So… what do we call this market guide?

I wish I had something snappier than “Standalone Autonomous Restaurants,” which sounds so sterile. But that’s what these machines are. They are literal automated restaurants that are self-contained and stuffed inside literal boxes.

This guide walks you through the coming wave of restaurants that can fit in shipping containers or smaller type boxes, and set up just about anywhere you can get power and water (if necessary).

But they aren’t just any autonomous kiosk. I’m defining this category as standalone kiosk that operates without human intervention (other than re-stocking and maintenance), contains multiple ingredients, can make a variety of menu options (so that excludes mono-taking robots like Blendid and Piestro), and can offer hot food (so that excludes robots like Chowbotics).

Whatever you choose to call it, these are the key players in the space. Some are building their own food brand (like Mezli), while others are targeting corporate cafeterias (like Karakuri), and others are powering other food brands (like Hyper).

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If an earworm is a song that gets stuck in your head, what should I call a startup that I just can’t stop thinking about?

When I launched OttOmate back in September, I made it my mission to seek out every food related automation company in the world. At this point, I’ve covered most of them (if I haven’t written about your food/delivery robot yet, drop me a line!), and there are a few that are sticking with me right now.

These startups either have a great product idea, or increase productivity, or just prove to be forward thinking and able to adapt. In fact, all three companies on this list pivoted at some point in their path, changing up their go-to market product offering.

Here are three food robot startups that I can’t stop thinking about right now (and you should definitely learn about before anyone else).

Read more

Crowdfunding is a renowned way for founders at any stage and in any market to collect funds to grow their business.

However, depending on the nature - and the stage - of your business, you might find a better fit through a reward-based or an equity-based crowdfunding campaign.

Let’s look into the definition of both:

Reward-based crowdfunding

Reward-based crowdfunding campaigns allow creators to raise funds to finance the creation, design, or manufacturing of a product/service/work of art before it exists. Those who pledge - known as backers - are generally entitled to receive, or access, that product/service/work of art with more favorable terms compared to a standard purchase.

Equity crowdfunding

Equity crowdfunding campaigns allow business owners to raise capital for their businesses to finance their operations or growth. Those who pledge - known as investors - are entitled to own shares of the business and enjoy the standard returns of a shareholder which can be, depending on the size of the pledge, financial gains, votes, re-buy rights, or similar options.

Which One is Right for Your Startup?

Both types of crowdfunding can be game-changers for your project or company. In order to identify the right type for you, I recommend understanding the functioning of both.

For synthesis’s sake, from now on I’ll refer to any product/service/project/work of art as *Product.

Reward-based crowdfunding

In reward-based crowdfunding, you have the opportunity to gather Customers before finalizing your Product. You basically create a group of people who are willing to pay and wait for your Product to take shape because they find it extremely exciting.

It’s a quite revolutionary inversion of a usual go-to-market strategy. Financially speaking, it empowers you to get a response to the question “Is anyone going to buy this?” before actually facing the costs of manufacturing/developing/producing your product.

Reward-based crowdfunding is the perfect fit when you are bringing to market a physical product for consumers. Or when you already have a community of people that are using your app/service or following your art, and you want to give super early access to some new features or content that they can enjoy.

The types of questions that you have to answer when you’re preparing a campaign and want to seem credible are:

• Where are you at in the development of your Product?

• Where will you make it?

• How can I use it/enjoy it?

• Is it going to last for a long time?

• Is it worth the price - and the wait?

• Is your team capable of delivering it?

• How is it going to change my life/improve my experience?

And so on.

After successful campaigns, the biggest challenge that creators face is the fulfillment of their promises. As entrepreneurs are optimistic by nature, it’s not uncommon to see some Products being delivered later than the original promise or with lesser quality. 

The people who support you at the beginning may end up disliking you if you aren’t transparent with them about your after-campaign. 

Don’t lose their trust!

Equity crowdfunding

With equity crowdfunding, you can raise funds by convincing Potential Investors to acquire shares of your company. It’s a quite different target from reward-based crowdfunding. It’s basically people who expect to multiply their money by supporting your campaign, similar to the way you do when you invest money on the stock market or in digital currencies.

