Reimagining The Restaurant With Robotics

I grew up working in restaurants. I have been a dishwasher, host, bartender, waiter, line cook, and regular cook. I’ve delivered food to people, and then cleaned those tables. But, that was a long time ago. Then, last week, I went to YC Demo Day, and there were food-related robots, and it got me thinking about how the last few years has seen all sorts of innovation in modernizing or entirely replacing the concept of restaurant. This is important because restaurants provide a space and service that people can use many times a day, and critically because it employs many people, both full-time and for those looking for extra income to make ends meet.

Briefly, here are some ways entrepreneurs are reimagining the restaurant experience.

Mobile, web lead-gen: Companies like DoorDash, Postmates, OrderAhead, Caviar (inside Square) and others are funneling more orders to restaurants, and fulfilling delivery either with their own staff or via 3rd party logistics (3PL) providers (more on those below). Like Grub and Seamless, using mobile for call avoidance to order and schedule with a few taps on our phones. (Oh, and now UberEATS is in the game!)

Vertically-integrated: Companies like Sprig & Munchery make and deliver their own food, bypassing the restaurant experience entirely, but getting fresh food to customers. This allows them to control their COGS and potentially have better contribution margins, though it takes longer to rollout to new cities — that’s one big tradeoff.

3PLs: Companies like Homer, Deliv, and Sidecar offered delivery services to other businesses.

Decentralized, peer to peer: Companies like Josephine Meals envisions a future where people become home-cook entrepreneurs (a la Etsy) and sell directly to people in their neighborhood…and they may even use 3PLs to power delivery.

New Disruptors: There are too many list to here, but just when you think food is saturated, companies like Tapingo, EnvoyNow, and Fooze (among many others – and please don’t ping me about them!) are finding markets to attack.

Franchise Model: Like Domino’s Pizza, a franchise network perhaps isn’t a terrible idea to get around the cost of expansion. A company in this recently YC batch (Wheely’s) wants to help others create mobile coffee shops.

Robots and Automation: Now, this is why I wrote the post. Restaurants and the food service industry employs LOTS of people. But, now, Robots are coming! TeaBot, coffee bots, sandwich robots, and other robots or automated devices (like e la Carte). KQED had a feature on Eatsa in San Francisco, an automated restaurant. Next time you’re in the coffee shop, count how many employees are there. Probably 7-10 per 500 square feet. Why? We are used to it, but it’s entirely possible for the next Blue Bottle to just be a station of iPads and robots making your stuff. Zero human interaction. The only question is — how long will it take to come? Based on what I’ve seen this year, perhaps sooner than we all think.