It's just another automatic wok. There are many companies making those in China.[1][2][3][4] And those are just the pan style. The simpler rotating-drum machines are easily available on Alibaba.[5]
Those guys didn't do their homework to see what's available.
The home-sized ones often take a cartridge of little plastic bins preloaded with the ingredients and coded with the instructions. Just slip one of those in the slot, push start, and get a good hot meal.
You want to compete with China, you need to know what's already been done there. Remember those "Bodega" clowns? They apparently didn't know that much more advanced automatic convenience stores already exist in China.
Well, no, it's not just an automatic wok - there's a consumer experience around an automatic wok. Integrating everything so that there's no human involved whatsoever is a bit more difficult than ordering an automatic wok from Alibaba. If you're trying to serve freshy-cooked meals from a vending machine, there is so much more going on than just the heating elements.
Just to pick one: the supply chain is a real issue. Getting fresh ingredients into the machines, keeping them running, performing maintenance... all of that requires a well-tuned supply chain, knowledge of food sources, etc., especially since Spyce is targeting an upscale "fast-casual" (~healthy) demographic.
As a disclaimer I was pitched by this team in 2015-2016, and was pretty convinced that they weren't facing much local competition.
People seem to forget that nearly all frozen meals and frozen pizzas are all robotic made by the many millions per day. Just by very expensive, large and high speed robots.
The innovation is now trying to make robots that are more flexible, smaller and low volume food production while not being super expensive.
Which ones specifically? At Dominos, I see people hand tossing dough and setting the ingredients whenever I go into one(not too frequently, don't judge me). I would imagine a group like Dominos would be the first to mechanize considering their scale?
Applebees could be all cooked by Robots also since all their food is microwaved frozen food. (I tell friends if you can't smell (edit) cooking outside the restaurant they are just a microwave kitchen.)
Fast food could also be run by robots fairly easily. I am imagining in 15 years most places will have robots doing the majority of cooking in restaurants. They won't spread disease, make food consistently, won't call out sick nor require an hourly wage.
When you can't "smell cooking" (as I assume you meant to write), it means their HVAC works, and if you can't "see cooking" (the other reasonable option?), it means they know how to put up a wall. Your friends should be taking you with a grain of salt.
"All their food" at Applebee's is not "microwaved frozen food"; I know plenty of people who got their start as cooks and chefs there. Something like three-quarters is made in-house and you'd have to be blind and unable to feel your tongue to not be able to tell a microwaved steak.
Looks like Applebee's is actually starting to cook items. I guess public pressure has changed their ways. Good for them. They absolutely were the king of microwaved food in chain sit downs for decades.
Appetizers are all frozen and pre-packaged they just deep fried at almost all chains.
Heck I worked at Ethan Allen Inn in Danbury CT a LONG time ago and all the meals were frozen and prepared in France and shipped over. Easily $75 to $125 per person in the 90s.
Smell outside a restraunt is certainly a true statement. No HVAC (A/C or Heater) is going to filter the kitchen's vent. Tell me you can't smell the difference between Burger King's fake grilling and McDonald when your outside of them? Same thing with restaurants. The one's that microwave a ton will
I just ate at The Modern in NYC the other day. The Modern is a Michelin star restaurant. I didn't smell cooking. Half the dining experience at Michelin restaurants is all about tightly controlling the inflow of stimuli to your senses. No good restaurant would want you to smell someone else's seafood cooking while you start on desert. Is your experience limited solely to to restaurants with poor HVAC?
I stated specifically outside not inside. You smell cooking from outside since kitchen's are vented. Now in NYC sometimes the vents are on top of a 25 story building and that beautiful NYC post winter stench might cover it up.
If a restaurant has a ton of items on the menu I guarantee you that most of that is just prepared food that is microwaved.
Seems like people are mad that I believe that most food in restaurants are not cooked.
I don't think people are "mad". But you have a track record of saying trivially disproven, unsubstantiated things on HN and you backtrack poorly from them, then you sprinkle in weirdly fixated antagonism like "NYC post winter stench". It's bad posting, and it's wrong besides--the gap between "they don't cook anything" and "they fry frozen appetizers and cook everything else as anyone else would" is not so small that you can handwave it away with "lol people are mad". I mean, hell, Applebee's has had apply-fire-to-food line cooks for twenty years or more. I knew kids in high school who worked there (and we'd go there because we got a discount).
