Dining robot Battlefield: a little messy

The digital and intelligent transformation of the catering industry is entering the second stage, in which the combined service mode of AI robot and human continues to stimulate cost reduction and increase efficiency.

Different from the intelligent management system reform in the first stage, the application scenarios of food delivery and dish returning robots are characterized by high-frequency interaction and need to face consumers directly. Meanwhile, because they involve AI, Internet of Things, big data and other technologies, they have higher requirements for service providers.

Smart restaurants for the Winter Olympics have gone viral recently, with robot food serving and delivery scenes sparking heated public debate and a rosy vision for the future of dining. However, it can be seen that only a very complete and humanized scheme can be competent for such a comprehensive scenario.

The threshold is not low, but the rigid demand for robots in catering business is almost clear. One reason is the pressure of increasingly expensive human cost, and the other reason is that the work efficiency in some scenes is much higher than that of human. In recent years, well-known catering brands such as Haidilao, Quanjude and Grandma's have applied the scale of catering robots to practical service scenes.

And in the catering robot, or service robot this track, to pangolin, Qing Lang intelligence as the representative of the old robot players, and to Orion sky, Purdue technology as the representative of the new AI players, the battle is more and more intense, looking at the growing super cake.

How big is the cake?

How big is the catering robot market? 36KR previously released the "2020 Catering robot Industry Research Report" has given estimated data, based on 864,000 target merchants, the average use of 2 prevail, set the price of a single robot 50,000 to 80,000, the domestic catering robot market size is about 112.3 billion.

The actual demand may be far larger than this estimate, because the application scenarios of catering robots are not limited to catering stores, but also to medical institutions, hotels, offices, scenic spots and other scenes.

Taking hotels as an example, sofitel, Westin, Hilton, Atour and other well-known hotel chains have introduced such delivery robots to enhance their intelligence capabilities in the corresponding scene.

According to the 2021 China Hotel Industry Development Report, by the end of 2020, the total number of accommodation facilities in China reached 447,000, with a total of 16.204 million rooms. Accommodation facilities and guest rooms of this size can accommodate a sizeable number of catering robots.

It is worth noting that the application conditions of catering robot in the hotel scene are lower, because the hotel space layout rules can plan fixed routes, which is simpler than the scene of the catering industry.

The temptation of this track is more than that. In the catering industry, in addition to catering robots, dish returning robots and stir-frying robots have natural demand scenes.

Haidilao in 2021 has mentioned that it has applied intelligent pot machines in more than 70 stores. Purdue technologies has previously introduced robots dedicated to returnable trades, which can be used to close quickly and increase turnover rates. Country Garden's Qianxi Robot even launched a number of full-process food making robots, such as hamburger robot, Baozaifan robot, etc.

Therefore, in the long run, due to the promotion of intelligent upgrading in catering and other industries, the market space of catering delivery robots may grow into a trillion-level market.

Many melee

A track full of imagination, will inevitably lead to a large number of players to enter. As the catering robot app matures, the number of players on the track has grown into a free-for-all.

One group is AI start-ups represented by Purdue technology, Orion Sky, And Updi. Their advantages lie in algorithms and software. For example, Purdue technology's core technology is low-speed autonomous driving, while Orion Sky's core technology is full-chain AI technology including voice interaction and image recognition.

The second camp is the traditional manufacturing players represented by pangolins, whose advantages lie in industrial manufacturing ability and mass production ability. Pangolins, for example, started out as hydraulic equipment before transiting to service robot manufacturing.

The third camp is the emerging industrial players represented by Robot 9 and Optimus Intelligence. Their advantages are mainly the combination of software and hardware solutions. For example, Optimus Intelligence, founded in 2010, initially focused on educational robots and released its first generation of orbital catering robots in 2014. No. 9 robot was the first company of Xiaomi Eco-chain to focus on balancing vehicle products, and its sugar delivery robot, which appeared frequently recently, was released in 2019.

