Velocity Ventures, Southeast Asia’s leading venture capital firm helping travel and hospitality solve industry challenges, will be the lead investor in Hyper Food Robotics (Hyper), a based in Israel which will launch its first fully autonomous robotic pizza kitchens in 2023.
With Hyper’s autonomous robot kitchens, it takes 8 minutes to cook a pizza for the end-to-end process and the kitchen can produce up to 120 pizzas per hour. An unmanned kitchen can operate three times more efficiently than a human-staffed kitchen by reducing labor and rental overhead, as well as minimizing food waste. The modular units are easy to transport, which guarantees easy scalability. Using AI technology, the robotic kitchen is able to ensure consistency in food quality and safety standards.
Hyper is the brainchild of Udi Shamai, Yariv Reches and Harel Shafran. CEO Udi is a well-known entrepreneur and owner of Pizza Hut Israel with over thirty years of running fast food restaurants. Faced with rising labor costs and difficulties recruiting the kitchen team, Shamai decided to explore how robotics and automation could alleviate persistent labor shortage issues. . He decided to bring together a team of experts in food, robotics and mechanics to design a fully self-contained store that can increase efficiency and reduce reliance on a hand- of human labor in the food service industry.
The goal is to design a total solution autonomous robotic kitchen for fast food restaurants that will replace the entire kitchen in a restaurant and automate the entire process from food preparation to cooking and even packaging. food for delivery without any kitchen crew needing to be involved. With modular self-contained kitchens, customers can essentially operate off-site catering services using a “plug and play” kitchen-in-a-box, ensuring ease of scalability while keeping manufacturing costs economical . Shamai is also committed to ensuring that quality assurance and food quality are not compromised.
Nicholas Cocks, Managing Partner of Velocity Ventures, said, “We are excited to invest in Future Restaurant Kitchen as we know restaurants around the world are facing a labor crisis. Our strategic roadmap at Velocity Venture is to identify and propel startups that will solve the problems faced by businesses in the hospitality and travel industry. Hyper’s robotic kitchen will be tomorrow’s disruptive technology for the foodservice industry as labor shortage issues escalate as more people now avoid back-end jobs . Automation and robotics can help businesses reduce labor costs and improve productivity by taking over repetitive tasks in the kitchen, allowing restaurants to redeploy their employees to other parts of the business. company that will improve the customer experience.
Udi Shamai, CEO and Co-Founder of Hyper Food Robotics “The arrival of Velocity Ventures as a lead investor is a major milestone for the team at Hyper. We launched our pilot store in October 2021 in Israel with Pizza Hut introducing a robotic kitchen that can prepare and cook pizza and side dishes. We look forward to exciting times as we grow and scale globally with the right partners. We aim to launch hyper “kitchens canned” globally by next year, which will be a game-changer for any foodservice operator wishing to deploy a cloud kitchen in which all automated technology and production areas are packed into a container self-cleaning shipping unit.”
Velocity Ventures is the most proactive investor in the travel and hospitality technology space in Southeast Asia and, including Hyper, has seven portfolio companies. The company also aims to make ten additional investments in the sector by the fourth quarter of 2023.
Hyper Food Robotics (Hyper) is a leading innovator in self-driving fast food. As a solution provider for food service operators, Hyper designs, builds and operates fully autonomous robotic box stores that can perform all functions in a fast food kitchen without the need for human labor. . Hyper’s Robotics Box kitchens are erected on a 40ft container platform and are equipped with easily reconfigurable robotic solutions, ensuring flexible scalability and mobility. This revolutionary concept will propel the restaurant industry towards operational process excellence as it seeks to help companies deploy cloud kitchens more quickly and easily. Hyper operates its Robotics Box kitchens as part of its end-to-end solutions, taking care of maintenance and supervision.
The company’s management team is made up of seasoned food, robotics and mechanical executives and CEO Udi Shamai is a well-known foodservice technology entrepreneur. Udi has 30 years of experience in managing fast food chains such as Dominos, Pizza Hut etc. (www.hyper-robotics.com)
Velocity Ventures is a Singapore-based venture capital firm solely focused on the Southeast Asian hospitality and travel industry. We invest in visionary entrepreneurs who are passionate about reshaping the hospitality and travel industry, with a focus on early-stage technology companies across 5 verticals: travel services, transportation, accommodation, catering & Drinks and experiences. (www.velocityventures.vc)