With recent advancements in technology, robots and automation have great potential in Chinese restaurants. They can automate the food and beverage-making process, save money and human resources, enrich menus, reduce cooking errors, reduce food waste, and work 24/7 without a raise. Customer-facing robots can help reduce human contact, a significant benefit during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The recent boom of delivery and ghost kitchens is bringing in more technology into these traditional businesses. The restaurant industry is still at the beginning of digitalization. With the development of automation, there is a huge market.
Chinese cuisine is one of the most popular ethnic foods in the U.S. More than 42% of American adults consume Chinese cuisine a few times a year. The U.S. Chinese restaurant industry’s revenue will increase at an annualized rate of 2.9%, predicted to be worth up to $17.7 billion in 2025. There are more than 40,000 Chinese restaurants in the U.S. This number is greater than all the McDonald’s, KFC’s, Pizza Hut’s, Taco Bell’s and Wendy’s locations in America combined. Most Chinese restaurants are family operations and the use of technology in family-operated Chinese restaurants is relatively low.
We offer a way for restaurant owners to save a lot of money. Using our machines, restaurants will require staff to prep and place ingredients into our wok ingredient boxes and serve dishes onto plates. But, the savings from reduced cooks are significant. Our next step is to develop robots to reduce labor for ingredient preparation and dish serving. Restaurant owners can benefit from their investment in the first year and save more in the following years. More than 70% of labor can be replaced by robots. Cooks will have time to prep instead of standing in front of the wok. Only a few minimal steps need to be done by a cook.
We make money by selling cooking robots and charging subscription fees. MiFood Tech is developing intelligent cooking robots that fit the needs of Chinese restaurants in the U.S. We are researching and developing an automated cooking wok, including a turbo cooking wok and tossing cooking wok. Later, we plan to develop automatic chopping machines and dish-serving machines integrated with Internet of Things. Software will also be developed to connect and program the intelligent hardware together and to manage orders from dine-in and take-out. We will sell the automated kitchen solutions to Chinese restaurants in the U.S. According to customers’ needs and wants, we can customize our products to meet customer satisfaction. The price of an automated cooking robot will be between $6,000 to $12,000, based on the analysis of our competitors’ prices. The cost of manufacturing the robot is 35% of the sale price. The managing software is charged by subscription. We plan to charge $99 per month to our restaurant customers.
Compared to other companies in the market, we are dedicated to automation technologies for Chinese restaurants to address their challenges with labor and cooking standards. Besides using our built-in recipes, restaurants can easily program our robots from the graphical user interface to cook their signature dishes. Our system can save money for restaurants with reduced labor, training, and set-up standards which is essential for business growth. With less time spent on repetitive work, chefs can innovate new dishes and improve the quality of their cuisine.
To test our technologies in the real world, we plan to open a test restaurant with our technologies in Ithaca next summer. The test restaurant is called TANR (摊儿). It means “booth” in Chinese. This restaurant pitches itself as a fast-casual Chinese food restaurant. Our target dine-in customers are employees working in downtown office buildings, downtown visitors, and residents (mainly Cornell students) living in the surrounding neighborhood. We will also provide delivery for Cornell students and locals.