The whole narrative about an equity crowdfunding campaign is much similar to the one you have when pitching your business to a professional investor or a to a friend who would like to invest in your company. The main questions lay around the stability of your business, the amount of paying customers, the Total Addressable Market, and all those things that a Customer (Consumer) would probably never ask you.

We’re talking about getting money from people that need to be convinced that you can make them more money. 

With equity-based crowdfunding, backers want to understand how your business works, not get excited about a new product.

In the aftermath of a successful equity crowdfunding campaign, the relationship with your investors can be relatively easy compared to a Kickstarter campaign for example. In general, Investors of an equity-crowdfunding have invested in you because they believe in your team, so they will comprehend if your business changes and evolves into something different over time.

However, this also depends a lot on the type of voting/non-voting shares that you issued during the campaign.

How Can You Succeed with Crowdfunding?

In both cases, the whole point is how excited - and hyped - your community is before you launch your campaign. 

If you find yourself in a spot where you have tens of comments and messages coming before going live, with people saying “I can’t wait” or “You guys are going to kill it” then yes, the campaign definitely sounds promising. If instead, the weeks before going live all you see is silence, there’s something wrong.

Also, the human component couldn’t be more important in both cases. Credibility, which basically means the level of trust that you’re able to get from the people who find out about your campaign, is always the most important factor.

Imagine that you’re about to support an ambitious project on Kickstarter and are on the fence between spending or not spending $500. What would make you go “yes” or “no”? It’s often the team, the experience of the people behind it. 

Even more for equity. Most of your potential investors will check the interview of your CEO to see if this person knows the business they’re into. 

Can you start a reward or equity-based crowdfunding campaign at any stage? 

With reward-based crowdfunding, in theory, any point in the history of your business is a good moment. If you and I tomorrow have an idea, for example, we can put together a small budget, create a prototype, do a video, and launch (as long as we build a community first, of course). On the other side of the spectrum, even a solid company with more than 15 years of stable revenue can launch a new pair of headphones on Kickstarter.

With equity, it's quite different. With equity, you must be at a point in your business journey where you have traction. You need customer success stories, a solid team, a clear idea on how your business makes more - and more - money, and also have all your Unit Economics fully figured out. In other words, you must know your business in detail, because potential investors are going to ask. Additionally, you need to make sure you are complying with all the relevant governmental and financial regulations around equity investment in your company — so do your research first!

The amount of funds that you need to raise also has a big impact on the overall timing of your campaign.

If your reward-based crowdfunding is financially viable only if you get 1,000 units ordered, then make sure that you invest in a long pre-campaign and get to the day before launching with a sense that 300 of them are already gone. If instead, you need $10,000 just to take off, your pre-campaign will require less time to prepare.

The same goes for equity crowdfunding: if you have a good reputation at running businesses and need $100K to start, it is relatively easy for you to raise it successfully in a short amount of time. If instead, you need to lock your $2M seed-round and are a first-time entrepreneur, it will definitely require more time and resources to prepare for that.

Also, consider that it’s always good practice - in equity-crowdfunding - having a piece of your round pre-committed from an investment fund / institutional investor. This helps your campaign look successful from Day 1 and makes you look more credible.

So Which Type Should You Choose?

In very short: Reward-based crowdfunding works much better for Consumer-facing companies while Equity-crowdfunding campaigns can apply to any type of business.

The products or initiatives that you find on Kickstarter or Indiegogo are, for the most part, products or experiences that you - as a consumer - will be able to enjoy once they are ready. From a new incredible 3D printing pen, up to an independent documentary on visual art from Medellin.

When it comes to equity crowdfunding, instead, you can theoretically run a campaign no matter what your business is about. It doesn’t matter if you are selling a SaaS (Software As a Service) platform or launching a new brewery: as long as your business sounds promising, investors might want to jump in.

How Do You prepare for a Crowdfunding Campaign?

When it comes to the preparation of any campaign, I always approach it using the 3-bucket method.

In short, your audience can be divided into 3 buckets: 

• Bucket 1 is the community that you create before launching your campaign

• Bucket 2 is the organic traffic that visits the platform where you’re launching independently from your project

• Bucket 3 is “everyone else “ on the planet that you can target while the campaign is live

We also have bucket 0, made of Friends, Family, and Fools. They can play a big role in equity crowdfunding, but a more limited one when it comes to reward-based crowdfunding.

