The CTO quit his job to start a business making stir-frying robots, which attracted collective investments from Tencent, IDG, and JD.com.

"So many people have had a hard time with it, yet there's still a continuous stream of buyers. This shows that the demand for cooking robots is extremely strong."

When Yang Jiancheng decided to resign from his position as CTO of Shangri - La Group and start a business in cooking robots, he didn't hesitate much. Instead, he was quite excited.

Yang Jiancheng still remembers one day in May 2019 when Stanford University open - sourced a quadruped robot model called Stanford Doggo, similar to Boston Dynamics' robotic dog. His feeling at that time was, "I was thrilled all over."

Beyond the excitement, Yang Jiancheng clearly felt the urge to start a business for the first time. During his studies at Tianjin University, he spent seven years studying electronic information and chip design. He has a deep passion for smart hardware and has always been waiting for such an opportunity. Around 2020, he saw at least ten of his classmates and colleagues successively enter the robotics industry.

In 2021, Yang Jiancheng and Guo Qing (known as "Old K" in the industry), who is also an alumnus of Tianjin University, founded Xianglu Technology, focusing on the research and development of cooking robots. Guo Qing is a former member of Meituan's S - team (the highest decision - making level) and the author of the book "The First in Sales".

Regarding the direction of their business, Yang Jiancheng and Guo Qing reached three criteria: First, they definitely wanted to work on robots; second, the project must have social value; third, it also had to have sufficient commercial value. Eventually, they set their goal on cooking robots.

Source: The interviewee

In the view of Yang Jiancheng, the co - founder and chairman of Xianglu Technology, "The essence of robots is to do things that humans can't do, do poorly, or don't want to do. Cooking is something that many people don't want to do and most people can't do well." Additionally, the market for catering robots is large, labor - intensive, and most people don't enjoy this kind of work.

In February 2022, Yang Jiancheng led his team to develop the first - generation prototype of the cooking robot, Meishan Lion. The first dish it cooked was stir - fried pork with chili peppers. However, at that time, the cooking robot could only cook a few fixed dishes and had poor scalability. It wasn't until May 2023 that the team added a powder system to the fourth - generation cooking robot, and Yang Jiancheng decided to test it in the restaurant kitchen.

Over the past four years, the Meishan Lion AI cooking robot has gone through six iterations. The latest model is the seventh - generation design, which can achieve AI - precise temperature control and adapt to the weight of ingredients. Besides home - style dishes like stir - fried beef with peppers, Mapo Tofu, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes, the cooking robot can now cook complex dishes like candied sweet potatoes.

Source: The interviewee

To meet the different needs of restaurants, Xianglu Technology has also developed seven product lines of cooking robots. A reporter from "China Entrepreneur" learned from industry insiders that Xianglu's cooking robots have entered more than 1,000 chain restaurants, schools, and corporate canteens, such as Golden Ding Xuan, Mincun Bibimbap, Yu Ni Zai Yi Qi, and Hilton Hotels.

Cooking robots are also bringing new variables to the cost structure of chain restaurants. According to the practical calculations of Yang Jiancheng and the founders of various chain restaurants, "The efficiency of one cook working with two cooking robots is equivalent to that of three head chefs working with three stoves. The cost of purchasing one cooking robot can be recovered in about six months."

Previously, in its prospectus, the chain catering brand Xiaocaiyuan disclosed that it had deployed cooking robots in 660 stores across the country and planned to invest 100 million yuan to purchase about 2,000 more cooking robot devices. "The cooking robot market is currently in an explosive stage. With our growth rate remaining above 300%, repeat purchases and customer referrals account for 70% of our sales," Yang Jiancheng told "China Entrepreneur".

With the market promotion of cooking robots, Xianglu Technology has attracted more and more attention from capital. Currently, Xianglu has completed multiple rounds of financing, with a cumulative financing amount of hundreds of millions of yuan. The investors include well - known companies and investment institutions such as JD.com, Tencent, IDG, and Source Code Capital.

In addition, in 2023, Xianglu Technology officially expanded overseas and has entered multiple countries and regions, including Singapore, South Korea, the United States, Australia, France, and Indonesia.

How to make the dishes cooked by robots have the 'wok hei'?

