For the past two years, the FoodTech ecosystem has been obsessed with Chipotle’s venture capital investments in physical cobotics, specifically the ‘Autocado’ processing unit and the Vebu ‘Augmented Make Line’. However, as we move through 2026, the brand has executed a brilliant, agile pivot. Recognizing the inherent friction and slow deployment cycles of scaling heavy […]
If you want a masterclass in FoodTech hardware strategy, look no further than what Sweetgreen is executing in 2026. After acquiring the MIT-born robotics startup Spyce, developing the frictionless ‘Infinite Kitchen’ automated makeline, and successfully proving the concept in a handful of beta stores, Sweetgreen made a brilliant, contrarian pivot. Rather than burning cash to […]
If you want to understand the maturation of food-tech in 2026, you need to look at Sweetgreen’s absolute masterclass in capital allocation. For years, the narrative was that to be a ‘tech-forward’ restaurant, you had to physically own the technology stack from end to end. Sweetgreen just flipped that script. By strategically offloading ‘Spyce’—their proprietary […]