Ono Food Co.

Automated Food Creation For Restaurants & Food Trucks

Sophic Design partnered with Ono Kitchen to develop a mobile, automated food-cooking system

Automated Smoothies On The Go

In Fall of 2019, in the city of Los Angeles, the Ono Food Co. debuted their unique take on the mobile food truck: a Mercedes Sprinter van outfitted with robotics and an ordering kiosk to automatically mix ingredients into delicious smoothies.

Spyce automated restaurant (curries), Boston, MA

CafeX automated coffee kiosk, San Francisco, CA

Ono’s smoothie-maker on wheels made waves right away! Their combination of advanced robotics and delicious food drew attention from audiences and tech blogs alike and they immediately knew they had the makings of a special opportunity in the growing automated food space.

Automation In Restaurants

With a solid foundation laid from their initial success in automated beverages, the Ono Food Co. set their sites on another growing category that was bigger and more promising: automated restaurants.

Creator automated restaurant (hamburgers), San Francisco, CA

Although the automated restaurants category was small it was drawing significant interest from investors because of recent (at the time) news headlines involving increases in the national minimum wage and the negative affects it could have on the restaurant industry. With tech companies / restaurants like Spyce (Boston), Creator (San Francisco), and CafeX (San Francisco) leading the way, the automated food industry was poised to take a leap forward and Ono Food Co. was eager to join in.

Making Automated Food Mobile

Ono’s existing experience in mobile beverages provided a perfect springboard into the mobile food category. By leveraging their expertise in data analytics, automation, and mobile beverages the Ono Food Co. could blaze a new trail and disrupt the food truck industry by providing delicious automated food items that can be cooked quickly and precisely each time.

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Setting out to again use the available space inside of a Mercedes Sprinter van, Ono partnered with Sophic Design to redesign the food automation architecture within to cook a variety of hot-food menu items from the same set of base ingredients. The new automation architecture leveraged a variety of automation features including ingredient and sauce dispensers as well as conveyor tracks, cooking stations, a serving station, and steam cleaning with catches for water and food spills..

While stationary, the exterior of the Mercedes Sprinter van was designed to showcase the magic of Ono’s cutting edge automated cooking technology allowing consumers to order their food and watch it cook while they wait.

Future Expansion

Ono’s automated food system was also designed with future expansion in mind into seated restaurants. The same food automation architecture could be leveraged and reskinned with minimal modifications to accommodate a seated dining experience in a stationary restaurant. Sophic Design set out to imagine this ground-breaking food technology in a restaurant setting where customers could order delicious food and see the future of cooking tech!

Design Inspiration

Because of the size and impact that the Ono Food Co. system would have on the restaurant’s environment, Sophic drew inspiration from the interior design of retail, restaurant, and other luxury spaces including that of Blue Bottle Coffee, Saturdays NYC, and Soho House.

Concept Exploration

When approaching the concept development for Ono’s automated restaurant Sophic sought to explore a variety of designs while connecting three common themes between them all;