Today restaurant robotics startup Bear Robotics announced they have raised an $81 million Series B. The round was led by IMM, with participation by Cleveland Avenue. The new funding brings the company’s total venture investment to $117 million.
Bear, co-founded by former ex-Googler and restauranteur John Ha, makes server robots that help hospitality businesses do everything from delivering food to tables to bussing tables. A few years ago, the company started trialing its first robot, Penny, in Ha’s restaurant, the Kang Nam Tofu House in Milpitas, CA. Since those early days, the company has shipped 5000 robots, with much of the volume coming last year.
The company has been on a roll lately, winning contracts with big names like Denny’s to Chili’s and a sports stadium or two. Bear’s biggest markets today are in South Korea and Japan, with the US quickly catching up. With their new funding, the company plans to expand further across the US, Europe, and additional countries in southeast Asia.
According to Bear COO and cofounder Juan Higueros, the volume they’ve experienced over the past couple of years is the result of a concerted effort to ramp up mass production in 2020.
“It took us all of 2020 to get it done,” Higueros told me via Zoom. “We really started ramping in Q1 of 2020 in the US. It’s been growing at a nice steady pace ever since and we anticipate the US market will continue to grow.”
With its new funding, the company will be investing in new products as well as expand into new markets. Higueros said the company plans to create a robot model that can travel to multiple floors in a building and create a larger model robot with additional carrying capacity. Beyond that, he said the company is also starting to think about other ways to bring automation to restaurants to help make the lives of service industry workers easier.
“Little things like getting your water or getting your refills on orders. Things like that can be a little more automated.”
Higueros told me the company has already seen the benefits of working with one of its newest investors, Cleveland Avenue, a venture capital firm founded and led by former McDonald’s CEO Don Thompson.
“They’re great to work with just because of the depth of their bench,” said Higueros. “We’re talking folks that have like 30 years of experience at McDonald’s. If there’s somebody you need to know in the industry, they know them.”
While the company isn’t disclosing the valuation for its latest funding round, Higueros says they are comfortable where they came in at.
“We got a pretty good bump from our Series A, and we’re comfortable with that,” he said. “There has been a lot of what’s happening in valuation the past year or two. It’s been really frothy. But if you go into a valuation that’s out of control, then you put yourself at a disadvantage because you have to climb into that.”
“We had a really good year last year. We shipped a lot of robots, and we were even profitable. So we feel good about where we are at.”
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