The strategy, for both types of crowdfunding, is: 

1. Fill up Bucket 1 as much as possible: as many emails, followers, deposits, or anything else you can put together before launching

2. This will automatically trigger Bucket 2: random visitors on any platform will be excited and more likely to pledge for a successful project

3. This will consequentially make Bucket 3 profitable: all the traffic that you can bring during the campaign is more likely to convert if Bucket 1 and 2 are working properly

And this process, by the way, can be applied to the launch of anything.

How Does Preparing for a Campaign Differ From Equity to Reward-based Crowdfunding?

Although they have much in common, there are a few key differences in the preparation for the 2 types of campaigns. 

I might get a bit technical here, but studying some of these concepts will definitely benefit your campaign.

Let’s check out the 4 key steps for Reward-Based crowdfunding:

1. Use [1] Paid Media (Ads on social media), [2] PR (magazines, blogs, etc), and [3] Social Engagement (referral campaigns, giveaways, organic posts, etc..) to create a community (First Bucket)

2. Find a way to validate the fact that your First bucket is willing to pledge for your campaign before going live (check click rate, track the amount of DMs and comments, ask for deposits, get people to subscribe to a pre-launch page, etc..)

3. Within the first 48 hours, you should be able to reach your goal which will give you exposure towards the organic traffic of the platform where you launched (Second Bucket) and this will bring you additional pledges (in some cases, you might have 100%+ more backers/investors thanks to the second bucket)

4. At this point, you can keep investing in Paid Media during the campaign (Third bucket) to scale up your campaign, and your Conversion Rate (amount of visitors that convert into pledges) and ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) should remain sustainable.

With Equity Crowdfunding, instead, the essential strategy is similar but with one additional step at the beginning:

1. Use your relationships in real life (bucket 0) to find one or more investors that commit to investing in your equity round

2. Use [1] Paid media, [2] PR, and [3] Social Engagement to create a community (First bucket) that has proven to be ready to invest in your campaign before going live

3. You should reach your minimum funding goal quickly and the Platform will have all interests in pushing your campaign to their qualified investor's community (Second Bucket) 

4. At this point, you should keep investing in PR, Social Engagement, and Paid Media during the campaign (Third bucket) to scale up your campaign and make your overall raise e great success.

Good luck with your campaign and feel free to reach out at andreabaldereschi.com if you are looking for support!

Missed Our NSF Q&A? No Worries! Watch it On Demand!

Y’all! At the risk of sounding immodest, the Q&A I hosted with NSF’s Orsi Dézsi this morning was fantastic (despite a few technical hiccups). Dézsi and I spent an hour talking about what the NSF does (food safety certification for your robot/appliance/machine), why NSF certification is important, and fielded a bunch of questions on topics ranging from sourcing approved parts to global certifications to impacts of the supply chain crunch.

If you missed it — you missed out, but don’t worry! We’ve got you covered. The entire event was recorded and is available right now on Linkedin. Go check it out! (I’ll also be making the audio available as a podcast next week.)

Watch the NSF Q&A

U.S. Military to Put Ten of Dexai’s Alfreds on Duty

Listen, it’s a little fraught to be writing about military decisions right now, given the state of global affairs. But, I write about food robots and this week we learned that the U.S. Military ordered ten of Dexai Robotics’ Alfred cooking robots in a contract worth $1.6 million.

Alfred’s hook is that it can, well, use a hook if need be. Dexai built the robot to use the same tools and utensils as human chefs, so the resulting robo-food should have more of a handmade fee.

Handmade, as I point out back at the site, but with added benefits like cost containment. Read on to see why food robots are a good match for the military.

Read About Alfred

Meet THEO, the Baumkuchen Robot

One of the pitches the aforementioned Dexai makes to potential buyers is the versatility of its robot. Alfred can be taught to sear a steak or scoop ice cream. The Japanese company Foodtech Meister is going in the opposite direction with its THEO robot.

THEO does one thing. And for many here in the U.S., that one thing is pretty obscure. THEO makes baumkuchen. Don’t know what a baumkuchen is? Neither did I! Baumkuchen is a spit cake made by dipping a roller in batter that then spins in front of a heat source. The result is a cake made up of 15 - 21 thin layers. It’s a German cake, and it’s evidently popular in Japan.

