The Chain Of Restaurants In Biguiyuan Is Facing The Challenge Of The Chain Of Restaurants

The application of robots in modern restaurants is not new. In the past few years, with the continuous change of service robot technology, "robot restaurant" has been emerging. From hamburger cooking to coffee brewing, robots are finding their niche in the catering industry.

The application scenarios and prospects of robot restaurant make this track never lack of runners in the past ten years, and the "role" is more and more rich - from the order taker to the kitchen, and then to the distribution, the technological progress makes the robot in the restaurant utilization rate is increasing.

In the San Francisco Bay area, there have been a series of star start-up companies such as zume pizza, cafex, eatsa, etc., which are sought after by capital including Softbank. KFC, McDonald's and other global fast food chains are constantly moving forward on the track of robot restaurants. They use AI voice system to receive customers, and robot cooks who are busy in the background appear one after another.

The normalization of epidemic prevention and control has further accelerated this speed. Dr. Xiao ran, deputy general manager of Qianxi robot catering group (hereinafter referred to as Qianxi group) under country garden group, told the 21st century economic reporter that robot restaurant reduced contact with people, adapted to the demand of "sanitation and isolation" during the epidemic period, and reduced the human cost, which could provide new ideas for the development of catering industry after the epidemic.

At present, the general manager of Xiyong Group Co., Ltd. and Mr. Dai Xianglu, the general manager of the catering industry in Dongguan City, have also provided 6 robots for the catering industry in Dongguan Chain.

Dr. Dai Xianglu said that relying on the central kitchen, Qianxi group's robot restaurant will further cover Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao in 2020. At the same time, the first central kitchen has entered the design stage in Changsha, and the central kitchen in Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei and Yangtze River Delta will be launched within this year, and some satellite stores will be set up in major large and medium-sized cities in China.

China National Food Group Co., Ltd. Information map

Robot restaurant from gimmick to business

In the past, robot restaurants were often regarded as "gimmicks", and there were not many application scenarios that could be widely used. In various international or domestic technology exhibitions, robot cooks can always attract the attention of participants. Among the top ten restaurants recommended by many travel magazines, one of them is "robot restaurant".

In the San Francisco Bay area, where technology is cutting-edge, several star robot restaurant companies have also begun strategic changes in recent development: zume pizza, a start-up company specializing in robot pizza, expanded rapidly after obtaining Softbank investment in 2018, but decided in early 2020 to focus more on food packaging and providing automated production and delivery systems; cafe operated by robots X decided in early 2020 to close its three cafes in downtown San Francisco and focus its strategy on the expansion of airport cafes. Creator, a hamburger robot restaurant invested by Google's parent company alphabet, still maintains the speed of making a $6 hamburger in five minutes.

An investor who invests in catering automation projects thinks that zume pizza and cafe X are faced with a problem. They go too far on the road of future development, but they are not close to the actual needs of people for catering, or beyond people's cognition of restaurants.

The investor pointed out that start-ups such as zume pizza have grown too fast after obtaining investment, and investors' demand for them to change from "scale-up at all costs" to "must really make profits now", which is divorced from the existing application scenarios, causing them to stall on the development track.

But on the track of robot restaurant, investors and innovators are still coming one after another. According to pitchbook, a data company, 440 venture capital deals were conducted in the global food technology industry in 2019, with a total investment of about $13.5 billion. Among them, there are 23 venture investments for the food technology industry to upgrade automation solutions, with a total investment of about 1.3 billion US dollars.

In addition to venture capital, industrial giants are also in the field continued to add weight. LG Electronics announced the development and use of kitchen robot in November 2019, and announced the launch of cloi servebot in early February 2020, which has been put into use in a restaurant in Seoul. From the back kitchen to the front room, LG Electronics is increasingly enthusiastic about the robot restaurant.

Robot restaurants have also maintained a high popularity in China in recent years. For example, HEMA launched a robot restaurant in 2018, and Haidilao built a "Haidilao smart restaurant" with robots serving dishes in 2019.

Country garden Qianxi Group officially opened foodom Tianjiang gourmet Kingdom robot restaurant in Shunde, Foshan, Guangdong Province in late June, following the water test in Guangzhou in January 2020. As the first robot restaurant complex in the world, it has 2000 square meters of operation space, more than 40 sets of catering robot equipment, and can serve more than 600 people at the same time.

Since its establishment in May 2019, Qianxi group has developed 61 kinds of prototypes, such as Hamburg robot, cloud rail system, integrated automatic steamer, hot pot intelligent catering robot and automatic logistics system. Among them, cooking robot and ice cream robot have entered the stage of mass production.

In more than one year since its establishment, Qianxi group has achieved rapid progress from R & D and manufacturing, system construction to overall operation.

Dr. Xiao ran, deputy general manager of Qianxi group, said that before the epidemic, the daily turnover of foodom robot Chinese restaurant in Zhujiang New Town of Guangzhou could reach 60000 yuan. Affected by the epidemic, the robot Chinese restaurant faced the situation of Limited passenger flow and insufficient dining people. However, the investment of robots made the restaurant cost lower and the overall loss was much less than that of other restaurants.

