[HN Gopher] Launch HN: Mezli (YC W21) - Robotic restaurants that...
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Launch HN: Mezli (YC W21) - Robotic restaurants that serve healthy
fast food
Hi folks, Alex here - I'm the CEO and one of the cofounders at
Mezli (https://www.mezli.com/). (I've also been a Hacker News
lurker since high school and always hoped I'd be posting a Launch
HN one day!) We make "auto-kitchens", fully autonomous restaurants
in a shipping container form factor. They serve our menu of
Mediterranean grain bowls for pickup and delivery, at a low price
point enabled by our approach's low costs. The three of us met as
grad students at Stanford where we were all working on different
things - I was doing AI research before dropping out of my PhD,
Alex G was in a robotics lab (and just finished his PhD!), and Max
was in aero/astro. We worked on a variety of classes, research, and
side projects together, but we wanted to start a company and none
of our ideas were looking particularly commercially viable. Then,
as I was winding down a project building an autonomous weeding
robot, it crossed my mind that one of my own biggest daily
frustrations was something that was worth building a company to
solve. That frustration was that eating well in America requires
spending a lot of time cooking or a lot of money buying meals. In
grad school, I didn't have enough time to cook every meal, but I
also couldn't afford to spend $10 or more at Chipotle, Sweetgreen,
etc. It turned out that most of my friends, in and out of grad
school, had the same problem. So, with Alex G and then Max as well,
I started looking into why good/healthy restaurant meals in America
are so expensive. It turns out that a lot of it comes down to
costs that are passed down to customers. An average Chipotle
restaurant costs a million dollars to build and runs up a $600K/yr
bill for on-site labor. That all gets passed on to customers, so
that a $10 burrito bowl has only about $3 worth of ingredients in
it, but also $3 of restaurant labor and $4 to cover things like
rent and profit margin - which for most restaurants is quite thin.
We realized that reducing the cost of building and operating a
restaurant could unlock much cheaper great-quality meals. So Alex G
and I, soon joined by Max, started talking to people all over the
restaurant and automation spaces and brainstorming how to solve the
problem. It turned out that if we constrained ourselves to bowl-
style meals (grain bowls, salads, soups, curries, etc.), we could
use a lot of existing automation equipment off-the-shelf, put it in
a shipping container and integrate it with a few pieces of custom
hardware to make an autonomous restaurant-in-a-box. The hardest
part turned out to be the dispenser technology - putting
ingredients in a bowl reliably is not trivial! We came up with a
new approach for that that we've recently filed a patent
application on and we'll be able to talk about more publicly once
the patent is granted. Like most restaurant chains, we do the bulk
of our prep in a central kitchen and then the auto-kitchen itself
uses a variety of heating and finishing steps (e.g. applying sauces
and dry toppings) to make bowls to-order. Unlike some food
automation companies, we're focused on creating a fully automated
"restaurant in a vending machine" rather than human-in-the-loop
partial automation. Getting our tech to work reliably enough to not
need a human to monitor it is a challenge, but comes with benefits
like being able to make more meals, faster, out of a smaller space.
It also gives us food safety advantages because there's less room
for human error, and we can also do things like bathing the insides
of our boxes with high-intensity UV light that kills germs but
would not be very employee-friendly! We're also taking the point-
of-view that solving food automation requires leaning into special-
purpose hardware, rather than just trying to program a robotic arm
to do everything a human cook does. As a former AI researcher, I
can speak to the difficulties of programming arms to do even simple
tasks like pick-and-place, let alone cooking full meals. And if
you're going to constrain the kitchen environment to help the arm's
actions be more repeatable, you might as well use special-purpose
hardware that can do the same tasks more quickly and reliably.
