Contactless & Autonomous Robotic Smoothie Kiosk

Interested in starting your own entrepreneurial journey in food and beverage but unsure what to expect? Then read up on our interview with Venki Ayalur, Founder and President of Blendid, located in Sunnyvale, CA, USA.

What's your business, and who are your customers?

Blendid® is on a mission to make freshly prepared food more accessible. Our food automation platform leverages advanced robotics, artificial intelligence, computer vision systems, and a proprietary operating system, foodOS®, to solve the industry’s biggest challenges for both food service operators & consumers.

While consumers are more mindful than ever before of the importance of eating fresh, nutritious food, finding quick options when they are on the go is incredibly hard – and often excessively expensive. In addition, food service businesses are struggling to keep pace with customer traffic and demands thanks to intense worker shortages, slim profit margins, and high overhead costs.

We are working closely with global brands such as Jamba, Sodexo, and Walmart to bring Blendid to more locations throughout the United States, including hospitals, airports, stadiums, grocery stores, retail locations, and colleges.

Tell us about yourself

I am passionate about innovation. I’ve led the development of several first-to-market technologies across internet technology and mobile phones to e-readers and now food robots throughout my career. Applying technology breakthroughs to the food industry with Blendid is no easy task. But being able to bring my passion for innovation to something like food that has the potential to make a real difference in people’s lives motivates me to overcome any challenges we’ve faced along the way. I credit my mother and her incredible cooking as my inspiration for making a move into the food technology sector. Ever since I left home for college, I’ve missed her food and envisioned preserving recipes so they could be enjoyed for generations to come. I hope that one day we can digitize and replicate all types of recipes.

When I connected with my co-founders, Vipin Jain and Vijay Dodd, we started coming up with different ideas and testing ways to replicate recipes. I even managed to create a simple robot to prepare a dish way back in 2015, but we quickly realized the true challenge was making a robotic system advanced enough to bring the control and predictability needed for reliable results when working with the complexities of food ingredients and preparation.

We have come a long way from the garage days, and over the years, we have built and deployed Blendid, a smoothie-making Robot, in Universities, malls, and supermarkets. Smoothies are just the beginning, and with food & recipes, possibilities are endless. Realizing the original dream of digitizing every recipe is what motivates me every day.

What's your biggest accomplishment as a business owner?

I’d say my biggest accomplishment to date is seeing our Blendid robotic food systems actually work out in the “wild” of college campuses and shopping centers. Watching consumers place a custom order on their phone and our robots expertly replicating their exact order with perfect precision … and then the smile and gleam in a customer’s eye when they are surprised at how well the robot did and how delicious the end result is … it is a special feeling of pride when everything goes as designed.

Following close behind would be my pride in the team we’ve built and nurtured. Our team manages to impress me every single day. They build innovative new technologies that many thought impossible, they find solutions to any problems that arise, and they have fun while they do it. Mentoring and, hopefully, inspiring the next generation of innovators, the technologists with the dedication to finding new ways to make their dreams realities, makes me eager to get into the office every day.

What's one of the hardest things that come with being a business owner?

One of the hardest things for me has been patience. There is a lot of waiting and time dedicated to building a successful business: time to systematically sort through all of the needed technology components and build them, waiting for the market and consumers to be ready for your invention, finding the ideal team members to support your vision, etc.

And then once all of those things finally fit into place, as they have for
Blendid, patience is still needed to be able to successfully meet demand. We’ve earned tremendous interest in getting our robotics platform to provide on-the-go fresh food options, but we need to ensure we have enough field knowledge (and the resulting refinements in place) before we push into mass production.

What are the top tips you'd give to anyone looking to start, run and grow a business today?

Be true to your passion.
Find an incredible team you trust.
Be patient but persistent.

We’ve managed to master a complex automation process to create the perfect smoothie, and now we are eager to optimize our technology to create other popular dishes – from soups and salads to sandwiches and bowls – to meet market demand. However, one day my hope is still to replicate my mother’s dish and share something incredibly special and comforting from my childhood with the masses.

Where can people find you and your business?

Website: https://www.blendid.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/myblendid
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/myblendid/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/myblendid2
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/venki-ayalur-4b50a31/

If you like what you've read here and have your own story as a solo or small business entrepreneur that you'd like to share, then please answer these interview questions. We'd love to feature your journey on these pages.

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