Miso Robotics ‘ test in central Pasadena, California, is filled with computers of the past and present.
There’s Sippy, Chippy and Drippy. The lab’s most famous machine, Flippy, can fry chicken nuggets and French fries much more quickly than people.
Miso Robotics ‘ success depends largely on its ability to persuade fast-food restaurants to include Flippy, a mechanical arm that dips fried baskets into hot oil, into their kitchens. Miso is one of several software startups betting that more firms may be looking for new ways to save money, reduce employee turnover, and complete more purchases as the restaurant business is being impacted by higher costs, which is being driven in part by rising minimum wages in California and other states.
” You’re always going to get rid of mankind in cafes, nor would you want to”, Miso Robotics Chief Executive Rich Hull said. What you’re trying to accomplish is automate the things that people find difficult to accomplish. Flypi is able to approach more than 100 cook baskets in an hour, which is significantly faster than the roughly 70 baskets the company’s workforce can handle in the same amount of time. Additionally, the machine protects employees from fires caused by hot oil or grease slips.
Restaurant bars have been making computers work in the kitchen for years. However, circuits and software have n’t yet taken over the table, despite White Castle, Sweetgreen, and Chipotle testing out ways to automate food preparation.
” We are at the very, very early stage. The expense transfer has not been demonstrated, according to Pacific Management Consulting Group founder John Gordon, an researcher in the restaurant sector. Diners are probably saying” There’s no doubt an opportunity in some restaurants because of the repetitive work that is done.”
For some companies, first results are promising. The fast-casual fast food chain Sweetgreen in Los Angeles has been testing its” Eternal Kitchen,” which uses equipment to combine and mix salad ingredients before being finished. Two sites that piloted the systems, including one in Huntington Beach, saw changes in order accuracy and staff turnover, while ordinary income were 10 % higher, managers said during a subsequent earnings call.
Miso Robotics, founded in 2016, has tested earlier editions of Flippy in about 20 cafes including White Castle, CaliBurger and Jack in the Box. White Castle, a burger joint that has largely places in the Midwest and the area around New York City, said it expects to follow through on ideas announced last year to introduce Flippy in almost one-third of its roughly 350 restaurants.
There are many fast-food technology companies that have tried unsuccessfully to destroy the restaurant industry. Last year, Silicon Valley pizza-making business Zume shuttered after raising$ 450 million from SoftBank’s Vision Fund and other traders. The firm, which was founded in 2015, apparently had difficulty getting its drones to stop melted butter from falling off sandwiches that were being baked in moving trucks en route to users, among other issues. And in 2022, DoorDash, the business that made the robot salad-making vending machine, abruptly shut down Chowbotics, roughly 18 months after it purchased the startup because it did n’t live up to expectations.
According to experts, Miso Robotics appears to be at a level where it can no longer be trusted. The business had nothing more than$ 4 million in cash reserves and an accumulated gap of$ 122.8 million as of June 2024. The company’s damaging operating cash flows have raised concerns about its ability to survive, a , report , filed to the U. S. Securities and Exchange Commission says.
Hull and another professionals started just last season, and former CEO Michael Bell was terminated in May 2023, another , filing , displays.
As of March, the firm has raised$ 126.5 million from shareholders and was in the process of raising additional money, according to statistics from Pitchbook. Gordon and another experts said they think the company’s ability to raise more money as it tries to increase sales is mainly dependent on its capability to do so.
Hull, an earlier investment in Miso Robotics, is a Hollywood film maker and professional who also founded a Spanish-language streaming business, Vix Inc., which was acquired in 2021 by TelevisaUnivision. He said Miso’s table and Ecolab, which invested$ 15 million in the business, brought him in to develop the business much like he’s done for the streaming organization.
” Innovation is not easy. It’s truly difficult. Now we have a seven-year mind start on anyone else, but it’s messy”, Hull said. ” I love noisy. That’s always been my thing”.
