San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
Pandemic gives robotics a boost
Bay Area innovations go from niche to contactfree necessity
Before the coronavirus pandemic, Chowbotic’s saladmaking robot named Sally was mostly seen in the food world as a quirky, nonessential gadget capable of stealing headlines for any business using one. But in a new dining landscape shaped by social distancing and increased sanitation practices, Sally is a necessity.
The same can be said for a Bay Area robot called Chef B, which makes more than three dozen 12ounce smoothies in an hour without human assistance. Similarly, a stateoftheart indoor farming startup is gaining traction in San Jose, and a San Francisco burger restaurant is making waves for serving takeout orders through a pressurized transfer chamber, which incorporates a miniature conveyor belt. It’s the first of its kind in the city.
As Bay Area residents focus more on cleanliness during the pandemic, food automation, which removes a significant amount of human contact with food in the preparation process, has jumped from a niche commodity to a pillar of the region’s dining culture. And much of the innovation can be traced to the Bay Area.
Sally from Chowbotics in Hayward is an autonomous kiosk capable of mixing dozens of salad combinations with little human interaction. And considering buffetstyle meals are, for now, a thing of the past, the future of salad bars exists within Sally, according to Rick Wilmer, the Chowbotics chief executive officer.
“We were selling into higher education spaces, hospitals, and then grocery stores were the new market for us before the pandemic,” Wilmer said. “The pandemic forced universities to shut down but the hospital market has accelerated. We were one of those lucky companies that had the solution ideally suited for the circumstances that changed the way people function as result of COVID19.”
Chowbotics isn’t alone in its recent uptick in popularity. Among the other food and tech companies that have seen opportunities for growth is
Blendid, the Sunnyvale company that created the smoothiemaking machine called Chef B. After mostly being found on school campuses like the University of San Francisco and Sonoma State University before the pandemic, Blendid is now available on DoorDash, a popular delivery app. A 12ounce drink on the app from Blendid costs $6.
The smoothies on DoorDash are made at Blendid’s Plug & Play location in Sunnyvale and will be delivered within a 10mile radius. Blendid’s presence on the delivery app is indicative of the growing demand for the company’s smoothies during the pandemic, according to Blendid’s CEO Vipin Jain. And while Chef B proved popular on college campuses before the pandemic, the company is now being courted by airports across the country.
“There’s obviously a lot of pain in the smallbusiness segment and it’s going to take a long time to recover. People aren’t working, and they’re going to have less spending power for a while,” Jain said. “One of the things that helps us is we’re providing something that’s affordable.”
Creator, San Francisco’s automated burger restaurant, is gaining attention in the fast food world not by expanding its brand, but by pioneering inrestaurant food delivery systems. The restaurant, which opened in 2018 and featured a 14foot burger machine with more than 350 sensors that is capable of making at least 130 burgers in an hour, recently unveiled a new transfer window for takeout orders.
The chamber acts the same as a miniature airlock, which means it is pressurized and it keeps outside from entering the restaurant. The chamber also has a selfsanitizing conveyor belt. An order is placed on one end of the belt inside of the restaurant and it slowly moves to the exterior of the restaurant to the customer.
What makes the venture more unique is Creator openedsourced the design, which means the restaurant is sharing it freely and any retailer, including the burger restaurant’s competitors, can create their own Creator transfer chamber. According to the Creator team, multiple businesses around the country have shown interest in the chamber’s designs.
“The restaurant industry was already under a lot of pressure to implement technology to improve working conditions and greater access to food quality, and the crisis we’re in is just exacerbating that pressure,” Creator’s founder Alex Vardakostas said via email. “Traditionally, the restaurant and retail industry has been slow to adopt tech solutions to their own detriment, especially in comparison to other industries (think: selfdriving cars, robotic surgery, etc.). The transfer chamber took us only four days from ideation to deployment but has a huge impact on staff safety by sealing off airspace and eliminating exposure.”
The automation of the food industry due to the pandemic isn’t relegated to just meal delivery systems. Willo, an indoor vertical farming startup out of San Jose, recently unveiled a directtoconsumer delivery program for people living within 20 miles of Santa Clara. Willo’s indoor farming technology relies on automation and artificial intelligence to grow various produce yearround in otherwise unsuitable climates. People can “subscribe” to a plot in Willo’s farm for prices starting at $99 per month to receive customized packaged salads starting in August.
San Francisco’s Simbe Robotics created a robot that roams the aisles of supermarkets, counting items on shelves and reporting back to its human controllers. And there are a growing number of restaurants working with tech companies on automation regarding temperature checks for diners and employees.
Companies like Blendid, Chowbotics and Creator represent the bustling intersection of food and tech, much of which is being spurred along by the dining public’s needs during the coronavirus pandemic.
“People are really starting to think about the future now,” Jain said. “So, innovation is going to increase but you’re also going to see adoption of this technology grow as well.”