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Text｜You Yong

Editor: Zhou Luping

In early 2024, the ALOHA robot developed by Stanford University amazed the world. In the video, this humanoid robot walked back and forth, waving a spatula, and made dishes such as scrambled eggs with shrimp, roasted chicken with scallops, and lettuce with oyster sauce. This makes people wonder, is technology so advanced now?

But the cooking robot in real life is not like the scene in the video, it is more of an automated cooking, or a multi-functional food processor. Before this, many manufacturers have been making pots and cooking more intelligent and fool-proof, such as adding a weighing function to the pot, adding an automatically rotating spatula to the pot lid, and adding a screen with built-in recipes next to the pot.You just need to prepare the food and seasonings.Just follow the machine's fixed steps and you don't have to stir it yourself. It can clean itself automatically afterwards.。

At the same time, there are a lot of "IQ tax" statements on the Internet. The most typical one is that stir-frying is the simplest step that can be replaced by machines, and the troublesome part is preparing the food and cleaning the kitchen. Some people also think that the food made by the cooking robot lacks the flavor of the wok and soul.

01

Who is buying cooking robots?

Zhang Chen is a smart home enthusiast who likes to tinker with new and interesting things. Last year, he spent more than 4,000 yuan to buy a cooking robot made by Tinegan. He and his wife are not very good at cooking, so the cooking robot is one of their few options.

"Stir-friedThe taste and color of the dishes are OK,andVery complete recipes, and can cook regular dishes. "Zhang Chen said. Every day, he needs to prepare all the ingredients according to the recipe, and then mix salt and sugar into salt water and sugar water in proportion, and pour them into the stuffing box. The cooking machine will automatically add these ingredients and seasonings in turn. Many cooking robots also have screens, and users can also follow the screen prompts step by step.

Many people don't know how to cook, and one of the main reasons is that they can't control the heat and use the wrong seasonings. The cooking robot makes cooking a fool-proof operation, with guidance and prompt sounds for each step.

People who don’t want to cook or don’t know how to cook, but don’t want to eat takeout, are very typical users of cooking robots.Most of them are urban white-collar workers or mothers with children.The cooking robot hits their pain point - on the one hand, they want to cook by themselves and eat with peace of mind, and the cooking machine can provide process-based recipes and accurately control the seasoning; on the other hand, the machine always covers the pot when stir-frying to avoid oil smoke.

Momo is a housewife who immigrated to Australia. The situation in Australia is more special than in China. If you don’t cook at home, you basically have only two options:Ordering takeout is inconvenient and tastes bad; going to a restaurant is expensive and tastes bad.

For a family with children like hers, her life is heavily dependent on machines. In addition to the common washing machine, she also bought a dishwasher and a special bottle washing machine, which have become indispensable in her life.

In the first half of this year, Momo spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy Bosch's cooking robot Cookit, which was specially shipped from China to Australia. It can not only fry, deep-fry, stir-fry, but also make noodles as staple food. There are many recipes, so you don't have to think about it. The pot is deep and the temperature can reach 200 degrees, which is very convenient for frying and has enough energy when cooking. "Basically, as long as I eat at home, I try different functions every day."

She knows how to cook, but she feels very tired because she has to stand and stir all the time, and she also has to deal with a lot of oil smoke.What she usually does is prepare the ingredients and then ask her husband to cook. Now she finds that the machine works better than her husband.

For example, Cookit’s selling point is precise temperature control. The cooking robot can help it better control the temperature and time. For example, when frying tempura, the temperature and minutes can be precisely controlled.

In order to meet the needs of different scenarios, another mother who bought multiple cooking robots told Digital Intelligence Frontline that she usuallyUse Tineco for Chinese food and Thermomix for Western and Chinese pastries. Tineco is smarter in cooking, but it has no blades and cannot grind or knead dough. But Thermomix is ​​not good at making Chinese dishes.

02

Pain points and shortcomings that need to be resolved

After trying it for two weeks, Zhang Chen finally decided to return it.

He didn’t see anyone around him using a cooking robot, and even after he bought one, his friends laughed at him, saying it was a waste of money. His parents’ generation found it even harder to understand, thinking it was a useless thing.

Of course, he returned the goodsIt's not because of other people's opinions or words. It's because of the high price of more than 4,000 yuan and the mismatched smart experience.。

For example, the ratio of ingredients and seasonings is fixed. Two tomatoes fried with two eggs correspond to 4 grams of salt. But if a guest comes to your house one day and pours four eggs into the pot, although the cooking robot has an automatic weighing function, even if it knows that you put four eggs, it will not actively add seasonings, and the user will need to add them himself.

"You have to press buttons at every step, so it's better to just fry it yourself," Zhang Chen said. "Every time you finish cooking and wash the pot, you may have to take it off, wash the pot lid yourself, and then wipe the stove."