According to Hull, the business plans to substantially increase its production capacity next year, allowing it to fulfill any orders it receives. Miso hopes to be successful by the end of 2026.
Some work economists question whether , automation , may support staff. A senior research scientist at the UCLA Labor Center, Brian Justie, took a trip to a restaurant that used Flippy during the summertime.
” Whether or not it’s faster or less expensive than a… standard restaurant, I believe what it quite evidently was was that fewer people were actually doing the same amount of work or more with a limited menu,” he said.
Hull highlighted changes the company has made to Flippy during a presentation at Miso Robotics ‘ laboratory, including reducing its size so it can fit under the fuel hood and above the grills in a small kitchen. And he claimed that the use of artificial intelligence technology, which can correct issues with its operating system or notice a customer service representative if it’s about to tear down, has reduced food waste and improved strength.
Although Hull said its engineers are currently focused on the frying robot, Miso Robotics has tested out other robots that were meant to pour drinks at the drive-through ( Sippy ) or cook and season tortilla chips ( Chippy ). When the business unveiled the machine in 2017, Miso immediately designed Flippy to turn burgers, but the business changed when it realized a bigger income opportunity with fried foods, he said.
Miso executives believe the frying technology could be a huge boon for the company, claiming in a government filing that” Flippy’s automation of the fry station represents a potentially massive$ 3.5 billion revenue opportunity for Miso alone in a market that, importantly, still remains fragmented, underdeveloped, undercapitalized, and ripe with growth opportunities for a company with Miso’s first-mover advantage”.
Restaurants can buy or lease the robot, and the company makes money as well from maintenance, software upgrades and tech support. Most customers lease Flippy for$ 5, 000 to$ 6, 000 per month, but various factors can influence pricing, including the number of fryers in a restaurant.
Several chains, including Panera, Jack in the Box, Chipotle and Buffalo Wild Wings, have been testing Miso’s technology since 2021, SEC filings show. Many of the businesses did not go into detail about whether the robots saved money, but instead pointed to other advantages.
At White Castle, for example, Flippy robots have allowed employees to better focus on other aspects that improve a customer’s experiences such as order accuracy and hospitality, said Jamie Richardson, the chain’s vice president of marketing and public relations.
After realizing that the drive-through and fry station employees had to balance many responsibilities and orders, the burger chain turned to Miso. In order to help with take-out orders, White Castle partnered with SoundHound to test an AI voice assistant named Julia ( named after a beloved White Castle host named Julia Joyce from the 1930s ). In June, McDonald’s announced it was ending a similar pilot program with IBM amid reports the technology , had struggled with people’s accents.
With many variables at play, White Castle has n’t measured whether Flippy has improved employee retention, Richardson said. So far, it has gotten positive feedback about the robot from employees.
” People who come to us want hot and tasty, affordable food”, he said. ” If you can take the pain points out of that, if you can reduce the friction, everybody wins”.
Curt Garner, chief customer and technology officer at Chipotle, said the restaurant chain tested out Miso’s tortilla chip-making robot in one Orange County location from 2021 to 2023. Garner claimed that the restaurant incorporated what it learned into other products even though the pilot ended last year.
Chipotle, which has a$ 100-million venture fund, has invested in other startups including Vebu Labs, which was founded and is run by Miso Robotics ‘ former president and board chair, James Jordan. The partnership produced Autocado, which cuts, cores and peels avocados before workers hand-mash them to create guacamole. Additionally, it has invested in San José-based Hyphen to develop what the company refers to as an “augmented makeline” that creates burritos, tacos, quesadillas, and kids ‘ meals using automated technology.
Jot Condie, president and chief executive of the California Restaurant Assn., said the COVID-19 pandemic fueled more interest in the use of automation and technology in restaurants.
A lot of the adoption, he anticipates, will happen in fast-casual restaurants where convenience and efficiency are key, rather than in full-service restaurants where the interaction with friendly servers is a more important part of the experience.
He predicted that quick-service establishments like Chipotle with the resources to invest in and adopt technology will sort of take the lead.
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