The Food Robotics Market Report 2022

Executive Summary

Imagine sitting down at a restaurant to a meal cooked entirely by robots instead of human chefs, would you taste the difference? 

Or imagine walking up to a sleek vending machine and ordering a bowl of hot, freshly made soup or a tossed green salad.

This future is here today as the food robotics industry has been one of the fastest growing sectors in food tech. This growth is in part due to the challenges faced by the restaurant and food service industry over the past couple years, as well as confluence of advancements in automation and robotics that have fueled a new cohort of startups to enter this space. 

Restaurants have been the largest end-market for food robotics over the past five years as they look to address the rising cost of labor and increase efficiency. Research conducted by Square found that 62% of restaurants say that automation would fill critical gaps in managing orders placed online, at the restaurant, and via delivery apps. 90% of restaurants agreed that increased automation for back-of-house operations would allow staff to focus on more important tasks. 

Automation in restaurants serves as a solution to improve the efficiency and productivity of restaurant employees, automate repetitive and mundane tasks, speed up service, streamline interactions between businesses and guests, advance guest recognition and customer relationship management, address language barriers, enhance personalization, and provide entertainment and novelty to the guest experience. In-house automation offers benefits to restaurant operating costs including labor, food waste, real estate, and rent as well as changing consumer preferences in regards to omnichannel ordering and food safety. On the other hand, consumer-facing kiosks allow restaurants to bring their food to markets it might not be able to reach with the investment of a large retail space. 

The intersection of food and robotics presents new business model opportunities including white label robotic offerings, wholly robot-powered restaurant brands, and robotics as a service business model. Food robotics can be applied to help power entirely new operating models such as ghost kitchens to make them more efficient and keep operating costs low.

This report will evaluate the factors driving food robotics innovation, explore the different contexts in which food robotics are used with a focus on in-house automation and independent consumer-facing kiosks, analyze the advantages and disadvantages of this new technology, dive into major players, explore challenges and barriers to development, overview the investment landscape, and discuss the future of food robotics.

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