Cyber Wok Hei: Can Robot-Cooked Dishes on the Spot Defeat Prepackaged Meals?

Xibei vs. Mr. Luo has generated an enormous amount of traffic, and restaurant owners from all walks of life have feasted on it. Some have their chefs live - stream cooking in the kitchen, while others publicize the proportion of pre - made dishes and semi - finished products, making the most of the hot topic and generating a high level of buzz.

Among the big names who have joined the fray, Liu Qiangdong has become the most prominent one. At a recent JD wine - tasting event, Liu Qiangdong, worth tens of billions, transformed into a chef and live - streamed cooking his hometown dish, attracting over a million viewers.

The cooking itself might not be that interesting, but his words were. Liu Qiangdong played with internet memes non - stop. He said it was his first time participating in a live - stream event and that he was a bit nervous, “as nervous as Mr. Jia Guolong was when he cooked for the first time, and as nervous as Luo Yonghao was when he did stand - up comedy for the first time.” Maybe he was really nervous. He didn't control the heat well. When he was caramelizing sugar, he stirred it in the pan for a long time but it didn't melt. Then he frowned and joked, “Could this gas stove have been bought from Jack Ma...?”

He really knows how to handle traffic and get on the hot - search lists.

01 Liu Qiangdong Re - enters the Food Industry

Business owners' humor always has a purpose.

It's obvious that Liu Qiangdong wants to drive traffic to JD's 7Fresh Kitchen. He wore a 7Fresh Kitchen apron during the cooking live - stream, and the hometown dish he cooked, Huanggou Pig's Head Meat, will also be available on 7Fresh Kitchen in the future.

Let's briefly introduce what 7Fresh Kitchen is. Its official positioning is a “joint - venture high - quality food production platform”. In other words, partners only need to provide recipes and participate in research and development, while JD takes charge of dish production, sales, and management. Currently, JD claims to invest 1 billion yuan to recruit 7Fresh Kitchen partners. Each adopted dish is guaranteed a minimum share of one million yuan, and the share from dish sales is uncapped; the more they sell, the more they earn.

For consumers, 7Fresh Kitchen focuses on “fresh - cooked + transparent kitchen”, which obviously addresses two major pain points at present: pre - made dishes and food safety. According to 7Fresh Kitchen's official statement, all dishes in the store are freshly cooked by professional chefs. The store uses transparent windows, so everyone passing by can see the hygiene conditions and cooking process inside. There are also cameras in the store, allowing users to directly monitor the kitchen online.

According to JD's plan, it will invest 10 billion yuan in the future, aiming to open 10,000 7Fresh Kitchen stores nationwide in three years, which shows great ambition.

This marks the high - profile return of 52 - year - old Liu Qiangdong to the food industry after decades of twists and turns in his entrepreneurial journey.

Why do we say “again”? Many people don't know that Liu Qiangdong's first business was opening a restaurant. When he was in college, he saw that a restaurant he often visited near the school was up for sale. He thought the location was good and the business should be okay, so on a whim, he borrowed more than 200,000 yuan to buy the store. However, the food industry gave this young man a harsh lesson. The business wasn't as good as expected, there were a lot of problems, and the employees under him made false accounts and embezzled money behind his back, leaving Liu Qiangdong penniless.

Burdened with a large debt, Liu Qiangdong decided to switch to a new field and start over. He rented a 4 - square - meter stall in Zhongguancun to sell CD - burners and disks. This small stall was called JD Multimedia.

Decades later, that small stall has become a giant with more than 500,000 employees. However, the outside world still doesn't want to see Liu Qiangdong get involved in the food industry again. After JD announced its entry into the food delivery market in February, netizens laughed, and shareholders cried. Investors couldn't understand this decision to jump into the highly competitive market. JD's stock price has been falling. Compared with the same time last year, the stock price has shrunk by about 30%.

Despite this, Liu Qiangdong still insists on doing business in the food industry. If the plan to open 10,000 7Fresh Kitchen stores fails, it will be a heavy blow even for JD's scale. So, this seems like a bold gamble. Liu Qiangdong is very daring.