"I bought this, I must be a lazy person. But since I am lazy, the hardest step is actually preparing the food and washing the pot.It's just stir-fry, and then help me add some seasoning, you will think it's not worth the price" Zhang Chen said. The cooking machine's intelligence level is average, the operating system is a bit rough, and the interface is prone to lag.

In addition, Zhang Chen also needs to cut vegetables and clean the kitchen by himself. Tineco's Food Mall also provides semi-finished clean vegetables. These dishes have QR codes on the packaging. After scanning on the cooking machine, you can jump directly to the cooking steps, realizing the connection between ingredients and cooking robots.

However, the price of fresh vegetables is much higher than what he bought in the vegetable market. Not only is there a threshold for free shipping, but there is also no way to deliver them in time. One needs to place an order several days in advance and have it delivered by courier. In Jilin City where he is located, it usually takes two days to receive the goods.

One netizen told Digital Intelligence that she spent more than 13,000 yuan to buy French kitchen appliance brand Majestic. Stewed dishes such as stewed potatoes and pork ribs and corn and pork ribs soup tasted good, but dishes that required stir-frying, such as stir-fried cauliflower and stir-fried garlic moss, tasted bad.The smell did not satisfy her. She felt it was very troublesome and inconvenient to wash.。

"All automatic cooking machines for individual users require users to prepare ingredients, wash pots, and prepare seasonings. The problem is that people who can't even cook, how can they have the time to do all these?" This is a question posed by a netizen.

Some people also complained that the cooking robot’s firepower was not enough, and the dishes it cooked sounded like stews; there were blind spots in automatic cleaning, and it often needed to be disassembled and cleaned manually.

The high price also hinders many people's enthusiasm for experienceAmong the top-selling products on JD.com, there are devices ranging from 400 to 500 yuan from Jiesai and Joyoung, to 3,000 to 4,000 yuan from Tineco and Xiaomi, and more than 10,000 yuan from Bosch. However, if you want to have a good experience, according to feedback from many users, you basically have to spend more than 3,000 to 4,000 yuan.

"This product is still in its very early stages," said Li Zisen, founding partner of Star Capital.Now it is mainly to meet some niche needs of specific groups of people."There are too few capitals and manufacturers entering this track, and there is no strong push to promote this category, which makes the product maturity and market education far from enough.

In fact, cooking robots have made a lot of progress in terms of product maturity in the past few years. In the past, every step from adding ingredients to adding materials required the user to operate it by themselves, which seemed very useless. Now many products are equipped with feeding boxes to achieve automatic feeding.

Not long ago, Aowei Cloud Network also released a piece of data.In the first half of 2024, my country's online sales of cooking robots reached 67,000 units, a significant increase of 82.1% year-on-year.The full-year online sales forecast is expected to reach 140,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 54.4%. Tineco revealed that at the beginning of 2024, the sales of Tineco Foods increased by more than 300% year-on-year.

Although the growth rate seems fast, the base is small. Compared with the categories of sweeping robots (over 4 million units shipped annually in China) and dishwashers (1.94 million units),The shipment volume of cooking robots is still a small number。

However, the number of consumer-oriented cooking machine brands has not increased significantly in recent years. After 2017, Joyoung, Supor, Fotile, Thermomix, Tineco and others have successively launched cooking robots.

Xiaomi Mijia launched aMijia cooking robotAt that time, Lei Jun also posted a promotional post on Weibo. This product, which was priced at 5,999 yuan, was often criticized for inaccurate material placement, long cooking time, unclean pot washing and high price. The Mijia cooking robot has not launched any new models since then.

Mibo, a brand under Fotile, also launched a cooking robot, but it is no longer available on the market. It was a flash in the pan. "The overall feeling is that it has not developed and has very high requirements for users."

03

The commercial market is heating up

Compared with these products for personal and family use, there is another categoryCooking robots are specially designed for commercial scenarios such as hotels, chain restaurants, and canteens. They are used earlier and more widely than C-end products.

The form and demand of these products are very different from those of C-end products. They are often large and have a large cylinder. They pursue efficiency and standardization to reduce costs. They can well balance the needs of all parties at present: consumers want fresh food, the catering industry wants to reduce costs and increase efficiency, and chefs want to have a more decent job.

The 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics brought this track to the limelight. The organizers of the Winter Olympics equipped the smart restaurant in the main media center with 120 meal-making robots, which can run 24 hours a day. The appearance of cooking robots in large-scale events also brought cooking robots into the public eye. In the following years, capital has also tilted towards this track.

Not long ago, the cooking robot companyBian Technology announced that it has received nearly 100 million yuan in financingThe investment list behind the company includes Professor Li Zexiang's Clearwater Bay Fund. The founder, Chen Rui, is also a serial entrepreneur who helped the company complete three rounds of financing in a year and a half.