We're now executing on both the food side and tech side of things
in parallel. Our human-powered ghost kitchen is dishing out our
Mediterranean menu from our San Mateo location (Stop by!
https://order.mezli.com). At the same time, we're building our
full-scale food-safe v2 prototype and are shooting to have it up
and serving customers later this month. Once our auto-kitchen is
working reliably and is robust enough to handle a few knocks, we're
going to start forward-deploying it to parking lots and garages in
the Bay Area to test out our operational model. Then, it'll be time
to build multiple auto-kitchens and eventually develop multiple
concepts so each auto-kitchen rotates to a new menu on a regular
cadence. At that point, we might start partnering with restaurant
chains, chefs, etc. to roll out their menus/brands to many of our
auto-kitchens at once. Since our hardware can make just about any
kind of meal that goes in a bowl, and the side of each auto-kitchen
will be a digital billboard, we'll be able to roll out new brands
to hundreds of locations overnight without having to update
signage, retrain staff etc. - a sort of "AWS for bowl-style meals"
model. We'd love to hear any thoughts from the HN community. Do
you have experience in the restaurant and/or automation spaces? Are
you a prospective customer with opinions on our offerings? Another
perspective yet? We'd love to hear your thoughts!
Author : kolchinski
Score : 89 points
Date : 2021-03-15 16:39 UTC (6 hours ago)
| conqrr wrote:
| Exciting stuff! So where's the $3 bowl on the menu? _(chuckle)_
| Its great to see each customization option doesn 't have a
| separate price line on it though!
| 2pointsomone wrote:
| What? $4.99? Is this a dream come true?!
| hooande wrote:
| How do you handle health inspections for fully automated food
| prep? did you have to get special approval from the Board of
| Health? and what do you do if, say, a rat jumps into a bowl?
| Qworg wrote:
| Ah, smart move running the test process with people first, then
| rotating towards automation. What estimates do you have around
| cost reduction/efficiency gains with your approach (given capex)?
| kolchinski wrote:
| Capex per location is looking like it'll be 15-30% of a fast-
| casual restaurant; variable costs will be about 50% ($3ish of
| ingredients per meal instead of $3ish of ingredients plus $3ish
| of on-site labor) when compared to a fast-casual restaurant.
| icy wrote:
| This is super unique, and very exciting stuff. Indian rice
| varieties will be a great fit for this model.
|
| Good luck!
| kolchinski wrote:
| Yes we're planning to launch an Indian menu in the future!
| xrd wrote:
| I'm very excited by this.
|
| It sounds like you have really analyzed your cost models. It's
| really fascinating to see the breakdown of labor and rent.
|
| Walmart and Amazon have proven that people respond to cost more
| than anything, even if there is evidence those purchasing choices
| weaken their local community businesses and tax collection.
|
| But, having said that, if there were a way to pay $7 for a bowl
| that had an innovative way to bring innovation to local
| employment AND had robots doing things in trucks that didn't have
| to pay rental in downtown, I would happily pay for that bowl over
| a $4 one that removed the labor entirely. Just my $0.02
| kolchinski wrote:
| It's hard to guess these things, but I suspect that even if we
| massively succeed we probably won't make much if any dent in
| sit-down and local/mom-and-pop restaurants (and the jobs that
| come with them) since we fill a very different role. E.g. I'll
| still be going to the local taqueria, Burmese hole-in-the-wall
| etc. post-Covid.
|
| But we might displace some demand and therefore labor from
| fast-food options like McDonalds. That said, they're having a
| lot of trouble finding workers right now (~200% annual turnover
| in the space from what I've seen) so I don't think we'll be
| creating unemployment there either.
| xrd wrote:
| This is a terrific answer, thanks for engaging with me. It
| makes me feel better to hear that.
| lukevp wrote:
| This is a great idea and the execution sounds perfect. I don't
| know about the pricing model though. For me, I see several
| advantages to a robot prepared meal - being safer and more
| consistent (same portions every time, no hair or other gross
| human stuff involved), not having to interact with anyone to get
| food, and presumably a really modern and slick ordering
| experience. I don't need it to be cheaper at all, as long as it's
| good quality food.
|
| Your goal of bringing healthy food more cheaply to people is
| great, but based on the other advantages this tech has, I think
| the price should be much closer. Eg if chipotle is selling it for
| $10, yours should be $8 or $9 not $5.
| cammikebrown wrote:
| You, as an app developer, may not care about paying less.