For a human to cook a baumkuchen, they must stand at the oven moving the roller back and forth for an hour or so. This is the definition of manual, repetitive work — something robots do very well.

Spin yourself over to OttOmate where I talk about THEO’s AI, any why this uni-tasking robot doesn’t need to diversify its talents.

Read More Abou THEO

Aldi’s New Pizzabot in Australia Will Soon Take Pizzabot Crypto

Do you “launch” or “open” a vending machine? I’m not sure, but whatever your verb of choice, the Aldi’s in North Sydney Australia started serving hot pizza from its new Pizzabot vending machine this week.

Made by fellow Aussie, Placer Robotics, Pizzabot stores two kinds of par-baked pizzas (pepperoni and Italian) that are heated, boxed and served on demand. Pizzabot accepts digital payments from Google and Apple Pay, and oh yeah, Placer is launching its own “Pizzabot” cryptocurrency as well, because why not. If you didn’t get in on the ground floor of Bitcoin or Bored Ape — here’s your big crypto break!

Kidding.

But I’m not kidding about the big business pizza vending machines will be. Back at OttOmate.news, I explain how vending machines like Pizzabot will continue to blur the lines between food retail and restaurant.

Read More About Pizzabot

If you want to understand all the key players in pizza automation, you should check out the OttOmate Market Guide to Pizza Robots! And video from our Pizza Automation Summit last year.

What’s Up With Amazon’s Cashierless Checkout?

Amazon opened its first cashierless Whole Foods this week. The first Whole Foods to get the Just Walk Out tech is located in Washington D.C. and it’s a significant milestone for Amazon, which has encountered a few hiccups as it scales up its cahierless checkout tech.

Last week Business Insider posted a story about how the company was struggling to get shoppers at its supermarkets to use Amazon smart Dash Carts, which provide a cashierless checkout experience.

Fun Fact: Did you know you can’t take Dash Carts outside? But don’t worry about carrying all those groceries out to your car, because Dash Carts are small and only hold about two bags’ worth of goods.

Anyhoo. This sluggish Dash Cart usage followed news last year that cashierless shoppers at the Amazon Fresh Grocery store, which uses in-store cameras instead of Dash Carts, had to wait hours after leaving the store to get their receipts.

These certainly aren’t fatal mistakes, but as I argued last week, there is a cavalcade of startups itching to ensure Amazon doesn’t dominate cashierless checkout, and just waiting to pounce on any unforced errors.

Read More About Amazon

A Q&A with Chas Studor, Briggo Founder, New CTO of Now Cuisine

Normally, I don’t cover personnel announcements (PR people, please take note). Unless they are super influential or well-known, no one cares who your new VP of marketing is. But when I learned that Chas Studor is Now Cuisine’s new CTO, I though it merited a post.

Studor’s been in the role for a while, but they’ve kept it quiet. I first met Studor years ago at, appropriately enough a coffee shop. At the time, he was Co-Founder and CTO of Briggo, which made a robotic coffee kiosk. Costa Coffee bought Briggo last year for an undisclosed sum. Studor has moved on from coffee to food and is now helping build Now Cuisine, which is basically a robot-restaurant in a box.

Studor was kind enough to sit down with me (virtually) this week for a quick Q&A about his new role, some technical challenges of building an all-in-one food kiosk, and the lessons he he learned from Briggo.

Read the Full Q&A

🎧 Podcast: Expedite's Kristen Hawley on Restaurant Robots 🎧

This (awesome) podcast interview with (the awesome) Kristen Hawley of the (awesome) Expedite newsletter is now available to everyone. Just a reminder that paid OttOmate subscribers get podcasts a week before everyone else.

Listen on Apple Podcasts

That’s it for this week. Thanks for reading.

Stay safe.

-Chris

Drones food delivery services is a tale of two speeds. The technology side is moving quickly with drones becoming more robust, safe and advanced than ever. But the regulatory side is slow, as civil aviation authorities around the world conduct the painstaking process of making sure drones don’t fall from the sky, crash into other aircraft or are otherwise a nuisance.