The fourth camp is the logistics terminal platform players represented by Meituan and Ele. me. Their advantages are dachang's technical team, rich supply chain resources and application scenarios.

In addition, there are real estate players like Country Garden, whose Qianxi robot was established in 2019 but already has a very rich product matrix of service robots.

Judging from the time of establishment and the frequency of product release, catering robot track has entered a period of rapid transformation in research and development. More products have been put into practical application scenarios and begun to generate commercial benefits after the players' early research and development investment and trial production.

Now, the big melee could also exacerbate, because one more player AI algorithms is terminal strategic layout, are no longer satisfied with only provide software services, but to do hardware and software integration of integrated services, the other is because a lot of focus on the consumption level in the field of robot head company reserves a large number of related technologies, incoming meal with robot track may only be a matter of time.

Runoff focus

In the dogfight stage, the catering robot track obviously needs to go through multiple rounds of elimination competitions. In this process, players must go through the tests of technology, service, productivity, innovation and other aspects in order to continue to advance.

At the present stage as the starting point, a recent match point meal with robots should is the commercialization of sustainability, there are two core problems, one is whether there existing customers, especially the head catering users, eat them the rest of the staff its demand, another is can develop some new customers and new scene, in the future business.

More directly, a central measure of the sustainability of commercial applications is whether these robots actually save money and increase efficiency for restaurants and hotels.

Related reports show that the daily workload of "Fortune Leopard" is equivalent to 2 to 3 manual waiters, and the purchase cost of the whole machine is only 20% of that of manual workers. The company's intelligent Peanut robots save 1.5 people per month in store costs. Purdue's Joy Delivery robot is said to have a payback period of six to eight months.

Based on the above data, the cost-saving effect of robots will ultimately determine the willingness and timing of businesses to use robot services. By this measure, the competition between players will come down to the price and cost of robots.

The more capable players are of mass production and resource allocation across the whole industry chain, the greater the obvious advantage will be, because they can control more room for price rotation at lower cost.

Of course, the experience of the robot product itself is a major premise. If the robot experience is poor, such as poor after-sales service, high maintenance cost, and great difference in actual use effect, it will be difficult to say that the competitiveness and breakthrough.

Product power is also a technical issue, and as we move forward, the battle between players is a matter of algorithmic power and hardware design.

Therefore, overall, catering robot is a comprehensive software and hardware high-tech products, its future evolution direction must be more intelligent, more capable, more human, so the decisive point is the global ability, rather than outstanding single point of ability.

Evolution speed

The past few years have seen rapid iterations of food robot products on the track, and many players have launched a number of differentiated robot products to suit different scenarios and meet the different needs of businesses.

For example, qinglong intelligent food with robots flying fish, T1, T2, T5, T6 five models, pangolin is food treasure, Amy, scud three series, purdue science and technology has gourd, joy to send, Bella, good four series of food with robots, the difference between these products depends on the distribution of capacity, mechanical quality and so on.

The future development of catering robots, from the product side, may extend to more sub-categories, because they need to be adapted to different scenarios and layouts, and businesses may also have customization needs.

From the perspective of business layout, the current mainstream players almost all span two or more segments of the scene, in addition to catering scene, hospital, hotel are the business scene that the head players pay more attention to at present, these scenes will become the new strategic focus in the future.

In terms of technological development, cloud computing and big data will continue to be applied to catering robots. In the future, catering robots may not only deliver food, or the functions of catering robots may evolve towards a more comprehensive direction.

From purdue players such as technology, superior to science and technology, the financing scale and speed of the run, eat less money with robot track, the product does not seem to be difficult, this may and associated with robot technology content and function, but does not rule out the possibility of next stage technology revolution and the function evolution, let meal with robots become more advanced.

It is certain that the arrival of more players and the introduction of more new products will accelerate the evolution of catering robots at the product and service level, making the whole circuit go faster.