Nala Robotics

Nala Robotics (Nala) offers artificial intelligence (AI)-powered food-making robots, while also operating its own restaurants. Its primary product offerings include “Nala Chef” and “Pizzaiola,” its multi-cuisine robotic chefs, and “The Wingman,” an autonomous fry station. The company claims that its technology is capable across price points from fast food and quick service to cloud kitchens and even fine dining. The company is headquartered in Illinois with strategic planning and development offices in California, India, and Ukraine. Nala Robotics opened its first restaurant in Naperville, Illinois in November 2021, with plans to open 10 restaurant locations in 2022, and scale operations to include 100 locations by 2024.

The “Nala Marketplace” pitches its customizable robot chefs toward restaurants, food chains, and other parties, facilitating the opening of their own proprietary cloud-based kitchens. It is offered on a restaurant-as-a-service basis to partnering companies.

Nala Chef is equipped with articulating robotic arms that can replicate dishes from any type of cuisine 24/7, including pizza, burgers, chicken wings, and international cuisines such as Italian, Thai, Mexican, Chinese, and Indian. Customers can also subscribe to customized meal plans based on dietary requirements. In addition, it can prepare prepackaged foods that can be sold at local grocery stores, restaurants, and convenience stores. Its Pizzaiola is a fully automated modular robotic chef that is primarily pitched toward pizza making. The menu can also be expanded to include pasta, salads, burgers, wings, etc. The unit is also equipped with a robotic arm for food handling and with natural language processing and machine learning capabilities. It can cook up to 50 8–18-inch pizzas an hour, customized using 5 dough types, 4 types of sauces, and 35 varieties of toppings and cheeses. The unit is available for leasing for a monthly fee starting at USD 7,000. Its autonomous fry station “The Wingman,” can pick up food items such as chicken wings and French fries, load them into the fry basket, dip them in oil, and shake off excess. It also comes with multi-fryer configurations that simultaneously send different cooked foods to individual seasoning bins to add spices and sauces. The Wingman comes equipped with AI, a high-performance camera, and vision systems to improve efficiency and maintain consistency of deep frying. Users can rent out the system starting at USD 2,999 per month.

In December 2022 , Nala Robotics introduced a new robotic dishwasher, “Spotless by Nala.” Spotless by Nala provides a complete dishwashing solution, from scrubbing to storage, and will perform tasks such as removing leftovers, rinsing, cleaning, drying, stacking, and storing a wide variety of utensils and kitchenware, including cookware, cutlery, dishware, and glassware. The dishwasher uses high-performance camera systems and machine learning to perform these tasks. In May 2023 , the company announced the launch of “Bowl Bot”, a salad-making bot that enables its users to create a customized salad and burrito bowls using a selection of 28 different bases, proteins, and toppings and “Sandwich Bot”, a sandwich-making bot that allows its users to prepare customized sandwiches using a selection of 48 meats, vegetables, and cheeses and a variety of bread and sauces.

Key customers and partnerships

Nala Robotics signed its first customer partnership with Chicago-based pizza brand Slice Factory in June 2022, to supply Pizzaiola units. In September 2022, the company also partnered with Saudi Excellence Company, a Riyadh-based tech company, to develop and deliver automated AI-based food services to restaurants in Saudi Arabia. In April 2024 , Nala Robotics announced a collaboration with Re-Up, an AI-convenience store company, to integrate Nala Robotics' autonomous fry station, The Wingman, into Re-Up's convenience stores.