Business closed loop efficiency and quality improvement

As mentioned by the investors mentioned above, the robot restaurant should be matched with the application scenarios. To achieve steady development under the existing conditions, there are many considerations.

Xi has been committed to building a chain of restaurants with the goal of "building a chain of restaurants with the goal of providing the largest solution for the catering industry in the past.

Qiu MI, assistant president of country garden group and general manager of Qianxi robot catering group, pointed out that since the establishment of the group, the company has invested nearly 300 million yuan in R & D and operation. The shortest period of investment in a single store is about 18 days after detailed calculation.

"The company will make a profit by opening robot restaurants on a large scale, supplying single equipment for catering robots, and providing overall solutions for intelligent transformation of traditional dining space," Qiu said

Country Garden Group's own industrial chain advantages have laid the foundation for the rapid development of Qianxi. From the point of view of Xibi group's supply chain of raw materials and lobster, Xibi group has established a supply base in many aspects such as poultry and lobster. At the same time, we should promote standardized production and procurement to lay the foundation for the open source of food materials for robot catering.

In the back-end, Qianxi group's robot restaurant and stand-alone equipment can provide intelligent catering services for the whole society, including country garden community, hotels, education, and commercial projects, so as to achieve collaborative improvement and linkage efficiency with the main business.

Qiu Mi said that Qianxi is committed to becoming the world's largest catering service provider, so all models should go hand in hand, including franchising, joint venture and self support.

Dai Xianglu said that Qianxi's business will mainly have three types. Specifically, the offline foodom robot restaurant will take Chinese food, fast food and hot pot as the three main business formats to provide consumers with a diversified and scientific dining experience.

The other business is to supply catering robot stand-alone equipment, which is widely used in hotels, scenic spots, hospitals, communities, schools, office buildings and other public areas, covering hamburger, pot rice, ice cream, crayfish, noodles and other categories of supply, 24-hour no contact, uninterrupted supply.

In addition, Qianxi group will also provide overall solutions for intelligent transformation of traditional dining space, such as government departments and canteens of large enterprises, to meet the needs of unmanned meal delivery, robot cooking and standardized production in the "post epidemic" era.

At the end of June, Qianxi cooperated with Beijing Beichen Industrial Group Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Beichen group") to carry out comprehensive strategic cooperation around the smart catering supply of all exhibition centers of Beichen group. The two sides will take the opportunity of the second phase project cooperation of the National Convention Center as an opportunity to improve the guarantee ability of catering supply for high-level and super large-scale activities through the technological advantages of robots, so as to cope with the changing demands of consumers.

Help Dawan district "intelligent manufacturing"

In the view of the investors mentioned above, the robot restaurant can realize the application scenarios in many aspects, such as large-scale dining demand, improvement of health standards, etc.

The aforementioned investors told the reporter of the 21st century economic report that robots are widely used in catering. Firstly, the robot can simplify the cooking process, and the accuracy of the robot can significantly reduce the error rate of dishes. The robot without the limitation of cooking skills can make dishes of different styles, and is more efficient than human beings. Second, in the long run, robotic mechanical labor and longer working hours can reduce operating costs for restaurants.

In addition, the aforementioned investors believe that robots can provide better experience for diners, and its consistent fast and reliable service can bring pleasure to diners and make more repeat customers in restaurants. At the same time, robots are attractive to new customers, especially children, and help restaurants attract more new customers.

According to Dr. Dai Xianglu, the expansion of Qianxi's scale will also drive the development of intelligent equipment in the upstream and downstream.

At present, Qianxi group has more than 900 employees and more than 300 core R & D teams. Among the core teams, doctors and masters account for 87%. More than 80 R & D projects have been established and more than 500 patent applications have been submitted.

Meanwhile, Qianxi announced at the end of June that it would join hands with Siemens to build the first IOT platform for smart catering industry. Dai Xianglu said that the production mode, operation mode and ecological chain of traditional catering industry were innovated and reconstructed, and a new ecology of smart catering industry was constructed.

Siemens will provide mindsphere, an open cloud based Internet of things operating system, to Qianxi group to help it establish an IOT laboratory in catering industry based on mindsphere, fully realize intelligent operation and maintenance based on cloud platform, build traceability system of whole industry chain, and realize digital supervision of food safety.

In addition, Siemens will support Qianxi group to develop intelligent catering equipment IOT platform, access standard and smart catering cloud platform, and provide advanced virtual debugging and other digital technologies to support Qianxi group to accelerate its development in the field of catering robots.

At the same time, it will promote the development of intelligent technology in Guangdong, Macao and other industries.

Qiu Mi said that in 2020, Qianxi group robot restaurant will further cover Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Bay Area Based on the central kitchen, and realize the batch production of single robot equipment. It is estimated that the mass production of single robot equipment will be about 5000.

In addition, in the next two years, Qianxi will build a nationwide robot catering supply chain system, and the central kitchen will further cover the Pearl River Delta, Yangtze River Delta, Beijing Tianjin Hebei, Hunan, Hubei and other regions. Chiu Mi said Qianxi will open robot restaurants on a large scale in Dawan district and even across the country.