Ask Yegor Traiman about whether robots or humans are better at making food, and he’ll side with his fellow carbon-based lifeforms.
“What might be super easy for humans is very difficult for robots,” Traiman told The Spoon.
But this doesn’t mean the CEO of food robotics startup Remy Robotics thinks humans should prepare all our food. In fact, he thinks robots should an integral part of the kitchen. The answer, Traiman explains, lies in creating a world in which the robots can succeed. In other words, we need to build kitchens around the robot rather than force-fitting a robot into human-centered kitchens.
“To really reach mass market adoption and really solve the labor shortage, you need to put the robot at the center.”
For Traiman, that means having culinary engineers build systems with the robots in mind from the start.
“It’s not about a fancy Michelin star chef,” said Traiman. “It’s really about engineers from the culinary side which invent the new cooking methods, frameworks and techniques for the robots to make them as efficient as they can.”
As for the robots, Traimain believes they need to highly flexible, a far cry from what he sees from most of today’s food robotics startups.
“Most of the food robot startups end up automating just a single process like flipping burgers,” said Traiman. “But can you gain mass market adoption with a single process automation?”
According to Traiman, his company also started down that path and tried to automate high-volume processes like burger assembly and pizza cutting, but realized they needed to focus less on high-volume mechanical solutions and instead build systems with software-defined intelligence and flexibility.
“We quickly realized, it’s a short time to market, but it’s not scalable. We immediately switched to more complicated deep tech based on AI, a true smart robotics application.”
That flexibility allows Remy Robotics to cook a wide variety of food types, which is crucial to the bigger vision of the company. Today the company operates its own robot-powered dark kitchens in Barcelona and Paris and creates food under the company’s own in-house virtual brands which is delivered through third party service providers like Deliveroo and UberEats. Longer term, however, Traiman sees his company as a B2B platform for any restaurant operator who wants to leverage automation in a scalable way to use Remy as a kitchen-as-a-service.
“Even though there is hype, no one in this business has found a sustainable business model yet,” said Traiman. “Delivery service providers are struggling. Virtual restaurants are also kind of struggling. Without the help of disruptive technology, there is no way out and I really believe robotics can make it better, cheaper and more reliable.”
You can see Remy Robotics and connect with Traimain at the Smart Kitchen Summit next week (get your ticket here). You can watch our full interview with Traiman below.