(And if there's any wind at all, modern roof-mount kitchen venting will ensure you don't smell much of anything if there's even moderate wind.)
The last time I ate at Applebee's the food tasted microwaved. I'm no chef but there is a subtle je ne soi quois about microwaved food (pasta specifically) and it was definitely present.
> I don't think people are "mad". But you have a track record of saying trivially disproven, unsubstantiated things on HN and you backtrack poorly from them
I either state my person experience from many years ago. (Don't need to present a research link) OR I present my research. Sorry you don't find me as a positive addition on HN.
I was stating my personal experience of working at a restaurant that had their meals prepared in France was frozen and shipped to America. The preparation was boiled in bags or microwaved and got high dollar for the meals. That is my personal experience.
Long time ago most chains like Applebee's and Tuesday's meals were prepared hours, days or weeks before a person would eat them and either they were boiled in a bag, microwaved or deep fried. This still happens more than people know. That is my statement.
Here is an article on expensive French Restaurants use of pre-pared food.
So I guess me saying that if I can't smell a kitchen cooking food it probably is making pre-pared meals. I could also state that if the menu has hundreds of items they are also pre-pared meals, but to you that is poor posting?
I much rather have a few option that are fresh and that is what the OP Restaurant is doing with robots and one human at a garnish station. Most of America's restaurants do not use fresh food or prepare your food that day. Applebee's has gone out of their way to change the way they make food.
"Today, the country's largest casual dining chain lights up 2,000 new wood-fired grills for a revamped menu with steaks that Applebee's hand-cuts on the premises. Amid the barrage of price-driven industry promotions, Applebee's thinks its upgrade to USDA Choice beef, along with the stacks of logs outside restaurants and the aroma of wood smoke inside, will pique consumer interest. That's something the chain needs right now: In the last fiscal financial year, same-restaurant sales were flat, and this year, Applebee's expects sales to range from a negative 2 percent drop to a 2 percent gain." http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/applebees-bets-big-rel...
>Seems like people are mad that I believe that most food in restaurants are not cooked.
Or, you know, you're just talking out your ass and it's not even remotely true. A lot of menu items just means there's either a lot of prep being done, a lot of the menu items have a reasonably similar set of bases, or both. There's always going to be a certain degree of Sysco stuff that's just bought and dunked into a fryer, but claiming most of a given menu is reheated from a microwave without any further backup other than "lol you can't smell it" is ridiculous.
Smell outside a restraunt is certainly a true statement. No HVAC (A/C or Heater) is going to filter the kitchen's vent. Tell me you can't smell the difference between Burger King's fake grilling and McDonald when your outside of them? Same thing with restaurants.
That is so false that you must be trolling. I've been to plenty of restaurants where you couldn't smell the food outside the restaurant, even though you could see them cooking the food inside and the air ducts carrying the smoky air from the kitchen to the outside. This ranges from small mom-and-pop taco stops to Michelin-starred restaurants.
On a side note: I've been to both Burger King and McDonalds, and you can smell them cooking the burgers at both. You can't "fake grill" a burger, as microwaving ground beef patties produces a different texture than grilling or pan-grilling.
Your statement is technically libelous in nature, as you are accusing a major restaurant chain of not actually cooking any of there food based on spurious factual assumptions.
You may want to consider asking dang to delete your comment.
As a side note, if you walk into an Applebee's you can actually be seated at a table with a view of the kitchen, where you can watch the cooks at work. Applebee's may not be the best cooked food, but it is actually cooked by real live people, and has been for decades.
To be libelous it would need to be proven false. Some Applebees location has likely at least partially microwaved chicken/steak to ensure that it meets the minimum safe temperature during busy periods before.
Also, whenever someone wanted to order a 'medium rare' steak, and I had to say we only make them 'pink' or 'no pink.' That's because most of the kitchen is a row of microwaves. The steaks were cooked on a stove top, but then microwaved to death. Pink or no pink only referred to how microwaved to death you want your meat."
