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When I met the Momentum Machine guys here in San Francisco, I was shocked that they were planning to open a restaurant chain instead of licensing the technology
by anandkulkarni 14y ago
When I met the Momentum Machine guys here in San Francisco, I was shocked that they were planning to open a restaurant chain instead of licensing the technology out to existing players. Opening restaurants? Making food? Very un-startupy, right?
But it turns out that if anyone can do it, these guys can. The brick-and-mortar restaurant business is massive, bigger than many technology sectors, and prime for disruption with new food and models: there's a $184 billion global fast food market, a $2.1 trillion global market, and just about everybody needs to eat.
This has the potential elements of greatness: serious, hardcore mechanical engineers as founders, with a background in the restaurant industry. More power to John and Alex -- can't wait to try my first one.
- prewett 14y agoMcDonalds actually operates something like 30% of its stores directly instead so that it eats it's own dogfood. It can try out new ideas in a production setting, etc. My guess is that Momentum Machines is doing something similar. Think of it as a public-facing R&D center, not as unstartupy. Plus, "startupy" is about designing to scale up. Having a physical store is not necessarily unstartupy. Operating it as a mom-and-pop restaurant would be, but operating it with machines seems distinctly startupy. New store? No problem, rent the space, install the machines, boom, done!
- tfb 14y agoAh, man. I've been planning on doing the same thing as these guys for years, but I haven't yet had the time or the financial freedom (still relatively young) or the luck of environment. But this is just plain awesome to see someone way ahead of me with a working prototype. I knew there were plenty of people with the same idea... I just didn't expect to see it become a reality so soon!
- kokey 14y agoThere's so much potential in this industry, when making burgers, pizza and cocktails are done to a high standard with machines, ordering is done on terminals, it could drive the costs down for social venues in the cities and leave human staff to focus purely on customer service.
- HeyLaughingBoy 14y agoThe first company to produce a Redbox-like burger, fries & shake kiosk will make a mint. I can envision those in breakrooms of small businesses everywhere. Remember, not every business is in the middle of a city with plenty of restaurant choices nearby. If the company I work for didn't have a cafeteria, I'd be in for at least a 3 mile drive to the closest fast food place if I forgot to bring lunch.
- kordless 14y agoThey should call it McSwineys!