The first problem that Yang Jiancheng and his team needed to solve was how to make the dishes cooked by the cooking robot taste the same as those cooked by chefs and have the 'wok hei'.

Yang Jiancheng and his team's idea was to first transform the cooking process into an engineering problem, that is, "replicate a cooking program based on a feedback system through a positive quantitative system," Yang Jiancheng told "China Entrepreneur".

For this purpose, Yang Jiancheng assembled an early core team consisting of chefs, restaurant operators, professional recipe developers, hardware product managers, and R & D personnel. The essence was to break down the cooking techniques of many dishes into specific steps and find the abstract commonalities. In addition, they also had to consider the restaurant's layout design, the volume of the cooking robot, and so on.

The first - generation prototype of the cooking robot, Meishan Lion, developed by Yang Jiancheng's team could cook some dishes, but its scalability was not strong enough, and the seasoning system used in catering had not been added yet.

In Chinese cuisine, the seasoning system is very complex. There are liquid seasonings, viscous seasonings, and powdered seasonings, which require different feeding systems. At the same time, seasonings such as salt, sugar, and monosodium glutamate are easy to melt at high temperatures and clump when exposed to moisture. Therefore, the packaging environment must be well - controlled. In addition, lard is frequently used in Chinese cuisine, and its state varies greatly under different temperature conditions.

Source: The interviewee

Since 2022, Yang Jiancheng has led his team to conduct many blind taste tests on dishes, gradually exploring from leafy vegetables to meat dishes and then to dishes that need to be thickened. They regarded each R & D test as a Turing test for the robot. Yang Jiancheng focused on four major indicators: First, can it cook delicious dishes? Second, can it cook more types of dishes? Third, can it cook faster? Fourth, can it reduce the cost?

In 2023, the Meishan Lion cooking robot could cook dishes that tasted the same as those cooked by chefs, and in some cases, even better.

Looking back on that R & D exploration experience, Yang Jiancheng felt like a blind man feeling an elephant. It was very painful. On the one hand, there was no reference solution to draw on; when they finally had a solution, there was no supply chain. In addition, it was difficult to find seed customers. Eventually, Yang Jiancheng and his team decided to self - develop all more than 800 parts of the cooking robot, from pumps to motors, as well as the seasoning system, heating system, braking system, safety system, food cooking system, food safety detection system, and so on.

After achieving the taste standard for the cooking robot, Yang Jiancheng began to focus on two other key indicators: First, who can cook faster, the chef or the cooking robot? And who has lower requirements for cooking techniques? Second, what is the maximum limit for one person to operate the robot? These two indicators point to a real - world scenario: during the peak dining hours in a restaurant, if 100 meals need to be served, can the cooking robot achieve lower costs?

Currently, Xianglu's cooking robot system supports the collaborative work of "one person + multiple devices" and can intelligently assign tasks to ensure efficient and stable meal delivery when multiple devices are operating in parallel. At the same time, the intelligent system and standardized recipes of the cooking robot can precisely control the cooking process to ensure the stable taste of the dishes. It only takes 2 - 3 minutes for a single device to serve a meal.

In terms of recipe R & D, for customers who do not have the ability to develop recipes, Xianglu provides public recipes for download; for customers who have the ability to develop their own recipes, such as restaurants with exclusive signature dishes, Xianglu also supports customers to upload their self - developed recipes to a private cloud and lock them.

A new technology company will inevitably emerge behind the thousand - store chain catering

After deciding to develop cooking robots, Yang Jiancheng and Guo Qing decided to focus on the B - to - B market first. Their judgment at that time was that the chain rate of Chinese cuisine would definitely increase significantly in the future.

"Based on the 5 - trillion - yuan market size of the catering market in 2024, there will definitely be a large number of chain catering brands with more than 1,000 stores. Their annual revenue may exceed 10 billion yuan. Among the production platform - type enterprises serving these thousand - store - scale chain brands, a technology company with a large market value will surely emerge," Yang Jiancheng analyzed to "China Entrepreneur".

Actually, before Yang Jiancheng entered the cooking robot business, the cooking robot industry had been developing for seven years. During market research, Yang Jiancheng found that in the previous seven years, many restaurant owners had been trying cooking robots. Although many had encountered difficulties, they still continued to buy. This made Yang Jiancheng feel sorry, but it also gave him great confidence.

