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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

YPC Technologies

YPC Raises $1.8 Million (CAD) for its Versatile Robot Cooking Kiosk

YPC Technologies announced today that it has raised $1.8 million dollars CAD (~$1.36 million USD) for its robotic cooking kiosk. The round was co-led by Hike Ventures and returning investor Real Ventures, with participation from Toyota AI Ventures, Uphill Capital, and multiple angel investors.

Like others in the food robot space, YPC is building a standalone, autonomous cooking system. But unlike PAZZI, which makes pizza, or DaVinci Kitchen, which makes pasta, or even Flippy, which works a grill or fry station, YPC aims to build a more versatile cooking robot, one that can make up to 20 different types of meals.

“Our business is unique because our system can produce a large variety of meals,” Dr. Gunnar Grass, CEO and Co-founder, YPC Technologies told me by phone this week, listing “Soups, stews, beef bourguignon, rissotto, steamed asparagus” as a sample of what the YPC robot can make.

This desire for variety was borne out of Grass’ time working in in the kitchen of a retirement home. The kitchen made one type of dish per day and Grass saw many plates come back partially eaten or completely untouched, because residents didn’t like the food or couldn’t eat it because of dietary restrictions (or because they lacked teeth).

YPC has been testing its robot out at a co-working facility in Montreal, Canada over the past year. The articulating arm grabs ingredients and does the cooking and can make anywhere from half a dozen to 20 different types of meals, depending on how it’s stocked. The current version of the robot can make 30 meals in an hour, though Grass said the next version will be able to make 100 meals per hour.

Grass said that the company is targeting business customers such as retirement centers, hospitals and commercial high-rises for installations of its robot. The system does not require additional ventilation be built, which could make the decision to install one a little easier for potential locations.

Of course, another appeal of the YPC system is that it’s a robot that can work all day and removes one human (and possible vector of viral transmission) from the meal prep equation. YPC isn’t completely human-less, since people are still required to stock and final presentations, but reducing the number of human hands preparing and touching food has becoming increasingly important during this pandemic. And this type of hygiene is top of mind for the potential customers YPC is dealing with. “Right now, everyone cares about safety,” Grass said.

As we said earlier, YPC’s robot is unique in the restaurant world. Grass said with the new funding, his company hopes to have a production pilot up and running with an unnamed “multi-national” food company by the middle of next year.

YPC Wants to Bring Fast Food Robotics to Fresh Food Cooking

We know that robots can cook up hamburgers, fry tater tots, and even make delicious bowls of food in high volume restaruants. But YPC Technologies wants to put that fast food style of robot to work making more complicated dishes like salmon filets, mushroom risotto, or even raspberry sorbet.

Based in Montreal, Canada, YPC (which stands for Your Personal Chef) has built a robotic workstation that its says can make high quality complex, fresh-cooked meals. Right now the YPC robot uses an articulating arm which grabs ingredients, pours them out into various multi-cookers and other devices that do the chopping, stirring and cooking. The YPC robot can make thousands of recipes and, depending on the complexity of the dishes ordered, can cook roughly 100 dishes per hour.

For all of its robotic bells and whistles, however, YPC Co-Founder and CEO Gunnar Grass told me by phone that YPC is not intended to be a fully autonomous kitchen. Humans will still be around for tasks like re-stocking ingredients and doing the final presentations. “The plating of the dishes is very difficult to achieve with robots,” Grass said, “in the long run we’ll automate 60 percent of kitchen operations.”

Grass stressed that this version of the cooking robot with the articulating arm is very much in the prototype phase, and will go through much more innovation, including the addition of a two-axis arm. Eventually, Grass said YPC will probably take up 40 sq. meters (a little more 400 sq. ft.), so it’s around the same size as the PAZZI automated pizza restaurant.

At first, YPC wants to own and operate its own robot eateries and is targeting mid-volume traffic areas like co-working spaces and retirement homes. It might also partner with a food service operation like Sedexo to be in university food halls that have more than one dining option. The YPC is not meant for high-volume sites like arenas or cafeterias that service thousands of people at once.

Co-working spaces actually seem like an ideal environment for a YPC system. There are plenty of office workers who want a good meal without having to leave the office, but there aren’t so many orders as to overwhelm the articulating arm.

While robots like Flippy are already working shifts, and Creator and Spyce are robot restaurants already open to the public, YPC is still very much in its early stages. Grass said his company raised a pre-seed round of funding, and that the operating prototype still needs to get the appropriate regulatory licenses before they go more public.

YPC is illustrative of the fact that automation in dining won’t be limited to just high throughput venues like fast food restaurants and arenas. Eateries that service smaller, but steady customer bases will also be able to take advantage of food robots, and will be able to provide a wider variety of meals than just burgers and tater tots.