Miso Robotics CEO on Why He Hit Pause on Flippy's Grilling, and What's Happening with White Castle

Mike Bell explains what's new with Flippy 2 and how scale and supply chain will soon collide for robot startups.

Miso Robotics announced today Flippy 2, the latest version of its commercial cooking robotic platform (check out the news story here).

It’s been a busy month for Miso, which just a couple weeks back annouced a Flippy Wings product in conjunction with Inspire Brands and Buffalo Wild Wings. Given all that’s going on, I hopped on a video call with Miso Robotics CEO, Mike Bell yesterday to learn about the new Flippys, what exactly is happening with White Castle, and why Flippy has stopped cooking burgers to focus on frying foods (for now).

Following is my Q&A with Bell, which has been lightly edited for clarity and concision.

OttOmate: What are the new features of flippy 2?

Bell: The form factor is like a lot of electronics or technology products: lighter, faster, better, cheaper. It protrudes less, it's easier to install and just a really cleaner form factor. Functionality is where really where you have something to write home about. Flippy one did a good job of offsetting labor and really taking over a bunch of the work in the fry station. Flippy 2 takes it significantly further. If you think of the fry station, going from right to left — where you take frozen products from a frozen dispenser on the right going all the way left, where it's dumped onto a holding table, Flippy takes everything from dispensing into the baskets, cooking it very precisely to dumping the fries, and then returning the basket to the original position. So it takes a huge chunk of labor off the table.