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Restaurant Industry Robotics
Jun 21, 2022
Mike Bell, CEO of Miso Robotics, on automating across the value chain of fast casual food
Explore our industry hub for more information on restaurant industry robotics.
The restaurant industry demands fast-paced, agile, and timely solutions, and sometimes, it needs something 'more than human' to accomplish high-level precision—like a robot. Mike Bell, CEO of Miso Robotics, speaks of Robots-as-a-Service (RaaS), a solution that addresses the needs of the production process, some as commonplace but technical as a frying station. Contrary to popular views, he claims that robots aren’t meant to replace humans but take over repetitive, laborious tasks that were made for machines in the first place! Miso Robotics is by far the highest-funded startup we cover under the robotic food and beverage prep spaces. Featured in our EDGE100, Miso is indeed a promising startup to watch.
Source: A combination of data compiled on SPEEDA Edge.
See our EDGE100 report to see Miso Robotics' rank!
The following interview was conducted by Sacra—May, 2022
Background
Mike Bell is the CEO of Miso Robotics. We talked to Mike about the value chain of the restaurant's back-of-house, the changing equation around labor in America's casual restaurants, as well as the crowdfunding strategy that has brought in $60M of investment from the public.
Questions
1. Can you start by giving us a brief overview of Miso Robotics and the core problem you're solving?
2. As you transition out of pure R&D mode, what does your sales process and go-to-market look like?
3. Why is automation the path forward for restaurants?
4. Can you talk about the roll out of your drinks station?
5. Where are we in the history of restaurant automation? What are the biggest challenges that have kept us from seeing a lot of these solutions out in the real world?
6. What is the difference between automation in the front of the house and the back of the house?
7. Is Miso gearing up to replace humans? Or is it closer to an Amazon model, where there's a robot doing 95% of the work, and a human steps in at certain points?
8. Do you have a roadmap in mind for how many restaurants could be using your technology? Are there restaurants where it doesn’t make sense?
9. What does the break-even period look like for restaurants?
10. Have you looked at ghost kitchens and dark stores as customers for Miso?
11. Can you talk a bit about the customer education challenge?
12. It sounds like there's two main technical challenges here: the machine learning/computer vision side, and then the scaling up production side. What are the challenges with the factory and mass production side of this?
13. You mentioned the fry station and the drink station being wedge use cases. Where else do you see this going? What other jobs does Miso want to solve?
14. Miso has been one of the most prominent companies to raise money through equity crowdfunding. Why has raising via equity crowdfunding been an important part of the strategy for Miso?
15. Do you feel that operating as if you were a public company has helped Miso operate better?
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