I find it interesting how good the top schools are at making sure they get credit for things. I often read "Harvard scientist..., MIT grads, Stanford..." in headlines. You rarely read "University of Minnesota" (just a made up example) so the casual reader may think that Harvard, MIT and Stanford are the only schools that do interesting things.
And it really works. At a startup I worked at we had a guy from MIT and whenever the VCs talked to to the low ranks they inevitable ended up talking to him. And no, he was not the best engineer. Not even close.
This. Regardless of the school name you prefix it with "graduates designed" conjures up mental imagery of bolted assemblies with fasteners you can't actually get a wrench on and massive stamped parts with a size tolerance of whatever the default in their cad software was"
Nice to see them getting coverage, we were at the same startup incubator (Greentown) before we both moved on to larger offices. I can attest that the food this machine makes is, in fact, tasty.
The description in the article suggests that the machine does not actually make any of the food, it just measures and dispenses pre-cooked items into a bowl? So it's a glorified automatic dog feeder?
No, the machine actually does do the cooking. There's an induction based heater that also mixes the food. Different sorts of raw vegetables are added by a hopper in a sequence that depends on their cooking time. Finally the mixer/cooker dispenses the meal into a bowl.
According to the article it rolls them around in some kind of barrel shaped apparatus to "cook" the food. That might be what the 'custom forged woks' are?
Here's a post from two years ago that has a video and some photos[1]. Not sure what warranted a new article from the New Yorker (maybe a product release?).
I've been predicting robotic fast food for a decade now. And it's here! By cooking with no human hand ever coming into contact with the ingredients or utensils, clearly a health benefit is accrued. And by steam-cleaning the cooker periodically, quality is improved.
I'd envisioned a somewhat different robot. I thought the ingredients could be tube-delivered like caulking guns, on a rotating 'tool carousel' so you could cook different recipes by selecting and timing. And process vertically so you avoid most 'conveyor belt' issues. Finally do it as drive-thru with automated ordering (touch screen/phone app) to eliminate the rest of the human factor.
The result should be good quality, fast food at a radically cheaper price.
That is a non sequitur. The most dangerous illness associated with fast food (poor nutrition aside) such as E. coli[1] and Hep A[2] are most readily attributed to ingredient suppliers, not improper food handling.
That doesn't mean that labour aren't a more frequent source of food-borne illnesses, just not the most serious cases. I'm not likely to die from someone sneezing in my food, but I don't want to catch what they have nonetheless.
True, but with a full automatic system to convert those ingredients to food, you could add a test step, where you filter out the contaminated ingredients.
And who handles the ingredients improperly? Doesn't refrigerate them sufficiently? Uses expired ingredients? Fallible humans. Lets remove them from the equation.
Robotic slaughterhouses would still have problem keeping fecal matter out of meat. The best way of preventing most food illnesses is radiating the food, but our irrational society won't go for that.
If you think labor is what keeps fast food prices high, you are mistaken.
Most of the largest chains have pretty much automated nearly everything by now that's possible given reliability and safety standards. If you look in the kitchen of any McDonald's nobody is cooking or preparing the components. They're either pre-cut, loaded into dispensers, being cooked in a self-timing temperature-controlled fryer, or being cooked on a self-timing temperature-controlled clamshell grill. If you check out a Taco Bell, they've even eliminated the cooking part. It's all made off-site in large batches and rewarmed on the assembly line. Even the beloved Chipotle has moved to retherming their components where possible.
The human labor is merely in assembly and delivery. And automating that with robots is a generation away, if at all.
Food prep is a small portion of that, you also pay people to clean the bathrooms, take orders, handle inventory and disputes, etc. Food prep on it's own is almost a rounding error.
You might be getting 30 seconds of time from people making minimum wage for a combo, but that's about it and even at 15$/hour that's well under 15 cents per order.
In other words, humans are just disposable, self-healing robots that require minimal maintenance. And when they can no longer do the job, Right-to-Work laws summarily get rid of them.
In their defense they also are quickly reconfigurable with visual and audible reprogramming options. I don't think you can get that Spyce robot to leave the kitchen and mop the floor when someone drops a drink. You also can't call in more robots when a bus full of high school kids shows up out of the blue.
Disposable, self-healing robots also do other things like assemble your iPhones and laptops but they're an ocean away so out of sight out of mind, right?
