kitchen-automation
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Middleby knows what happens before dinner
Behind the menu sits a second business: the machines that make a kitchen work. Middleby built a portfolio around that business, then began cutting away the parts that no longer fit.
Nala Robotics and the problem of the last dirty plate
A robot can fry a wing. Nala Robotics wants it to sauce the wing, box the pizza and put away the dishes, too. The interesting part is what happens between those tasks.
Stephen Klein
Stephen Klein is the co-founder and CEO of Hyphen, a San Jose food-robotics company that builds the automated Makeline - a hybrid manual-and-robotic assembly system that runs beneath the counter to build bowls and plates at up to 350 meals per hour. A self-described foodservice fanatic since childhood, Klein started a text-to-order frozen yogurt business in college, helped scale Instacart in its early days, and ran operations at robotic coffee bar Cafe X before launching Hyphen in 2020 with co-founder Daniel Fukuba. Hyphen has since drawn investment from Tiger Global, Chipotle and Cava and deployed systems with chains and foodservice operators across the country.
Hyphen
Hyphen builds the Makeline, an automated meal-assembly system that sits beneath a restaurant's counter and portions and plates digital and takeout orders while staff handle the guest-facing line above it. Paired with its CulinaryOS software for menus, orders, inventory and labor, the San Jose company aims to raise peak-hour throughput and order accuracy without replacing kitchen workers. Founded in 2020 by Stephen Klein and Daniel Fukuba, Hyphen has raised roughly $59M and counts Chipotle and Cava among its strategic investors and pilot customers.
The Restaurant That Refused to Wait for You
Shin Starr spent years putting a kitchen inside a truck. The clever part was not removing the driver. It was teaching dinner to arrive at the same moment as the customer.