| Understand that many are less fortunate than you. I can't
| imagine a robot in its first stages being as adept as humans at
| cooking and plating food. I'm optimistic it can be iteratively
| improved upon, however.
| kolchinski wrote:
| Yes pricing is still an open question: we're likely going to
| end up with a spectrum of brands, with some being more "budget"
| and some being more "upscale". We're excited about making good
| food more accessible but how to best balance that that with
| actually making enough of a profit is the question!
| Justsignedup wrote:
| I think at about $7-$9 for a decent sized lunch meal in say New
| York or SF would demolish the competition. Sub $10 is really
| the magic number. Mealpass tried to do this, but as was pointed
| out, the costs are real, so if you wanna lower the price,
| usually the size or quality (or both) goes down.
|
| If you hit about $6-7 a meal, you'll be very close to competing
| with home-cooked meals on cost. Sure people can go a bit
| cheaper, but it isn't gonna be really a significant reduction,
| but there will be a large time cost to it for home-cooked.
|
| I am rooting for you. :)
| kolchinski wrote:
| Thanks!
|
| Yeah for our broke selves the goal has been to basically get
| the price point down to the point where it's a no-brainer to
| skip cooking.
| boatsie wrote:
| I've heard the idea of automated restaurants for a long time, but
| there are still overhead costs and labor costs.
|
| You would still need proper permits/licenses and real
| estate/rent. Insurance. Utilities.
|
| The prep and cooking of the ingredients still needs to be done,
| and then those items transported in a chilled/heated manner for
| food safety.
|
| And if there are perishable goods like produce or meat, the
| machine will need to be thoroughly cleaned and sanitized
| regularly, which would require labor, a sink, etc. Unsold food at
| the end of the day needs to be stored/chilled properly back at
| the central kitchen. Ingredients will need reloading, machines
| may get jammed, etc. So it doesn't seem like it will be labor-
| free.
|
| Even in the best case scenario, like the sandwiches or muffins at
| Starbucks, or even deli items at the grocery store, the prices
| aren't all that low, so I am curious to see if this can be done
| profitably.
| kolchinski wrote:
| Yep agreed on all of those counts. We're designing the machine
| and operation to keep costs low and reliability high.
|
| E.g. ingredients are pre-prepped in the central kitchen and
| then transported refrigerated to the auto-kitchens. The
| mechanism is designed for easy cleaning and refilling upstream
| and reliable operation in the auto-kitchen. It's one of the
| only parts of our machine that's totally custom; we've filed a
| patent on it because we think it gives us a significant leg up
| over previous approaches.
|
| Food safety is also a huge deal to us; we've been working
| closely with regulators from almost day 1 to make sure that our
| approach is even safer than a traditional restaurant (less room
| for error.)
|
| And rent is also a plus for our approach: a parking spot costs
| less to rent than commercial real estate!
| jayjay71 wrote:
| Sounds fun. Best of luck.
| bigblind wrote:
| I really hope you socceed and manage to spread globally. (I'd
| loev to have one of your restaurants around the corner in
| Maastricht, NL, where I live.
| amelius wrote:
| Can we have a look in the kitchen? :)
| kolchinski wrote:
| Sorry, we're not doing public tours yet! But shoot us a note if
| you're stopping by (info@mezli.com) and I'll pop out and say
| hi.
| LargoLasskhyfv wrote:
| Looks good, sounds good, seems to have reasonble prices.
|
| Now combine it with something like this for the
| outlet/dispensing/sales:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO
|
| http://blog.brillianttrips.com/2009/07/febo-dutch-fast-food-...
|
| https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-fast-food-snack-automat-re...
|
| I remember them from decades ago in the Netherlands, while being
| there, stoned, and having the munchies.
|
| I felt like I've been transported into the future!
|
| Food in the wall! How cool is that?
|
| I'd guess the Japanese have something similar in their cities.
| kolchinski wrote:
| Exactly! We're planning to have a similar cubby-style mechanism
| for pickup.
| ninetax wrote:
| I'm sure you're familiar with Eatsa, any reflections on how you
| might escape the same "fate" [1]?