Once regulatory hurdles are cleared, however, drones will swiftly rise up as a main method of food delivery. Drones are faster than human delivery drivers or sidewalk robots, dropping off hot food in minutes. Drones don’t clog up roadways with delivery vehicles, and, as the addage goes, you don’t need a two-ton car to drop off two tacos. And for emerging economies, drones offer a way to bypass infrastructure problems like bad road networks.

In other words — pay attention to these companies because their business, like the drones they fly, will take off vertically once all the elements are in place.

A quick note that unlike other OttOmate Market Guides on Sidewalk Delivery Robots, Bartender Robots, Robot Baristas and Pizza Robots — this guide to drone delivery proved to be the trickiest. I have reached out to all the companies listed to clarify their regulatory with the appropriate civil aviation authority as well as their service areas. As companies reply with new information, I will update this guide.

Additionally, if there is a service I inadvertently left out, please email me and I will add them post haste.

Read more

Like just about everything else, the pandemic and labor shortages are driving interest in robot delivery. Delivery robots hold the promise of increasing access to meal and grocery delivery while driving down the price for such a service. Robots also don’t call in sick, work all day and by their nature provide contactless delivery.

There’s actually a ton of activity happening in the delivery robot space right now, so we at OttOmate put together a handy guide to show you which startups are already making robot deliveries right now. This guide focuses on sidewalk robots, so it doesn’t include autonomous low-speed vehicles like the Nuro. But that’s okay because from Bizero to Yandex, we’ve got all the major players covered.

If your stealthy robot startup isn’t on this list, email me and I’ll add them! If your startup is on this list and you have an update to share, email me! And while you’re at it, check out OttOmate’s other robo-guides including the OttOmate Guide to Robot Bartenders, the OttOmate Guide to Robot Baristas, the OttOmate Guide to Pizza Robots, and the OttOmate Guide to NSF Certification.

Read more

It’s the most wonderful time of the year. No, not the holidays — it’s list time! A time where every news organization takes stock of what they’ve written over the previous eleven months, and wraps the best bits into an easily-consumed package.

Rather than creating a “Top” list, we at OttOmate are going in a bit of a different direction. We’re highlighting what we feel are some of the most interesting food automation startups we’ve seen this year.

They aren’t ranked, and this doesn’t mean other companies aren’t interesting to us. It’s just that these companies have an interesting niche, market approach or some other je ne sais quoi that caught our eye. But enough of my yakkin’, let’s light this candle.

Intermode

No need to prototype!

What do they do? Intermode builds delivery robots. That’s it. A bunch of ex-Ford engineers make the robots and let other services add on whatever sensors, cameras and lidar they want.
Why is this interesting? Intermode allows other delivery startups to skip the robo-prototyping stage entirely. But more than that, Intermode shows we’re at a stage of the emerging market where robot delivery services can be created with off-the-shelf parts. Get your robot from Intermode, your teleoperation system from another provider and boom! You’re halfway to launching your own delivery startup.

Read More About Intermode

Tortoise

Big delivery flexibility.

What do they do? Tortoise makes a big, slow moving, teleoperated delivery robot that can haul up to 150 lbs.
Why is this interesting? Because of its flexibility. Unlike other delivery robots, Tortoise can carry a lot (150 lbs), so it can be used to haul weekly groceries over the last mile, or inventory (like rotisserie chickens!) across the middle mile between store locations.

Read More About Tortoise

Valqari

A smart idea for drone deliveries.

What do they do? Valqari makes smart lockers to accept and hold drone deliveries.
Why is this interesting? Valqari is making drone drop-off boxes for a number of different use cases including standalone boxes that could sit at the end of your driveway as well as landing pads that can be installed outside residential building windows.

Read More About Valqari

Bobacino

Robo-boba meets cultural identity.

What do they do? Bobacino is developing a robot boba tea vending machine.
Why is this interesting? Well, boba tea is awesome. But Bobacino is on this list not because of its technology, but because of its Chief Boba Officer, Stacey Kwong. Bobacino is doing a bit of a high wire act as it navigates not only issues around automation and job loss, but of race and cultural appropriation as well. How it pulls this off next year will definitely be interesting.

Read More About Bobacino

mia&noa

No cup for you!

