”, has shown a preference for using platforms such as StartEngine and SeedInvest to raise funds with its portfolio companies like Piestro, Miso Robotics, Future Acres and Bobacino.

Piestro’s success with its crowdfunding campaign comes on the heels of the news about locking up a partner in 800 Degrees, a pizza chain that has plans to roll out 3,600 Piestro pizza vending machines over the next five years.

According to Piestro CEO Massimo Noja De Marco, the company has preorders for over 5 thousand Piestro machines. That disclosure came in an interview with Kevin O’Leary (aka Mr Wonderful), the Shark Tank investor who is a spokesperson for StartEngine.

During the same interview, O’Leary asked what it costs to make a Piestro. “Ultimately it’s probably gonna cost around $45 thousand and we’ll be selling at around $75 thousand, but we want to be able to use two different models,” said De Marco.

Piestro’s CEO explained the company will use both a robot-as-a-service and a direct purchase model. With the robots-as-a-service model, the customer pays a fee that includes the monthly lease, maintenance and support feeds, and a royalty for each pizza sold.

“It can be anywhere between $2,900 to $3,000 a month, but they have a machine that they can take to market without putting a lot of money down,” said De Marco.

For direct purchase models, which DeMarco said some large foodservice companies are interested in, Piestro will charge between $799 to $899 a month, which includes ongoing support and maintenance and a per-pizza royalty fee.

You can read more about the funding campaign in the prospectus and watch the interview with Mr. Wonderful below.

Meet the Innovators: Piestro

Wavemaker Labs Working on Nommi, an Automated Kitchen Robot

Corporate product development investor and incubator Wavemaker Labs is adding Nommi, an “automated delivery kitchen” robot to its portfolio. Wavemaker CFO Kevin Morris shared the previously unknown endeavor during a presentation at our ArticulATE food robotics summit yesterday.

Morris didn’t reveal much about Nommi other than an early rendering of a robotic kiosk and that it was being developed in partnership with a large hospitality company. Judging from the size of the machine in the rendering, Nommi appears to be something in between Chowbotics’ Sally and Spyce’s Infinite Kitchen. It holds a number of ingredients which are automatically dispensed and heated. Other renderings Morris showed illustrated how Nommi could also be installed in the back of a van, making it mobile, and inside a shipping container (a la Mezli).

Nommi is the latest food robot to be added to Wavemaker’s growing roster of automated food machines, which also includes Miso Robotics, Piestro, and Bobacino. As Morris explained during his talk yesterday, Wavemaker begins its process by identifying a problem in the food tech sector and then finds corporate partners to develop a specific solution. This approach helps hedge Wavemaker’s investment bets because there is already a customer for the robot in place once the product is done. In the case of Miso Robotics, for example, a fast food chain (presumably Caliburger) was looking to automate burger flipping and thus Miso Robotics’ Flipppy was born. Nommi is being developed in partnership with an undisclosed hospitality company which will help develop the menu, robotic capabilities and act as a first customer once the robot is done.

While Wavemaker is investing in and helping initially develop the Nommi, history suggests that at some point the bowl food bot will be turning to equity crowdfunding when it comes time to raise capital. Wavemaker companies Miso Robotics, Piestro, and Future Acres have all run equity campaigns over the past year.

Given the scant details that Morris shared with the ArticulATE virtual crowd, Nommi is probably still a couple years out from coming to market. But The Spoon will surely be covering it as it becomes a real thing.