Udi Shamai is aware of pizza.
The proprietor of the Pizza Hut grasp franchise in Israel since 2008, with a stint at Domino’s earlier than that, Shamai has a fame for combining dough and cheese with software program and {hardware} to assist make that pizza style even higher – and to get it to your door with a minimal of human involvement.
Shamai is now digging deep into the dish along with his newest startup, Hyper Meals Robotics, which creates modular, moveable robotic pizza kitchens.
Robots within the kitchen? What was unsuitable with the old style manner of making ready a pie? Shamai tells ISRAEL21c there are three issues.
At the beginning is value. Workers contains some 20% of the prices of working a pizza chain. Robots, then again, by no means get sick and by no means want holidays or cigarette breaks. Changing people with robots will save Pizza Hut cash. (Whether or not the retailer will move that financial savings on to the buyer is one other matter fully.)
Second is security: Robots don’t make errors. They don’t use substances which have handed their expiration dates and so they always remember to put on their protecting gloves whereas getting down and soiled with the dough. A self-contained “plug and play” robotic system may even monitor the air high quality, so every little thing stays hygienic.
Lastly, there’s consistency. A human employee could make an incredible pizza in the beginning of his or her shift, however after eight hours, a buyer would possibly get a sub-optimal pie.
Hyper’s answer is a 40-foot container fitted with simply configurable robots that may put together the dough, sprinkle the cheese, toss on toppings and put the pie within the oven earlier than transferring it to a warming field, sliced and prepared for supply.
A pizza professional
In October, Singapore-based journey and hospitality enterprise capital agency Velocity Ventures invested in Hyper, which is predicted to launch its first totally robotic pizza kitchens in 2023.
Hyper is targeted on the US market, Shamai notes, however the Velocity funding ought to speed up Hyper’s adoption in Southeast Asia.
Hyper is just not Shamai’s first food-related startup. In 2014, he based DragonTail, a software program system for optimizing the working of a fast-food restaurant. Exactly monitoring orders and deliveries, which appears so apparent within the age of DoorDash, GrubHub and Wolt, merely didn’t exist then.
DragonTail was acquired by Yum! Manufacturers, the mother or father firm of Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and KFC, and now Dragontail’s order administration and supply know-how is integrated into 1,500 Pizza Hut eating places throughout a couple of dozen nations.
From dough to cleanup
When Shamai began Hyper, he initially hoped to assemble the robotic kitchen from off-the-shelf components, however rapidly realized that every one the machines needed to be proprietary.
Hyper cofounder and COO Yariv Reches engineered the system from scratch.
The robots could make 120 pizzas an hour, about 3 times greater than in a typical human-staffed kitchen. They use a patented methodology for stretching and rotating the dough, and specifically designed dispensers that pour actual quantities to keep away from waste and uneven distribution.
The robotic’s arms work with particular conveyers to get the product from one station to the following.
“The robots transfer the pizza into the oven, take it out, reduce the slices and put it within the field to be saved in a supply cupboard,” Reches continues.
“The supply individual finds what he’s searching for and might take drinks and salads out of the identical cupboard.”
Hyper’s robots even maintain the cleanup. Sooner or later, Reches notes, they may very well be programmed to do much more.
Though Hyper is just not alone attempting to automate fast-food operations, Shamai says that “nobody else is doing a full idea retailer. Some will simply retrofit an present retailer.”
He provides that whereas a standard pizza store generates about 14% revenue, Hyper can push that revenue margin to 34%.
Ghost kitchens
Now, don’t count on to stroll right into a next-generation Pizza Hut and see robots working within the again room.
Hyper is hyper-focused on the “ghost kitchen,” a separate delivery-only location that’s typically positioned in a less-trafficked, industrial a part of city, Reches tells ISRAEL21c.
“Whenever you order a pizza, you don’t care the way it’s made, simply that it comes on time, it’s heat and engaging and suitable for eating. We’re ghosting the ghost kitchen.”
Shamai goes one step additional.
“In a few years, there received’t be one individual working within the fast-food supply enterprise,” he claims.
This additionally suits with Velocity’s funding philosophy. Velocity was established simply as Covid-19 began.
“They wished to seek out options to deal with this new world,” Reches says. “There was nobody out there to work throughout Covid however everybody wished to order pizza. They noticed a possibility – not simply due to Covid. It additionally suits the issues and the ache this sector had.”
A completely robotic kitchen may even observe provides, “so we all the time know when to order new tomato sauce or pepperoni,” Reches says.
Pilots now, bowls later
Hyper has been piloting its robotic kitchen in Israel with Pizza Hut and Yum! since 2021, and Shamai expects to robotize 10 present Israeli pizza kitchens in 2025.
In the meantime, the corporate is beginning trials with ghost kitchens in america and Asia. All that’s required is to hook up the container to electrical energy, water and sewage.
Pizza Hut is on board, naturally, however Shamai emphasizes that “the method is similar whether or not it’s Pizza Hut or Domino’s. The distinction is the dough, the aspect dishes and the particular substances,” Shamai says. In excessive tech lingo, which means Hyper is model agnostic.
Hyper will cost each a one-time setup charge and a proportion of gross sales. The shops’ operations might be remote-controlled from a central location.
Hyper’s 15 workers, primarily based in Petah Tikva, are engaged on the following growth:
Robotically ready “bowl meals” (stir fries, poke bowls, all types of Asian fast-food choices), adopted by burgers.
“Sixty p.c of the features we developed for pizza will transfer ahead to the following sort of retailer – even salad, ice cream or Mexican meals,” Reches notes.
For extra on Hyper Meals Robotics, click on right here.