So, the question is, what gives JD the confidence to bet on 7Fresh Kitchen?

02 Cooking with Robots: Cyber - Style Wok Hei

Actually, there is a very crucial point hidden in 7Fresh Kitchen's promotion: they use robots to cook.

From the transparent offline stores, you can see that it's more like a factory than a kitchen. Various ingredients are sorted and neatly placed in the freezer. Staff members just add the ingredients to the cooking robots according to the recipes. The robots will automatically handle the processes of controlling the heat, stir - frying, mixing, and seasoning.

So, JD's fresh - cooked concept is not the traditional model where a chef stands in front of the stove and stirs the wok vigorously. The staff at 7Fresh Kitchen are more like supervisors, and each person can manage 3 to 4 cooking robots at the same time.

The robots they use are probably from a company called Xianglu Technology. Last year, JD made a strategic investment of 200 million yuan in it and signed a cooperation agreement. The core standard for Xianglu to design cooking robots is to ensure that 10,000 robots cook the same dish with the same taste, and one robot cooks the same dish with the same taste for 10,000 times.

To meet these two standards, Xianglu has installed a large number of precision sensors in the cooking robots to accurately adjust the temperature and precisely control the amount of ingredients and seasonings. The temperature difference during cooking is no more than 1%, and the error in ingredient delivery can be less than 1 gram. For different types of ingredients, Xianglu has also developed an intelligent cooking algorithm, allowing the mechanical spatula to work with different forces and frequencies. So, whether it's stir - frying vegetables, rice, or noodles, the robots can adapt. Moreover, each robot can automatically record data in the background, facilitating detailed comparison and error - correction.

Moreover, these cooking robots can not only accurately reproduce delicious food according to the recipes but also support a certain degree of personalized adjustment. You can choose to add more salt or less chili, remove Sichuan pepper or scallions, meeting more detailed requirements.

More importantly, cooking robots are not limited by physical fatigue and are faster. A human chef usually takes about 10 minutes to cook a dish, while a cooking robot can finish it in 3 to 5 minutes. It will never get tired and can work continuously for 24 hours as long as you pay the electricity bill...

So, how much does such a robot cost? The entry - level model costs about 30,000 yuan, and the models with higher output and more precise equipment cost about 80,000 yuan. It seems quite expensive, but if you hire a qualified chef, you have to pay a monthly salary of at least 5,000 yuan, right? The robot can recoup its cost in about half a year, and after that, it's all profit.

As ordinary consumers, we don't know if Xianglu's robots are as good as they are advertised, but Liu Qiangdong is really interested and has chosen to build 7Fresh Kitchen around these robots.

The addition of robots helps JD save labor costs and significantly improves the food - delivery efficiency. Moreover, it offers fresh - cooked food, which consumers like. There is no fundamental difference between a robot stirring the wok and a human chef. After all, this is still within the scope of science, not magic. Wok hei comes from the right temperature and chemical reactions. In theory, as long as you set the program correctly, cyber - style wok hei is still wok hei. And robots are better than humans in terms of standardization. They never shake their hands or forget things. As long as the ingredients are in place, they can reproduce dishes without any difference.

Ingredient supply is exactly JD's strength. The group already has an existing fresh - food business, and its cold - chain logistics network has covered major cities, which can be directly utilized. JD only needs to establish a large - scale central kitchen to pre - wash, cut, and prepare clean ingredients, and then distribute them to stores in every corner, thus solving the ingredient problem. As for inventory management and big - data analysis involved in this process, JD has rich experience in these areas.

After the food is cooked, it needs to be delivered, right? Coincidentally, JD has its own food - delivery business, which is currently offering crazy subsidies to attract customers. It helps 7Fresh Kitchen drive traffic, and after 7Fresh Kitchen becomes popular, it helps increase user stickiness for the food - delivery business. It's a closed - loop system. Now it seems that JD's entry into the food - delivery war might be the “dumpling” made