The San Francisco Metreon mall has a new smoothie-making robot. I tried it.

 

If you are in the SF area, check out the new ROBOjuice, client of Inna Efimchik, kiosk to try out the robot service experience.

In what feels like a lifetime ago, but was really just 2019, the San Francisco Metreon had a coffee robot. But after a robo-midlife crisis and the company’s decision to shift toward airport cafes, the robot disappeared shortly before the pandemic.

Now, a new robot has set up shop at the SoMa mall: ROBOjuice, a kiosk serving San Francisco shop Palmetto Superfoods’ smoothies and açai bowls. 

Visiting the new robotic barista on a Tuesday afternoon, my interest was immediately piqued by the prices. While there were only four menu items to choose from, the cheapest item, a 16-ounce berry banana smoothie, was $4.95. You’d be hard-pressed to find a smoothie anywhere in San Francisco these days that cheap. 

The humanoid-looking robot, with acrobatically long and twisty arms and a digital face, expectantly awaited my order. I made my selection on the POS screen — the aforementioned strawberry banana smoothie — typed in my phone number, and swiped my credit card. I was somewhat baffled by what came up next on screen: a prompt to add a tip. Did I really need to tip a robot? 

The ROBOjuice kiosk serves Palmetto Superfoods smoothies and acai bowls.  Photo by Erin Ng; courtesy of Palmetto Superfoods

The Palmetto CEO, who was there facilitating the launch of his restaurant’s robot partnership, assured me I did not. Any tips I did give, though, would apparently go to the actual humans working at the company. 

The robot is still in beta-testing mode, so the transaction didn’t go entirely smoothly — an error message popped up that the robot’s minders had to intervene to fix. But once the robot got to smoothie-making, things went off without a hitch.

The machine grabbed a plastic cup, filled it with frozen berries and bananas from the clear cylinders behind it, then placed the cup under a faucet that spouted oat milk. Next, it moved the cup to a blending station that whipped up the smoothie within the original cup. Finally, it retrieved the cup and placed it on a revolving platform, serving my drink to me proudly with a little smile on its computerized face. The whole process took about two minutes.

I had to snap on my own lid and paper straw, but the pastel pink smoothie was delicious. A perfect balance of sweet and tart, it somehow tasted one million times better than the banana berry smoothies I make at home every morning.

Say hello to Palmetto's ROBOjuice kiosk with its little computerized smile. It's located inside the Metreon and ready to make customers yummy fruit smoothies and acai bowls. Photo courtesy of Robojuice

The reason the smoothie was so good is probably because the robot serves products from Palmetto, an established SF smoothie shop with brick-and-mortar locations in the Inner Richmond and the Marina (and sources its açai directly from Brazil). Palmetto’s founders, Charles Lee and Hessam Shirmohammadi, became interested in introducing new technology at their smoothie shops when they started getting popular.

“On a busy day at Palmetto, usually we don’t want a customer waiting more than five minutes for their order,” Lee said. “But on a crazy weekend day, which happens every weekend now, you can wait up to 30 minutes … What the robot does is now people can get their bowls in a minute, a smoothie in two minutes.” 

ROBOjuice founder Nik Sakhno, an electrical engineer with a background in the food and beverage industry, said he wanted to partner with an existing restaurant so he could focus solely on what he does best: the technology. This way, unlike many other robot food companies, he doesn’t have to split his attention by trying to create a good food product at the same time as a working robot — leading to a better outcome for both elements. 

There are other aspects that give his company a leg up over other robot companies, in his opinion, too.

The Metreon now features ROBOjuice, a kiosk serving San Francisco shop Palmetto Superfoods’ smoothies and açai bowls. Photo by Erin Ng; courtesy of Palmetto Superfoods

“Our technology is more affordable than other robotics companies because we build it in a different way,” Sakhno explained. “We have a patented self-clean blender. It’s easier to blend a smoothie already in a cup than in a traditional style blender … it’s easy to clean and maintain.”

At first glance, the smoothie robot can seem like a win-win. As a small kiosk that runs on robot rather than human labor, it’s cheaper to operate, meaning the prices are lower for customers with the added benefit of potentially being a speedier way to get a smoothie. But there’s certainly some things a robot can’t do — like arrange açai bowl toppings beautifully, or provide warm customer service.

The ROBOjuice founder freely admits that his robot needs a human to operate it, though. While the robot is currently in its soft launch phase, the Palmetto kiosk will eventually employ a runner to restock the smoothie ingredients two or three times a day, and engineers offsite will need to monitor the robot through cameras in its arms to detect if something is wrong. In that case, a human would need to come by and adjust it. 

Robots in the restaurant industry also tend to inspire concerns over machines replacing human jobs, but Palmetto founder Lee doesn’t see it that way — even though he eventually wants to bring ROBOjuice robots into his existing brick-and-mortars, too. 

The robot features a self-cleaning blender that blends smoothies inside their serving cups. Photo courtesy of Robojuice.

“Our goal is not to completely eliminate staff or labor or anything like that,” he said. “We always think there needs to be some kind of human element in those atmospheres … We're just trying to eliminate the tedious tasks, so we can elevate current staff members to do other roles that make them happier.”

Lee explained that social media, such as TikTok, has been a huge marketing boon for Palmetto — which is something his staff of largely college students are very interested in. So with robots taking on more of the tedious smoothie-making tasks, human staff could instead focus on the more fulfilling marketing or management side of the company. 

Currently, the Palmetto ROBOjuice kiosk is still months away from an official launch. But for now, you can drop by the San Francisco Metreon for a smoothie or açai bowl every Friday during the month of May from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m.

A robot did not make this artfully decorated Palmetto Superfoods acai bowl... but maybe one day. Photo by Erin Ng; courtesy of Palmetto Superfoods.

 
Samantha Gee