Final 12 months once I visited Tokyo, I ate at a completely robotic pasta restaurant known as E Vino Spaghetti. from a Japanese startup known as TechMagic.
Constructed by a Japanese startup TechMagic, the restaurant’s pasta robotic was capable of make a plate of pasta in lower than two minutes from the time an order was despatched in by way of the digital order kiosk. The robotic prepped the sauces and toppings, heated the noodles (that are pre-cooked and frozen, normal for noodle and pasta eating places), mixed all of it in a spinner, after which delivered the meal down alongside a conveyor belt to the plating station the place a human added ultimate garnishes and did a ultimate high quality verify. The machine additionally cleaned the prep bowls when it was completed.
Constructing an virtually solely automated restaurant that pumped out a spot of pasta in lower than two minutes was a powerful trick for a younger startup for TechMagic, a lot in order that I urged that possibly once I returned to Japan this 12 months for Good Kitchen Summit Japan, the corporate could have one other robotic restaurant in Tokyo to point out off.
And lo and behold, they did! The most recent restaurant powered by a TechMagic is known as Oh My Dot, an automatic ramen noodle restaurant within the Shibuya district. The way in which it really works is you order your ramen by way of a contact display, selecting from a wide range of totally different flavors starting from sesame to spicy scorching soup to curry. As soon as your order is entered, the robotic arm begins selecting up the flavour modules and dropping them into the ramen cup. From there, the broth and noodles are added, and the final cease for the cup of scorching ramen is with the human server so as to add garnishes and make a ultimate high quality verify earlier than it’s handed over to the shopper.
You possibly can watch all of it beneath in a video shot by The Spoon’s Good Kitchen Summit Japan associate, Hiro Tanaka:
As I wrote final 12 months, the concept to construct meals robots first got here to TechMagic founder Yuji Shiraki when he visited his 90+-year-old grandmother. Shiraki noticed she couldn’t prepare dinner for herself and so began to consider how a house cooking robotic would possibly assist her. Nevertheless, he quickly realized that Japanese kitchens have been too small to construct the kind of robotic he envisioned, and he began interested by constructing robots for eating places. It wasn’t lengthy earlier than he give up his job as a administration advisor and based TechMagic.
That was 5 years in the past. Since then, the corporate has raised $23 million in funding (together with a $15 million Sequence B final September), acquired a patent for its pasta-making robotic, and plans to create its personal chain of robot-powered franchise eating places.
Along with the ramen robotic restaurant, the corporate additionally was exhibiting off a brand new stir fry robotic, which you’ll be able to see beneath (additionally shot by Tanaka).
