Mezli, the world's first fully autonomous restaurant, announced its public opening after a several-year build out at KitchenTown, a food and food tech innovation center in San Mateo, California.
The concept was created by Stanford engineering students Alex Gruebele, Alex Kolchinski and Maxwell Perham to democratize access to healthy, delicious, convenient food. They brought their cutting-edge idea to KitchenTown to have the tools, infrastructure and culinary expertise needed to transform their technology into a viable modular restaurant model.
KitchenTown put the full weight of its resources and talent behind Mezli's development. In addition to investing in the start-up's seed round, it created a customized 'homebase' for the team to grow their ground-breaking concept into a consumer-ready operation. Specifically, KitchenTown:
Provided a 5,000 square foot workspace in its Innovation Garage for the robot to be built
Created Mezli's first menu with the help of KitchenTown Culinary Director Eric Minnich, now founding chef of Mezli
Hosted a year-long pop-up restaurant where locals could purchase the Mezli bowls to provide real-time feedback on the food
Advised the Mezli founders on the food industry and connected them with industry experts
KitchenTown Founder and CEO, Rusty Schwartz, says helping to fuel the development and growth of Mezli and launch it into the world is exactly the type of positive impact he intended to make when he built the multi-faceted campus in 2014 in the heart of Silicon Valley to fuel the most innovative food and food tech ventures.
"As a lifelong entrepreneur myself, I know that driving positive change in our food system has to happen from the ground up; from emerging innovators who are sustainability-minded, tech-savvy, eager to collaborate and hungry to scale,'' says Schwartz. "To play a critical role in making their visions a reality, KitchenTown has to provide the capability, infrastructure, mentorship and ecosystem. We are proud to see our mission pay off in being part of the development and growth of Mezli."
Mezli is currently located Spark Social and expects to be fully operational to the public by the end of August or early September. Click here for more information on KitchenTown and visit Mezli for more details on the robotic restaurant's menu and opening date.