So they finally came out with the rumored restaurant, with 8 years + USD$25M down. Spyce[0] (slammed by HN[1]) beat them to it, on a smaller budget, with the sa

So they finally came out with the rumored restaurant, with 8 years + USD$25M down. Spyce[0] (slammed by HN[1]) beat them to it, on a smaller budget, with the same 'restaurant with partial automation' model. By all accounts (including the friendly founder of Bistrobot, who was unfairly slammed in the article), US regulations are not friendly toward innovation in this space making a restaurant-based launch an effective requirement. Previous statements from the company included Our alpha machine replaces all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. It does everything employees can do except better and that US restaurants can save USD$150,000/year on staff salaries. Current reality: many staff, USD$16/hr each, manual finishing, manual preparation of sides and drinks, manual cleaning. In 2016 I founded Infinite Food here in China. We're developing a fully automated model more akin to a wholly owned and operated network of futuristic vending machines and logistics fleet than a restaurant. Consumers order and pay through an app. Starting from fresh ingredients stored in a fridge within each unit, we cook noodle, pasta and soup dishes to taste, with an average 3 minute hot meal preparation, packaging and retail time and mere seconds for cold dishes. Think ramen/soba/udon/nyangmyeon/pho/pad thai/laksa/various pasta/various Chinese noodles with total customization. In addition, we provide real time nutritional feedback on personalization, allow for ordering in any human language and 24x7x365 availability. Our core idea is to get physically closer to the high density Asian urban consumer than any other food retail option, and offer a broader choice of fresher food. Early on we looked at the whole problem took the strategy of simultaneous innovation at the appropriate layer: central facility, logistics network or service location based upon available technology and allowable tradeoffs. There's no public evidence any of the US players have much investment in this area, whereas we have a provisional business method patent filed for our solution with more on the way. Currently we are relocating across the Pearl River Delta from Shenzhen to launch operations in Zhuhai and take advantage of the new HK-Macau bridge while hedging regulatory risk across three launch markets (HK/Macau/Guangdong - China's most populous province) and are raising Series A to deploy 300 locations next year. Total relative spend vs. MM/Creator: ~5% + 1/3 time. Some of the things we've achieved they haven't: full personalization, zero in-field maintenance, true self-cleaning, automated packaging and cutlery provisioning, logistics innovations. Estimate net profit/sale in initial markets: ~USD$2+. Max hot sales/hr: 80. Max cold sales/hr:200+. Meals/restock: 200+. Parallel meal prep.: Up to 4x. Footprint: 2x1 square meters. Prospective investors are welcome to check us out at http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ or email in profile. [0] https://www.spyce.com/ https://www.spyce.com/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792371