Robotic Restaurant Kiosks Purpose-Built
Cool new concept, deployed, for robotic restaurants for restaurant automation. As far as kiosks goes this project somehow weaves in the older conventional “kiosk definition”. Maybe the grain bowls are Turkish in origin. It definitely brings to mind the RMU or Remote Merchandising Unit. And not unlike a Ghost Kitchen albeit one out in the opebn.
We had a call with Alex Kolchinski and were very impressed.
In Brief
- Robotic kitchen for Mediterranean bowls of food
- Kind of reminds us of the original “make your own cereal” robots.
- On third version of automation
- $3 million seed round from investors
- Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase has been a launching pad for a variety of food tech startups such as Tovala, SAVRPak, Bostrista, Cultured Decadance, Millo and Freshstix.
Excerpt from The Spoon
Mezli, a maker of robotized container restaurants, has won the 2021 Smart Kitchen Summit Startup Showcase.
The company, which currently operates a prototype restaurant in San Mateo’s KitchenTown, was started after two of the company’s cofounders, Alex Kolchinski and Alex Gruebele, met while studying at Stanford. Like most college students, the two were always on the hunt for food to fuel their studies but usually found the options lacking.
“We’re building up to where we have a whole fleet of these across the country, even across the world, where these are all over the place because they’re cheaper and smaller than restaurants, you can put them in more places.”
Mezli’s prototype robot restaurant is making a minority of the bowls served to customers and is supplemented by a human-powered kitchen. It is up and running and serving customers from the company’s KitchenTown location in San Mateo. The machines take up a 10-foot by 20-foot space and are freestanding. They are loaded with ingredients, initially offering Mediterranean-style grain bowls, side dishes and drinks.
The company is now working on its third version of its prototype that will be ready for a public launch next year, he said. That momentum is backed by a $3 million seed round from investors including Metaplanet, roboticist Pieter Abbeel, restaurateur Zaid Ayoub and Y Combinator. That new funding will enable the company to add more talent, parts, food and operational expenses.
More Robotic Restaurant Kiosk News
- Robotic Chef Makes Spaghetti(Opens in a new browser tab)
- Robot Kitchen Adds In-House Delivery(Opens in a new browser tab)
- Mobile App For Ghost Kitchen Orders – iOS & Android – Retail Automation(Opens in a new browser tab)
