Singaporean food tech company Epic Food and Beverage has launched the country’s first robotics concept restaurant at Frasers Tower in Tanjong Pagar.
Spanning 200m², the space can accommodate up to 90 patrons. It also has a fully-automated system, which includes taking orders and cooking.
Called Hawkee, the name translates to the word ‘curious’ in Hokkien (a Chinese dialect).
The restaurant has 12 menu items, all of which are prepared by a robot chef called D.I.A.N.A, which was created and manufactured by Epic Food and Beverages.
The robots are assembled in Singapore and programmed to cook each dish in a way that retains strong wok hei, the smoky wok fragrance. In Singapore, a good hawker dish is largely determined by whether it has wok hei.
D.I.A.N.A. cooks each dish according to a recipe that consists of a precisely measured amount of condiments in under 4 minutes. The robot chef also allows patrons to customise each dish.
Plans To Launch Other Food Service Robots
Founded in January 2019, the angel-funded startup aims to transform the food and beverage industry through automation, robotics, and training so the industry can keep up with the digital transformation of the economy.
More importantly, the company aims to use robotic cooking and artificial intelligence to preserve the hawker culture.
From security robots to using robotic arms for heart surgeries and driver-less buses, Singapore is known for being forward in the robotics game. It has one of the highest robot-to-human-worker densities in the world, after South Korea.
The robot chef concept is not new in Singapore — AUSCA (Automated Service Chef Associate) is already whipping up omelettes at an award-winning restaurant on the island.
However, a full-fledged restaurant with an affordable menu centred wholly on robot chefs is unheard of so far. To this end, Hawkee is considered a pioneer.
Moving forward, the company behind Hawkee said it has plans to develop and launch several other food service robots in the near future.
Featured Image Credit: Hawkee
This article is written by Zhixin Tan, and was first seen on KrAsia.