Robomar Launches Fully Autonomous Mobile Restaurant Concept As It Announces $2M Seed Round
Robomart, the company that introduced the shopping concept at CES in 2019 and began rolling out its first test store last year, announced a new model of its mobile store concept this week with the Robomart Haven. The Haven, which will join the first-generation Robomart (now called the Oasis), will be available to retail partners from 2025.
Unlike Oasis, which targets ice cream purveyors, restaurants, and cafes, Haven is more like a store on wheels. According to CEO Ali Ahmed, Haven can store 300 different SKUs and hold thousands of individual products for sale. The Haven will also serve as a small walk-in store, allowing customers to walk in and shop.
And unlike Oasis – which are retrofitted vans with drivers to drive them – Ahmed says Havens will be fully autonomous. Spoon readers may recall that the Oasis (then called Robomart) was originally intended to be a fully autonomous vehicle, but at some point, the company realized that building a fully autonomous vehicle to carry the front of its retail store was too much to bite for the first product. So instead, they chose to use drivers in their first version of the mobile store and create a shopping experience that is fully controlled by the app (drivers do not interact with customers, according to Ahmed).
But with Haven, the plan is to make it fully autonomous, according to Ahmed.
“Haven is not going to be a modified van with a cab,” Ahmed told The Spoon. “It will be a fully driverless offering that gives us the ability to bring everything back in to serve our customers.
Ahmed says the company does not plan to “become a car company,” – meaning they still have no plans to make their own cars – but instead plan to work with different car manufacturers to turn the car into a Robomart Haven.
With a larger footprint, Ahmed says future partners will be able to completely white label and customize their Haven and will be able to have multiple types of food storage (ambient temperature, ice, cold, or hot) inside the vehicle. This differs from Oasis, which only offers one type of food storage (similar to ice cream for its ice cream partners Ben & Jerry’s).
Haven’s news comes alongside the announcement of the company’s $2 million in seed funding led by W Ventures and Wasabi Ventures, SOSV, HAX, and Hustle Fund, among other partners. The funding is a vote of confidence for a company that has shown significant performance over the past year, working with inking with seven partners and a full commitment from this week regarding 106 Oasis mobile stores.
So far, those storefronts are only pilots, but Ahmed says they will soon be rolled out in full. Although he did not commit to giving an exact date, Ahmed says that the Oasis machines that will start driving will come out this year, and they will start taking new orders next year. Haven, due out sometime in 2025, is also open for pre-orders.
