A few years ago, Chef Robotics is facing possible death.
“There were many dark periods where I was thinking of giving up,” founder Rajat Bhageria tells Techcrunch for his six -year -old company. But friends and investors encouraged him, so he continued.
Today, the Chef Robotics has not only survived, but is one of several robotic food technology companies that is flourishing. The start, which recently raised a $ 23 million series, has 40 Marque employees and customers like Amy’s Kitchen and Chef Bombay. Dozens of robots installed across the US have made 45 million meals to date, Bhageria says.
This is compared to a cemetery of failed food technology companies, including chowbatics with its Sally salad robot; Robot for distribution of zume pizza; Kiosk Robot Karakuri, and, more recently, Agtech Small Robot Company.
Bhaageria says he saved his company by doing something that the founders of the early phase are afraid to do: leaving the signed clients and millions of dollars in revenue.
The problem of catching
It all started when Bhaageria made his master’s degree in robotics at the famous UPENN lab. He dreamed of the promised world Sci-Fi where the robots did our housework, mow our lawns, and cook five-star dinners.
Such a world does not exist yet because engineers still do not have to completely solve the problem of robotic syllable. Training the same robot to wash a glass of wine without crushing it and a cast iron pan without falling it is a difficult task.
When it comes to robotic chefs, “No one has built a database on how you can get a blueberry and not remove it, or how you get the cheese and you haven’t accumulated it?” He describes.
His original idea with Chef Robotics was similar to the long list of robotics that died: a robotic line for fast random restaurants. This is a large industry with chronic employee deficiency.
“We had actually signed contracts. Just as we had signed multimillion dollars contracts. Of course, we are not doing it anymore. So what happened?” He said. “We essentially could not solve the technical problem.”
In those types of businesses, an employee fills an order by collecting all the varied ingredients needed for each meal. These restaurants want robots to repeat that process because the alternative is to have dozens of dedicated robots, and to calibrate, a single ingredient, some of which can only be used occasionally (we see you, anchovies).
But Bhageria and the team could not build a successful robot for nothing because training data does not exist. He asked his potential customers to let him install robots for one or two ingredients, collecting training data and building from there. They said no.
Then Bhaageria had an epithet.
Instead of going by trying to give existing customers what they wanted, perhaps he needed different customers. “I honestly sucked out because I spent the half year of my life trying to persuade these people, these quick random companies, to work with us,” he recalled.
To say no leads to yes
It did not help that the fundraising after 2021 was brutal. LCs were also looking at the cemetery. “We talked to dozens of different funds,” Bhageria said. “We just rejected over and over again.”
Bhaageria was thinking of giving up. “You get home and are like. What am I doing in my life? Am I doing the wrong thing? Should I leave?” He remembered.
But he was excavated inside and in March, 2023, raised a $ 11.2 million round led by Construct Capital, while also lowering controls from promus ventures, kleiner Perkins and gaingels.
Bhaageria and the team also found their perfect market, part of the food industry known as “high Mix production”.
These are food manufacturers that have many, many recipes, and do thousands of services, but usually as meals or meal trays. For example; salads and sandwiches or main courses and side dishes. These are foods used by airlines and hospitals, etc., or are frozen foods for consumers.
Instead of an employee who grabs all ingredients for each meal, “high mix” employees form a mounting line. Each person adds their individual ingredient to the tray repeatedly until the order is completed. Then they collect the next recipe.
“Actually actually hundreds of people who are staying in a room 34 Fahrenheit, and they are essentially destroying food for eight hours a day,” he describes. “So it’s just a terrible job.”
Consequently, this industry has chronic lack of work as well.
Robotics was not economically feasible for them in the past due to the variety of components involved. But an initial start that builds a flexible world, where robots are built in partnership with the food manufacturer, works.
Better still, “while learning how to make this chorizo, or teach peas, or this sauce, or these zucchini,” Bots receive the real -world training data they need to eventually serve fast restaurants. Bhaageria says this is still on his road map.
Best of all, thanks to the reborn interest of VC for all things, collecting funds this time was “surprisingly” easy, Bhageria says.
Avataar Venture Partners, co-founded by former VVC Norwest Mohan Kumar, was specifically seeking to fund the beginnings “in the physical world” and actually followed Chef Robotics, Bhageria says. He closed this round in less than a month. Avataar led, with existing investors build capital, Bloomberg Beta and Promus Ventures gathering, among other things.
New funding brings the total chef raised to $ 38.8 million. He also signed a $ 26.75 million loan from Silicon Valley Bank to fund equipment.
And the process this time was “exciting,” he said.