|
| Besides the obvious difference that you're fully automated, I
| mean how will you avoid the trap of "Hey it's a lot easier to
| sell this food tech to others than to be in the restaurant
| operations business!"?
|
| 1: https://sf.eater.com/2019/7/23/20706270/eatsa-closed-tech-
| co...
| cinbun8 wrote:
| "AWS for bowl-style meals" - I just don't understand YC anymore
| chrisseaton wrote:
| Wow!
|
| Are there any videos of the robots working? Or none yet due to
| the patent work?
| gojomo wrote:
| Even just photos of the container and robotics, however rough,
| would feed hackers' curiosity!
|
| (But: I can see why you might want to wait to make sure any
| images provided also put potential food-purchasers at ease.)
| kolchinski wrote:
| Nothing public yet but we're setting up a video shoot for
| tentatively next month! Stay tuned.
| boyka wrote:
| I'd love to see the automated repeated cooking process as well
| as how hygiene/cleanup is integrated.
| PabloOsinaga wrote:
| Would be nice to see videos of the prototypes
| vinay_ys wrote:
| Very interesting. I have lots of questions.
|
| How does last mile supply chain to deliver the pre-prepared
| ingredients work?
|
| How does fresh/stale ingredients management work?
|
| How cleaning of the insides of the machine work?
|
| How frequently will it require servicing? Will the entire
| container go to service center (swap out the container without
| downtime for customers) or will a service crew visit to
| fix/service things at night?
|
| Have you thought of doing this as a food truck? It might make
| things easier during the early days.
| kolchinski wrote:
| In short: -Refrigerated vans/trucks deliver ingredients
| -Leftovers get cycled out -We've designed the machines to be
| easy and efficient to clean. Some of this is still secret until
| our patents are issued, sorry I can't say more! -Roughly once a
| day, and the containers will stay where they are most of the
| time. -The nice thing about shipping containers is that you can
| put them on a flatbed truck and move them around. That gives us
| some location flexibility without needing to build it into a
| truck.
| milesward wrote:
| Stoked for you, would eat, bring on the robot-chow-giving
| overlords
| viklove wrote:
| On your website it says:
|
| > Prepared at KitchenTown by Chef Eric Minnich, former Chef de
| Cuisine of Michelin-starred Madera.
|
| I thought robots were preparing the food? What's this about?
| axtscz wrote:
| From their website:
|
| >The Mezli founders teamed up with Eric Minnich, a classically
| trained chef with experience at Michelin-starred restaurants,
| to develop a menu that a robot can confidently execute 24 hours
| a day, seven days a week. Because there are no humans involved
| or expensive rent to pay, that means you can get a cauliflower
| and turmeric rice bowl for $4.99.
|
| I guess he's the chef that created the menu
| Qworg wrote:
| > Our human-powered ghost kitchen is dishing out our
| Mediterranean menu from our San Mateo location (Stop by!
| https://order.mezli.com). At the same time, we're building
| our full-scale food-safe v2 prototype and are shooting to
| have it up and serving customers later this month. Once our
| auto-kitchen is working reliably and is robust enough to
| handle a few knocks, we're going to start forward-deploying
| it to parking lots and garages in the Bay Area to test out
| our operational model. Then, it'll be time to build multiple
| auto-kitchens and eventually develop multiple concepts so
| each auto-kitchen rotates to a new menu on a regular cadence.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| New menu? Ugh.
|
| I think people underestimate that Americans have a hunger
| for homogeneity when they go out for fast food. Everywhere
| in the continental United States, a hamburger from
| McDonald's tastes the same. If I find a few things I like
| from a restaurant, that's what I am going there for. If I
| want to be surprised, I will go somewhere new.
| axtscz wrote:
| This is amazing sounding. I wish nothing but the best for you
| guys.
