French startup EKIM raises €2.2 million for its fast food "robulution"

French food tech startup EKIM has raised €2.2 million from Partech and Daphni to launch a new fast food solution called PAZZI.

PAZZI is EKIM's project for a food “robolution” - using robots, apps, and data analysis to offer “tech good food” including pizza, drinks, desserts, and salads. PAZZI will be the world's first remotely run restaurant, with its food being made available in several settings, including takeaway, food courts, and eventually, drive-ins, under franchise or license agreements from 2019 onwards. With EKIM's technology, PAZZI will be able to provide high quality ingredients, optimal service time, and ultrapersonalized service using fully autonomous robots from order to delivery. With a potential 24/7 opening time and a 30-second execution speed, PAZZI will present an ideal option in busy locations such as train stations, airports, shopping centers, or campuses.

"‘Cose da pazzi’ means ‘it’s completely mad’ in Italian," said Philippe Goldman, CEO of EKIM. "This was my initial reaction when I discovered the project in the summer of 2016. PAZZI represents a huge technological challenge: optimizing the total production process of a pizza (order, preparation, baking, and delivery) within a 45m2 area, customizing each order, adding a show cooking dimension, all of this at a reasonable investment cost. These are the challenges we faced during the four-year research and development phase. Yet this project would not make sense had we not included the search for ingredients of the highest quality. The objective is not only to conquer the global fast food market of over €900 billion, but as well to move away from junk food - a global public health concern -, but also to extend our offer to the food service industry."

"The meeting with the EKIM team was an immediate success," added Romain Lavault, general partner at Partech. "It is very rare to disrupt both the economic equation and the quality of a product already present everywhere in the world. What this future leader of French food tech manages to achieve is incredible: to offer a faster, more flexible, more connected, and more economical service while increasing quality and choice thanks to new recipes and premium ingredients. Discussions regarding the next round of funding scheduled for the end of the year have already begun.