What do they do? mia&noa builds coffee robots that require you to bring your own cup.
Why is this interesting? For one, it’s helping fight the big problem with single-cups and plastic waste. But it’s also so counter-intuitive to make your customers work harder for your end product. Once you get past that initial shock, it’s easy to see how easily mia&noa could fit in at an office, school library, commuter train station or other location where the same people visit every day.

Read More About mia&noa

Yo-Kai Express

Amen for robo ramen.

What do they do? Yo-Kai is best known for their hot ramen vending machines, but they are quickly becoming a multi-food platform.
Why is this interesting? Yo-Kai is on the list for the ways in which they are extending their cooking platform in all directions. The company is building up co-branding relationships for its vending machines with well-known ramen restaurants, making a countertop device so you could make Yo-Kai ramen at home, and adding self-driving capabilities to its vending machines so in the very near future, you’ll be able to hail a bowl of ramen like you would a taxi.

Read More About Yo-Kai

Mukunda Foods

Bring your own ghost kitchen.

What do they do? Mukunda Foods makes a variety of automated cooking appliances such as woks, fryers and biryani cookers for restaurants.
Why is this interesting? Mukunda plans to scale by building out their own global network of ghost kitchens. These ghost kitchens will be stocked with Mukunda automation appliances allowing a small staff to create a large variety — and volume — of meals. Rather than trying to sell devices one at a time to every restaurant they can find, Mukunda is just building their centralized ghost kitchens and having the restaurants come to them.

Read More About Mukunda

Speedy Market

End-to-end robot retail.

What do they do? Speedy Market connects autonomous unattended retail with self-driving robot delivery.
Why is this interesting? Speedy creates full-stack autonomous retail+delivery experience. Right now Speedy has a convenience store up and running in a luxury high-rise residential building in Istanbul, Turkey. Basically its an automated convenience store that offers shopping and delivery to your door 24 hours a day. It’s not too hard to see this type of always-on, on-demand shopping service finding a home in similar buildings around the world.

Read More About Speedy Market

GUSS

An answer to ag prayers, a self-driving sprayer.

What do they do? GUSS makes self-driving crop sprayers.
Why is this interesting? GUSS is worth noting for a few reasons. One, it’s solving a very real labor problem for farms (spraying happens during the overnight shift, so it’s even harder to hire for than regular farm jobs). Second, GUSS is building sprayers, that’s it — not a multi-function platform that can do everything. And finally, GUSS isn’t some n00b, its parent company has been spraying for 40 years, so it knows what the market wants and has the network to deliver it.

Read More on GUSS

Wavemaker Labs

Incubator is making a varsity sport out of JVs.

What do they do? Wavemaker Labs is an incubator for a number of food robotics startups including Miso Robotics, Bobacino, and Piestro.
Why is this interesting? Wavemaker isn’t on the list because of its portfolio of companies. It’s here because of its new joint ventures. Instead of standard co-branding agreements with established restaurant brands, Wavemaker — and its portfolio company Piestro — have starting creating full-on joint ventures. Piestro created 800° GO with 800 Degrees Pizza, and Wavemaker partnered with C3 to create Nommi. Will joint ventures become the new go-to market for co-branded food robots?

Read More on Wavemaker

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If you ever worked in a packed bar or nightclub, you know that bartending is less Tom Cruise in Cocktail and more Tom Cruise in Edge of Tomorrow (Pour. Serve. Repeat.). There’s no time to flip bottles when you have a dozen people vying for your attention at the bar, plus a server in their station needing drinks for an eight-top plus the barback just broke a glass and now you have to burn the ice.

For most big bars and clubs, the name of the game is volume. Keep the drinks flowing and the guests buying.

Churning out consistent product without taking a break is what robots do best. So we’ve put together a list of all the beer, wine and booze ‘bots we could think of. From Barney to Yanu, raise your glass for all of these robo-bartenders!

Read more

Is there anything better than pizza? (Answer: Nope.)

But for restaurants facing labor shortages and ingredient cost increases, the one thing that might make their pizza better is robots.

Robots have the potential to bring a number of industry-changing benefits to the pizza world. Robots can work around the clock, they create a consistent product with little waste, and their small footprints can create expansion opportunities previously not possible.