Then, former Meituan executive Lao K foundedOak Deer Technology also announced that it has received nearly 200 million yuan in strategic investmentThe investors behind it include not only top VCs such as IDG and Source Code Capital, but also Internet giants such as JD.com and Tencent.

Most of the customers of these two cooking robot companies areIt is a restaurant chain and hotel。

At present, Oak-Deer's Cuisine Lion has been used in 1,500 stores in China, mainly covering restaurants, hotels, large corporate canteens, nursing homes, etc. The buffet restaurant of Foshan Hilton uses Cuisine Lion products.

Li Zisen, financial advisor of Bending Technology and founding partner of Star Capital, told Digital Intelligence Frontline that the application of cooking robots on the B-side mainly comes from the needs of three aspects:First, with the aging trend, it is inevitable that machines will replace humans.The job of a chef is rather special and it takes time to learn something quickly. It may take two to three years to train a chef. It is very hard and tiring. Young people don't want to do it and the turnover rate is high. There is a strong demand for machines to replace people.

Second,The chain rate of catering is getting higher and higherBy replacing chefs with machines to serve food, the speed and standardization of serving food can be improved, solving the cost problem of the kitchen. In fact, chain restaurants are also the market with a relatively strong demand for cooking robots.

For example, the restaurant chain brand Lao Xiang Ji purchased 12 smart cooking robots in 2021 and put them into trial operation in four stores in Hefei. Based on the trial operation, Lao Xiang Ji will gradually put smart cooking robots into use in more than 1,000 stores across the country.

Another chain restaurant company, Xiaocaiyuan, disclosed in its IPO prospectus that in 2023, Xiaocaiyuan has already used cooking robots in its stores to achieve "precise seasoning and stable taste of dishes."The price of a cooking robot is 50,000 yuanIn this IPO, Xiaocaiyuan plans to use the 150 million yuan raised to purchase 3,000 cooking robots.

Third,The demand for Chinese food exportFor example, in a hotel in Hokkaido or Northern Europe, it is often difficult to recruit a chef who can cook Chinese food, but consumers have this kind of catering demand.

Bending Technology's products have been shipped to 17 countries and regions, and its customers include the world's leading catering groups and catering operators. Oak Deer Technology's products have also been launched in Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, the United States and other countries. In fact, in the Pearl River Delta area, there are already many companies that make cooking robots, and their products are mainly sold overseas.

04

What kind of imagination space will AI bring?

Although current cooking robots can already achieve automatic adding ingredients and automatic cleaning, from the user experience, these levels of intelligence are still not enough.

Although the effects shown in the ALOHA video are amazing, the ALOHA robot is not actually operating autonomously. There are still humans remotely controlling it behind the scenes, and the effects were only achieved after many attempts.

But the advancement of artificial intelligence technology has given cooking robots more possibilities.Tineco claims to have connected to ChatGPT to analyze data on cooking packagesWhen a user inputs a dish, the big model learns all the recipes in the cloud, and then automatically generates a data package based on the hardware characteristics of the cooking robot and user needs to meet the user's personalized needs.

After the latest round of financing, Oak Deer Technology will also focus onLayout of vision, sensor detection and other technologiesApplications in cooking robots include the launch of a new generation of vision-based AI cooking robots in 2025. AI will be used for temperature control, and can adapt to the optimal temperature, time and speed required for cooking according to the weight of ingredients and the starting pot temperature.

The cooking robot developed by Non-stop Technology is alsoAdopting TCTA algorithm technologyTeleCooking Translation Algorithm converts chefs’ pan-flipping skills and heat values ​​into hundreds of thousands of cooking data. Through machine learning and simulation, it records and restores the chefs’ pan-flipping and heat-control skills in a 1:1 manner, and preserves the chefs’ entire cooking process in the form of digital recipes.

"Current products have not yet reached the stage of true intelligence." Li Zisen said that current cooking robots basically run according to set program packages and rarely use AI.

In his opinion, the intelligence of the future can be tuned together. The machine knows your preferences. You may give a cooking robot several ingredients, and the AI ​​can recognize the dishes and weights. It knows what you are cooking and makes the corresponding cooking methods and seasonings. "It is equivalent to everyone having their own private chef, and everyone's taste is a model." Li Zisen said.

In addition to making the machine itself more intelligent,Cooking robot manufacturers are also helping catering companies accelerate digital transformationFor example, after customers place an order at the front desk, the information is directly transmitted to the cooking robot, reducing the number of times the information is transmitted. For example, Oak Deer Technology also mentioned some efforts in dish development and recipe authority, so there is no need to worry about the sudden loss of chefs, and the chain brand can also strengthen its control over franchise stores.

It is not difficult to find that the existence of cooking robots has solved some core problems in both the C-end and B-end markets. As a new thing, cooking robots have many shortcomings, but for many families and people with specific needs, more and more people are willing to try them. In the B-end commercial market, both capital and catering companies have shown strong interest.