Velocity Ventures, SoutheastAsia’s leading venture capital firm focused on helping the travel and hospitality industry solve business challenges, will be the anchor investment for Hyper Food Robotics (Hyper), an Israeli company that will launch its first fully autonomous robotic pizza kitchen in 2023.
With Hyper’s autonomous robotic kitchen, it takes 8 minutes to cook a pizza for the final order and the kitchen can produce 120 pizzas per hour. An unmanned kitchen can operate three times more efficiently compared to a manned kitchen by reducing labor costs and wages, as well as reducing food waste. Special units are easily transported ensuring ease of expansion. Using AI technology, the robotic kitchen can ensure consistency in food quality and safety.
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 and has over thirty years of managing fast food restaurants. Faced with rising labor costs and challenges in hiring kitchen staff, Shamai decided to explore how robotics and automation could alleviate the ongoing problem of labor shortages. . He decided to assemble a team of experts in the fields of food, robotics, and engineering to design a fully autonomous store that could increase efficiency and reduce dependence on a worker in the food service industry.
The goal is to design a kitchen box robotic solutions that can replace an entire restaurant kitchen and automate the entire process from preparing food to cooking and even storing food for delivery without and the need of any kitchen team that it involves. With dedicated independent kitchens, customers can operate food services outside the home using a “plug and play” box kitchen. , ensuring ease of maintenance while keeping production costs economical. Shamai is also committed to ensuring that quality and food quality are not compromised.
Nicholas Cocks, Managing Partner of Velocity Ventures, said: “We are excited to invest in Future Restaurant Kitchen because we know restaurants around the world are facing a staffing crisis. Our strategic plan at Velocity Venture is to identify and catalyze startups that solve problems facing the hospitality and travel industries. Hyper’s robotic kitchen will be tomorrow’s disruptive technology for the food service industry due to the increasing challenges of labor shortages as many people refuse to work at home. Automation and robotics can help companies reduce labor costs and improve productivity by eliminating repetitive tasks in the kitchen, allowing restaurants to redeploy their workers to other areas of the business. to improve the customer experience.
Udi Shamai, CEO and Co-Founder of Hyper Food Robotics “Having Velocity Ventures come on board as our anchor investment is a very important thing for the team at Hyper. We launched our pilot store in October 2021 in Israel and Pizza Hut introduced a kitchen cabinet that can prepare and cook pizzas and side dishes. We see exciting times ahead as we grow and expand globally with the right partners. We hope to launch the Hyper “robotic box kitchens” internationally next year which will be a study for any food service operator who wants to install a cloud kitchen that is equipped with all automation technology and production zones in self-cleaning. unit.”
Velocity Ventures is the most active investor in the travel and hospitality technology space in Southeast Asia and includes Hyper, which has seven affiliated companies. The company also expects to make ten additional investments in the sector in Q4 2023.
Hyper Food Robotics (Hyper) is a new leader in the field of independent fast food restaurants. As a food service provider solution, Hyper designs, builds, and fully operates robotic kiosks that can perform all tasks in a fast food kitchen without the need for a human. work Hyper’s Robotics Box Kitchens are built on a 40-foot container base and equipped with reusable robotic solutions, ensuring ease of transfer and flexibility in mobility. This concept will push the food service industry towards operational efficiency while trying to help businesses deploy cloud kitchens quickly and easily. Hyper operates their Box Robotics as part of its end-to-end, maintenance and vision solutions.
The company’s leaders are experts in the field of food, robotics, and technology and CEO Udi Shamai is a well-known entrepreneur in the field of restaurant technology. Udi has 30 years of experience in managing fast food chains such as Dominos, Pizza Hut and others. (www.hyper-robotics.com)
Velocity Ventures is a Singapore-based venture capital firm with a focus on the Hospitality and Travel industry in Southeast Asia. We invest in visionary entrepreneurs who are willing to reinvent the Hospitality and Travel sector, with a focus on early growth technology companies across 5 verticals: Travel Services, Transport, Housing , Food & Drinks, and Experiences. (www.velocityventures.vc)