Jasper pivoted its cooking robots from B2B sales to in-building meal subscriptions

Jasper runs robotic kitchens in residential buildings, assembling a set menu — cod with steamed potatoes, paprika cream chicken, sticky toffee pudding — from machine-learning-scheduled ingredient dispensing.

$3.5 million raised from backers including Toyota Ventures, with a further $7 million raise in preparation.

Gunnar Grass founded the company several years earlier as YPC Technologies with human-robot interaction expert Camilo Perez Quintero, motivated by saving time on cooking, and built robotics to automate cooking processes.

After the B2B approach stalled, the company pivoted a few months before October 2022, rebranding to Jasper and adopting a 'cooking as a service' model: robotic kitchens in or next to residential high-rises, charging residents a subscription plus ingredient costs, with menu items priced $1.20 to $16.90 and meals plated on porcelain to cut household waste by up to a third. It ran trials in a residential mid-rise over a year, then launched in six apartment buildings in a month.

Corporate food-service buyers were a slow, uncertain sale; residents ordering dinner are a direct, measurable one.

Siting kitchens inside buildings eliminates the delivery cost and platform fee that consume roughly half of delivery dollars.

Restaurant labor shortages and rising ingredient costs made food-prep automation suddenly attractive to everyone.

A wider menu range than rivals like Nommi's kiosks supports a subscription rather than vending-machine economics.

When enterprises won't buy your automation, owning the customer relationship yourself is riskier but converts the same robot into recurring revenue.

As of October 21, 2022, Jasper had launched in six apartment buildings with about 231 customers, 13 employees, under $100,000 in ARR, and plans to reach $2.5 million ARR before a further $7 million raise.