Cooking automation startup Jasper, has shifted to direct-to-consumer after attempting to sell its technology to major food service companies. In a recent conversation, CEO Gunnar Froh discussed the pivot and provided an update on the company, which is a member of this year’s Battlefield 200 at Disrupt 2022.
Gunnar founded Jasper (as YPC Technologies) with human-robot interaction expert Camilo Perez Quintero several years ago with the primary goal of saving time on cooking. They took a business-to-business go-to-market approach after developing robotic technologies to automate cooking processes, hoping to sell their platform to food and service providers. However, the company never achieved the commercial success that Gunnar and Quintero had hoped for. The company rebranded to Jasper and adopted what Gunnar refers to as a “cooking as a service” model a few months ago. Jasper now operates robot kitchens in or near residential buildings, charging residents a subscription fee plus the cost of meal ingredients.