|
| Edit: just saw it's mediterranean food. Cheers
| yowlingcat wrote:
| I'm curious about whether deliverability (and temperature
| control/container insulation) has any impact on /which/ kind of
| bowl style meals you'll target. 15 minutes out, there's not too
| much of an impact. But once you hit 45 minutes - 1hr or beyond,
| certain meals start to get off limits or sub-par. Mediterranean
| is nice because because it's tasty, healthy, and keeps well,
| especially as parts of it make sense cold (pickled veggies, etc).
| Curries reheat with relatively little flavor lost. But what about
| soups? And which kinds of grain bowls are more or less amenable
| to the outer margins of deliverability?
| Animats wrote:
| That's always a problem. Only food which can be reheated can
| survive Instacart/Doordash/Uber Eats delivery.
| mike_d wrote:
| How do you handle failures? I like the idea, but am worried about
| my ability to shake a shipping container to make my stuck grain
| bowl fall out.
|
| Other startups that went this route found they still had to have
| a person on-site.
| kolchinski wrote:
| We've also been super concerned about reliability because a lot
| of earlier companies in the space have struggled with it.
|
| A lot of our IP is actually around reliability so I can't share
| everything but the high level of it is that: 1) We design every
| system with reliability as a top priority. 2) We're building in
| several layers of fault recovery mechanisms. 3) Most of the
| steps of our process have redundancy built in, so that even if
| something fails everyone still gets their lunch until a tech
| shows up.
| mike_d wrote:
| Thanks for the detailed reply. When you are ready for larger
| scale deployments shoot me an email, I'm particularly skilled
| at breaking things in interesting ways.
| Animats wrote:
| "Bowls"? You mean something like an automatic wok machine?[1]
| Those are common in China.
|
| 1964 technology for automated fast food: AMFare: [2]
|
| [1] https://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/Commercial-Wok-
| machin...
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/1Xop9py8zBY
| tlb wrote:
| Everyone proposing robot kitchens should watch the AMFare
| video.
| gregschlom wrote:
| "Robotic restaurant that serves healthy fast food": this is
| _exactly_ how Eatsa used to pitch itself
| (https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/09/upshot/restaurant-of-the-...)
|
| Turned out things didn't work out too well for Eatsa, but I think
| it was more due to errors in execution (hyper fast growth with
| nation-wide expansion, and lots of time and money spent on
| developing custom hardware) rather than a lack of product/market
| fit.
|
| Best of luck to Mezli!
|
| (Disclosure: former Eatsa employee)
| Animats wrote:
| Eatsa was strange. It wasn't really automated. It was more like
| Amazon lockers for fast food. There was a conventional kitchen
| in back, but order taking and scheduling was automated.
|
| McDonalds announced a big automation push years in 2019. Again,
| not robotic kitchen automation. Automating order taking and
| supervision.[1] A previous try at that was called "Hyperactive
| Bob".[2] That's like Amazon's warehouse automation system with
| Kiva robots.[3] Or the Chicago Dryer "Cascade" system for
| folding linens.
|
| These things use computers to tell the people what to do,
| because unskilled human hands are cheaper than robots. The
| human part is reduced to simple eye-hand coordination tasks,
| which robots still can't do very well. "Machines should think.
| People should work" automation.
|
| [1] https://www.foodserviceequipmentjournal.com/mcdonalds-
| plans-...
|
| [2] https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20040908/0156256.shtml
|
| [3] https://youtu.be/CWNuaPE4DTc
|
| [4] https://youtu.be/k-DSd2o-mP8
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Sounds like they followed the WebVan business model.
| kolchinski wrote:
| We've taken a lot of inspiration from Eatsa, actually! We've
| chatted with probably of half-dozen ex-Eatsa folks. I'll shoot
| you a note if you're up for a conversation.
| impendia wrote:
| Good luck to you!
|
| One huge frustration I've had as a customer is the
| _unavailability_ of healthy fast food. I spent five months in
| Berkeley and ate at Sweetgreen all the time.
|
| Now, I'm back in Columbia, SC where I work at a large university.
| If there was a Sweetgreen, or something similar, near campus then
| I would eat there 1-2x a week.
|
| So I'm hoping that your efforts will lead to healthy and fast
| restaurants opening in places where they aren't currently viable.