Pizza, as it turns out, it a hotbed of innovation activity! There are a raft of startups building new automated methods of creating and serving hot pizza around the world. We’ve compiled a list of all the pizza automation startups we know of, from vending machines to back of house pizza assemblers to full-on standalone autonomous restaurants.

Take a look, and if there’s one we missed, drop me a line and I’ll update it!

Pizza Vending Machines

Read more

Today is National Coffee Day here in the US, and Friday is International Coffee Day, for all you international readers!

We love coffee here at OttOmate. Well, technically, we love robotic coffee kiosks. The futuristic automated baristas-in-a-box will pour you the perfect cup o’ joe every time.

So to celebrate both Coffee Days and the burgeoning world of robo-baristas, here’s a list of all the startups that we know about making coffee kiosks. (If we’re missing your coffee startup, drop me a line and introduce yourself!).

Artly
Robot: An articulating arm that uses computer vision to learn from human baristas to create latte art.
Locations: Two in Portland, Oregon, three robots installed in San Francisco.

Barney Barista
Robot: A spinoff of Switzerland robotics company F&P Robotics, the Barney bot uses an articulating arm to move cups and serve coffees, sodas and more. Barney’s sister bot is the Barney Bar bartender.
Location: Switzerland

Broobee
Robot: Broobee uses computer vision to train its robot to act like a human barista. Unlike other autonomous coffee kiosks on this list, Broobee has two articulating arms that work in concert with each other to make drinks.
Locations: Portland, Oregon

Cafe X
Robot: The grandaddy of coffee robots, Cafe X uses an articulating armt to make and serve a variety of hot and cold coffee and tea drinks.
Locations: San Francisco Airport, Terminal 3

Costa Coffee (formerly Briggo)
Robot: The Barista Bot foresakes the theatrics of articulating arms in favor of a more an enclosed, appliance-like approach. The machine makes a variety of hot and cold coffee and tea drinks.
Locations: Hard to tell, Costa Coffe’s site lists all of its stores and doesn’t break down the robot kiosks. Back when it was Briggo, the company installed machines at the SFO and Austin airports. I’m not sure if they are still there, however.

Crown Coffee
Robot: In addition to an articulating arm, Crown Digitals kiosks also feature a cool transparent screen for ordering and eventually advertising.
Locations: Singapore

FIBBEE
Robot: An enclosed coffee bar a la the Costa Coffee bot.
Locations: Moscow, Russia

Henn Na
Robot: I visited the Henn Na cafe when I was in Japan a couple years ago. It’s located underground in an office that if I remember correctly, is a travel agency. So it’s less of a standalone business and more of a hook to visit the agency.
Location: Tokyo, Japan

Know Intelligent Technology
Robot: The InBot offers two flavors of its coffee bot: The P Series, which is a rectangular kiosk, and the T Series, which is slightly smaller, round and has a video screen. Both models use Eversys coffee machines, sport dual robotic arms and Know’s inBot OS.
Locations: China, Hong Kong and Dubai.

mia&noa
Robot: The hook with mia&noa is that you have to bring your own cup, which sounds counter-intuitive, but makes sense when you consider that it’s built for locations like offices and universities. Places where the same people visit every day.
Locations: Four machines around Switzerland.

MontyCafe
Robot: Montycafe makes a humanoid looking robot that operates coffee machines (and even serves ice cream!)
Location: Russia

MyApp cafe
Robot: MyAppCafe’s hook is that it prints customizable pictures (like selfies) on your latte’s foam.
Location: Germany, but the machines are coming to the U.S. via a distribution agreement with Robojo.

Orionstar CoffeMaster
Robot: A countertop humanoid robot that makes pour over coffees
Location: China

RoboCafe
Robot: RoboCafe is a sit down-style coffee bar located inside a mall in Dubai. A robot arms prepares the drinks and Roomba-like robotic servers on a counter bring it to you.
Location: Festival City Center, Dubai

Rozum Coffee
Robot: A countertop articlating arm that operates coffe machines.
Locations: ? Not sure. The Company is based in Belarus.

Smyze
Robot: In addition to coffee drinks, Smyze makes a number of different juice-based drinks.
Locations: Four across Switzerland

Truebird
Robot: Perhaps the coolest thing about Truebird is its use of magnetic pucks that elegantly glide your cup when serving you.
Locations: Brooklyn, NY

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