"So many people have had a hard time with it, yet there's still a continuous stream of buyers. This shows that the demand for cooking robots is extremely strong," Yang Jiancheng told "China Entrepreneur".

Yang Jiancheng. Source: The interviewee

In addition, the restaurant kitchen is still a labor - intensive industry. The owners of chain restaurants are still troubled by the rising labor cost of chefs, the shortage of chefs, and the difficulty in unifying the taste of dishes. Therefore, how to help chain restaurant owners increase the speed of opening new stores and achieve the stability of standardized food delivery is a clear market opportunity that Yang Jiancheng has identified.

"The pain point of chain restaurants is that they have to spend a great deal of energy and cost to achieve the same taste in hundreds of stores. Take the launch of new dishes as an example. First, the head chef at the headquarters has to develop and approve the new dish, then formulate the SOP and distribute it to each store. Subsequently, hundreds of stores need to be organized for learning, and practical operations need to be carried out in large pots for each dish. After that, the company needs to organize taste - testing, adjustment, and acceptance before the new dish can be launched in the store. One can imagine the human and time costs of training hundreds of stores," Yang Jiancheng analyzed to "China Entrepreneur".

Within Xianglu, when it comes to the cooking robot replicating the cooking level of human chefs, Yang Jiancheng also set two core indicators: First, ten thousand machines should cook the same dish with the same taste; second, one machine should cook the same dish with the same taste for ten thousand times.

The intense competition in the catering industry also increases the entrepreneurial risk for restaurant owners. "In the domestic catering industry, 3 million new stores open and 3 million stores close every year. Every year, there is a waste of 1 trillion yuan in social resources just in the process of opening and closing restaurants," Yang Jiancheng revealed.

However, the cooking robot can serve Hunan cuisine restaurants and can easily be switched to Sichuan cuisine restaurants or even used to make covered noodles. The recipe adaptation range is very wide, and the store - switching speed is very fast. "A catering store has at least three opportunities for transformation. Even if the cuisine changes, the chefs don't need to be replaced. This can help some endangered catering brands quickly transform and extend their life cycle," Yang Jiancheng said.

General - purpose or specialized?

Since 2023, the explosion of large AI models and embodied intelligence has made both the capital market and the industrial market take a keen interest in robots.

Especially in early 2024, a robot named Mobile ALOHA developed by a Stanford University team became popular on the Internet with its cooking video. In the video, ALOHA cracked eggs, cut vegetables, stir - fried shrimps, and washed the wok. The whole process was completed by the robot with two mechanical arms and a wheeled mobile chassis. However, ALOHA is still far from entering ordinary people's kitchens.

Photography: Zhao Dongshan

Actually, during his entrepreneurial journey, Yang Jiancheng was often asked why he didn't develop general - purpose robots. During this period, the question that Yang Jiancheng kept asking himself was whether ALOHA was the optimal solution, or rather, whether it was the optimal solution at present.

Ultimately, Yang Jiancheng's answer is that general - purpose robots and specialized robots each have their own niches. In the catering industry, where cost is extremely sensitive, functional stability requirements are extremely high, and the failure rate requirements are extremely low, general - purpose robots may not be the optimal solution.

According to the monitoring of Aowei Cloud Network, in 2024, the online sales volume of cooking robots in China reached 290 million yuan, with a sales volume of about 140,000 units, a year - on - year increase of 54.4%. In addition to Xianglu Technology, companies such as Tineco under Ecovacs, Xiongmao Master, and Youte Zhichu have also entered the cooking robot industry. However, Tineco initially entered the market with the C - end household scenario as the entry point and is currently expanding into the B - end scenario, while Youte Zhichu is targeting scenarios such as group meals for meetings.

During the process of visiting multiple chain restaurants, a reporter from "China Entrepreneur" found that cost is still the key factor restricting the large - scale popularization of cooking robots. The unit price of mainstream commercial cooking robots is mostly between 10,000 yuan and 50,000 yuan, and high - end models even cost more than 100,000 yuan, which poses a certain pressure on some small and medium - sized restaurants