| burlesona wrote:
| This is very cool, and I wish you all the best!
|
| I relate 100% to your problem statement. It's even harder if you
| have dietary restrictions you're trying to accommodate, for
| example non-dairy, gluten-free, or low-carb. You spend a lot of
| your life prepping food, paying a ton of money for the small
| number of fancy restaurants that serve what you want, or else
| compromise and eat food that isn't what you want to be eating.
|
| If there was a low-carb robot kitchen in my neighborhood serving
| $5 meals I'd probably be visiting that 10-20 times a week.
|
| I could see tech like this also helping in underserved
| communities where healthier food is not only not affordable, it's
| simply not available. Lowering the capital requirements and unit
| cost could mean a better supply of healthier meals in
| neighborhoods that currently have few choices.
|
| That being said, it's hard not to also feel a tinge of concern
| when reading announcements like this. Automation is coming for a
| _lot_ of jobs (in this case the ~14 million Americans who work in
| restaurants). I'm an optimist about such things, but I do also
| sense a concern that for a lot of people there aren't many "good
| jobs" left (where "good job" is defined by something that you
| could learn/train on the job without requiring special skills or
| higher education, and eventually make median income or better).
| kolchinski wrote:
| Thanks, yeah we've been already getting a number of customers
| who are vegan, gluten-free, etc. - specific dietary needs
| weren't on our radar originally but I'm really glad we're
| solving those problems.
|
| 100% agreed on the underserved communities. I remember going to
| Burger King with my family as a kid because that's what we
| could afford and was nearby.
|
| Restaurant jobs are an important question. We think we're more
| likely to displace more home-cooking than restaurant demand (we
| don't do sit-down at all), but there's also a big labor
| shortage in the restaurant world right now because fewer people
| want to work in kitchens than used to. I'm hopeful that
| automation will help people be able to cook less but keep
| demand for dine-in restaurants largely untouched (people want
| to go out to eat with friends and family).
| burkaman wrote:
| This sounds a lot like Spyce, a robotic grain bowl restaurant
| that's been open in Boston for a few years. Not a criticism,
| there's obviously room for more than one of this kind of place in
| the world, but were they an inspiration for you? Even your
| motivation for starting the company is similar to the Spyce
| founders: https://boston.eater.com/2018/4/27/17290330/downtown-
| crossin...
| cammikebrown wrote:
| It makes perfect sense that their motivations are similar. I
| can't think of two bigger reasons than lack of time and lack of
| funds to have quality, healthy food that's cheap or quick.
|
| It's also funny to see the Spyce creators complaining about
| $10-$12 meals, when the prices on the website range from
| $10.40-$11.90.
| kolchinski wrote:
| Yes we're very familiar with Spyce; I've actually eaten there
| myself. Our motivations are pretty similar but our approaches
| are different - they've been doing walk-in style partially-
| automated restaurants (although they've recently pivoted; I
| know less about the new direction) while our "auto-kitchens"
| are totally automated, more like a big/complex vending machine.
| bsimpson wrote:
| Also reminds me of https://www.chowbotics.com/
| kolchinski wrote:
| Yep Chowbotics : salads :: Mezli : all bowl-style food
| They've done a great job proving out that automatic meal
| prep works.
| sterlinm wrote:
| I also came to say it reminds me of Spyce (in a good way!). I
| was I think pretty close to their number one customer for a
| while before I changed jobs / locations.
|
| The business model and approach does look pretty different,
| but the types of meals look vaguely similar. I'm curious if
| that's just because when you start thinking about what types
| of meals can be automated (partially or fully) it pushes you
| in that general direction. If you don't mind sharing, what
| was the process like for figuring out what types of meals
| could be cooked by robots?
| kolchinski wrote:
| You can do a lot with bowl-style meals but they're also
| simple to assemble! That said, Spyce does a "stir fry"
| style approach while we do a more traditional "keep
| ingredients separate" serving style. We picked
| Mediterranean food first because we like it a lot
| ourselves, it's healthy and tasty, and does well with our
| process - but we'll be expanding to other cuisines too.
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