In some parts of the world service workers belong to unions that stand up for fair wages and working conditions. Where you live might not see that as viable or perhaps it conflicts with local religious or political views, so your conditions may vary.
All this does is dump the ingredients in a pot and mix them by spinning the pot. It's a hell of a long way off from making such advanced recipes as sandwiches or burritos. And at $7.50 it's rather expensive by fast food standards.
Any price change will not be radical. Wages account for about 25% of the cost of fast food, but these robots are not free and any savings will result in price drops only if the price change also increases profits. Instead, more money may be spent on better ingredients or marketing. Do not expect a 25% price drop.
With regard to health and safety, the robots will provide only small benefit. Humans are better equipped (i.e., we have noses) to detect bad food; and in any case humans will still be involved in the handling, storage, and transportation of ingredients. Although disgusting, cases where the cook doesn't clean the grill properly and people get sick are much rarer than cases where the ingredients are already bad.
I suspect the main benefit of these robots to a fast food chain would be consistency in product and preparation times.
The market will produce those that work savings into the price. We can't make blanket statements denying that?
The automated food industry is very, very good at producing quality safe food. And I reject that humans will still be storing nor handling food - a truck backs up, exchanges pallets with a food container carousel, the truck drives away with the empties. Robots all the way!
You can imagine the future however you like; however, as you chided a sibling poster, "read the article." The technology on offer does not do those things.
But yes, I think you can make a blanket statement that decisions will be made on the margins and any savings to the consumer will be incidental.
I'm surprised Moley (http://www.moley.com/) didn't get a mention. I'm super excited about robotic food preparation, especially in the case of consumer facing robotics where its a unit in your own kitchen.
With that said, from the robotics progress I've seen/studied, more fundamental robotics progress needs to be made first. The approaches used right now are just not durable/reliable enough for mass market adoption. Best of luck to that team though.
Moley looks like a science fiction pipe dream right now and would require an absolutely massive number of leaps in modern robotics - control, vision, whatever. We're a long way off such a system.
Putting junk in a bowl is a much simpler feat. Also hard for robotics to win much on I should think because the labor for putting food into a bowl is not terribly expensive as is (and imo not a particularly exciting market) - see Eatsa. Though it's still cool that they end-to-end the process with dishwashing (according to video).
The price of $15k according their YouTube video is ridiculously low. Decent robot arm costs you $5k alone. Not sure how they will plan to make some profit even buying parts in bulk.
$5k is on the low end. The demo kitchen they did was with 2 UR5 robots, list price somewhere around $20k each. They put 2 5 finger hands on the end, which probably cost at least the same again each. I'd bet you'd be getting well towards $75k (or maybe even significantly more) just buying the components.
In response to this (and the price mentioned in sibling comments of $15k+), I recently heard about Tovala [1] which seems like a good alternative. It doesn't appear to be as complex, but I don't think robotic cooking has to be.
I had something like this delivered frozen to the fridge in the office. It was huge fridge just for this purpose. But the meals weren’t enjoyable. Price was 3-6€/meal, so Tovala goes premium. I ended preparing everything at home. If I were mega rich, I would love to have big robot in the kitchen cooking the way I do.
Just throwing out some armchair criticism: I would think that a robotic chef would look a little less intuitive. I mean, is two monkey arms really the optimal strategy for revolutionizing this field? Happy to be proven wrong!
>conceived as an engineering solution to every hungry college student’s gripe—where to get good, cheap food fast. (It’s the same market that the meal-replacement drink Soylent is after.)
Pretty broad definition of "good" if Soylent fits in there.
That's an old video. Our new robotic kitchen has been completely redesigned and reengineered since then. There's a photo in the social share...check out @spycefoodco on Facebook or Twitter to see the image.
The home-sized ones often take a cartridge of little plastic bins preloaded with the ingredients and coded with the instructions. Just slip one of those in the slot, push start, and get a good hot meal.
You want to compete with China, you need to know what's already been done there. Remember those "Bodega" clowns? They apparently didn't know that much more advanced automatic convenience stores already exist in China.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HkGRzzsKH4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCTv-4sFt_s [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NTIciISVPA [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S--wwu4S-w [5] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/automatic-wok-machine.html