This $25,000 robot wants to put your Starbucks barista out of business
This $25,000 robot wants to put your Starbucks barista
out of business
Cafe X is a start-up with a new robotic barista designed
to sling 120 cups of joe per hour.
The company was launched through a Thiel Foundation grant
and is backed by prestigious investors, such as Khosla Ventures.
The bot fulfills 300 to 400 orders a day.
Starbucks has no plans to add robots to its 20,000
locations, the company said.
Cafe X, an automated barista, could be the future of
coffee shops
By David Hochman May 8, 2018 May 8, 2018
The robot revolution is here, at least for your morning
caffeine fix. Cafe X Technologies is a new, $25,000 automated barista designed
by the award-winning team behind Dr. Dre's Beats headphones and speakers: the
Ammunition Group. The Jetsons-style coffeemaker can sling 120 cups of joe per
hour at specs that satisfy finicky roasters (and project partners) like Intelligentsia,
Ritual and Equator.
The robo unit is essentially a fully operational café
beneath a six-axis animatronic arm. Customers place orders on a kiosk
touchscreen or via the Cafe X app and receive a text when the drink is ready,
after about a minute of preparation. Like at a regular coffeehouse, you get a
multitude of beverage options: latte, single-origin espresso, matcha latte,
cortado and so on, and with different types of frothy milk, including organic
Swedish oat milk. Even the robot gestures are crafted to evoke a true coffee
bar experience. As it presents each cup to customers, the machine offers a
sweeping "ta-da!" gesture.
"We knew a robot could create an exceptional cup of
coffee, but we also wanted it to appear warm and friendly," said inventor
Henry Hu, 24, who conceived the idea in his second year at Babson College after
being stuck in a coffee line for too long at an airport. "The baristas to
me looked like factory workers," he said. "They were moving cups
around and pushing buttons, which made me think, 'I bet we can build a product
that automates these boring tasks way more efficiently."
Designing a consumer-friendly bot
With a $100,000 Theil Fellowship, Hu and two friends
built the bar protoype by hand from sheet metal in a San Mateo, California,
garage. After securing $5 million in seed funding from investors like Khosla
Ventures, Social Capital, Launch and Felicis Ventures, the project brought in
Ammunition, the respected design firm that also worked on Square's
point-of-service register and Lyft's dashboard "Glowstache." Hu and
his team's concept then attracted additional investors, including the Thiel
Foundation and Jason Calacanis, an early investor in Uber. To date the total
funding stands at $7 million.
Cafe X
"We're not trying to replace baristas or that
relationship customers have with them," said Victoria Slaker, Ammunition's
vice president of product design, who oversaw development. "But we saw an
opportunity to make something more beautiful and more interesting than a
standard vending machine that could also pour a mean cup of coffee." From
a design standpoint "the intention was to make the robot cool-looking but
not goofy," Slaker said, which is why the device does not have
"googly eyes, a face or an ironic mustache, despite how tempting that
was."
Cafe X launched last year at AMC Metreon and 578 Market
Street in San Francisco, and a second-generation model debuted this past
February in the heart of San Francisco's financial district at One Bush Plaza.
A human refills coffee beans and milk and cleans the unit at least once a day,
and a product specialist is available on site to educate customers and offer
tastings. The bot typically fulfills between 300 and 400 orders a day. Prices
are kept low, since there's little overhead. A basic cup of Americano coffee is
$3, and there's no need to tip.
"The idea of humans making coffee for 10 hours a day
is as crazy in 2018 as a tollbooth collector sitting in a metal box on a
freeway," said Jason Calacanis. "It's also torture for the customer.
Baristas get orders wrong, drink quality is wildly inconsistent, and coffee
places don't keep a record of every customer's past drink order — but you can
do all this with robotics."
Starbucks cult followers disagree. They love the charm of
the local barista cooking up their brews. Starbucks — the largest coffeehouse
restaurant in the world, with more than 20,000 locations — has no official plan
in the works to add robots, though the company does have a popular mobile app
that lets you order Frappuccinos on the go, track purchase history and identify
and save songs playing at your local Starbucks location.
Future prospects
With high demand and an even higher curiosity factor,
Cafe X is focused on scaling its manufacturing capabilities in 2018 and will be
launching additional locations in 2019. It's part of a growing robo-boom in the
food and beverage world. Panera is testing self-serving kiosks to increase
efficiency, and pizza robot company Zume has generated $48 million in funding,
with plans to service Bay Area delivery cravings by the end of this year.
That's not to say there aren't shortcomings for a venture
like Cafe X. Even with interest from franchise partners and corporate
locations, the supply chain is slow for new models. Hu said the company is
likely to produce only 15 new units this year. It's also unclear whether the
company can move beyond the novelty stage to become a part of customers'
everyday lives. One more downside: The device, as of now, cannot create fancy
latte art.
Public perception may be the biggest sticking point. As
Calacanis admitted, "With robotics, there's a right and wrong way to do
it, and if you're not careful from an experience and design standpoint, things
can get creepy."
Hu isn't worried. "I don't see the robot revolution
as a problem," he said. "The idea isn't to scare you or harm you in
any way. The point is to get you your coffee as quickly and deliciously as
possible."
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