Like so many different elements of the robotics world, the pandemic has dramatically accelerated curiosity within the automated kitchen. After all, the meals and restaurant business was deemed important amid international shutdowns, however discovering kitchen workers proved an issue for a lot of, particularly early on when questions remained round COVID’s transmission.
This week, California-based quick informal salad chain Sweetgreen introduced plans to go all in on automation with the acquisition of Spyce. Founded in 2015, the Boston-based startup began making waves a couple of years again as a spinout of MIT mechanical engineering college students. First serving up meals on the faculty’s eating corridor, the group finally opened a pair of automated eating places within the Boston space. The startup notes, “our Spyce restaurants will stay open at this time.”
Sweetgreen plans to ultimately incorporate Spyce’s know-how into its eating places. It will possible take a while to scale as much as the wants of the chain, which at the moment operates greater than 120 places throughout the U.S.
Image Credits: Spyce
“We built Sweetgreen to connect more people to real food and create healthy fast food at scale for the next generation, and Spyce has built state-of-the-art technology that perfectly aligns with that vision,” Sweetgreen CEO and co-founder Jonathan Neman stated in a press release. “By joining forces with their best-in-class team, we will be able to elevate our team member experience, provide a more consistent customer experience and bring real food to more communities.”
Like pizza, salads are a transparent goal for early meals automation. They’re each common and comparatively simple to automate — basically mixing a bunch of elements from completely different chutes right into a bowl.
Sweetgreen is fast to notice that the plan isn’t to exchange staff outright, nevertheless.
“[T]eam members will be able to focus more on preparation and hospitality moments, while having the opportunity to work with state-of-the-art technology,” the corporate writes. “Invest more in training and development to support team members to become Head Coaches. Interested team members will be able to develop technology-facing skills to operate and maintain Spyce technology.”
The deal is anticipated to shut in Q3. Terms weren’t disclosed.
