How I Created A Robot Barista That Is Disrupting The F&B Industry

Keith Tan

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Published: October 29th, 2022

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Keith Tan

Founder, Crown Digital IO

Founders

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Crown Digital IO

crowndigital.io

from Singapore

started December 2016

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Hello! I’m Keith Tan, the founder, and CEO of Crown Digital, a smart Internet of Things (IoT) start-up solving key challenges in the F&B industry – including manpower shortages. We are three specialist companies fused into one: first, we are a software company with an end-to-end operating system.

Secondly, we are a robotic automation company that designed a functional unmanned retail hardware solution: ELLA, Singapore’s first robotic barista that can brew more than 300 coffee combinations and serves up to 200 cups per hour, supported by the IoT-connected software allowing customers to order and pay directly from a mobile app while using deep learning and predictive analysis for optimization.

Last but not least, we are a coffee company, roasting and retailing our artisan coffee with premium Buscaglione beans from Italy. ELLA has eliminated the worry of hiring and retraining new baristas to create consistently good cups of coffee efficiently – she’s got that all covered.

We offer coffee as a solution to both B2B and B2C customers. ELLA is currently available in select malls in Singapore and train stations in Tokyo, allowing all coffee lovers to grab a quick cup of coffee without the need to queue since the mobile app allows them to order ahead of time. She can also be found in the offices of our B2B partners, who work with us to give their employees unlimited cups of good coffee each working day, which boosts employee morale and productivity.

Soon, we will be branching into white labeling to support large operators with their digitalization efforts, providing ELLA hardware, recurring raw materials, software integration, customized user journey development, and backend integration. My ultimate goal is for Crown Digital to provide a complete solution for fellow F&B operators to digitize their operations to achieve increased operational efficiency and margins, and of course, for ELLA to be found all over the world!

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

After attaining a finance degree in the United Kingdom, I worked in various industries, including property, cars, and wealth management. I loved those jobs, but when I was 35, I decided that it was time to build something for myself. I ventured into the F&B industry by opening the first Crown Coffee café in 2016, offering Buscaglione coffee and panini sandwiches.

As I wanted to scale up my business with more outlets, we were constantly plagued with challenges including manpower shortages and high overhead costs such as rental, labor, and training, resulting in low-profit margins that made it difficult for the business to expand.

It was frustrating but I chose to see it as a whitespace opportunity, so with a team of technologists and baristas, we were able to fully automate our operations, which led to Crown Coffee’s evolution into a smart café in 2017.

The inspiration specifically for ELLA came when I tested a robot arm picking up and serving croissants to guests at a corporate innovation center. It was my first proper encounter with robotics and I had no background in that at all, but knew instantly that I wanted to incorporate it into my business and continue exploring the potential of technology.

Hence, I founded Crown Digital in 2018, mostly with my funds. Focused on experimenting with technology to create a robot barista that could replicate the tasks of human baristas, eventually leading us to ELLA. Once we realized that ELLA can serve up to 200 cups of coffee per hour with coffee variations and consistent quality, we knew that we were on the right path.

I was working on a robot barista prototype in one of the Crown Coffee cafes and one of our customers had a client who wanted to lease ELLA for an exhibition. It turned out to be run an exhibition run by Alibaba Cloud at Marina Bay Sands. During the exhibition, we had our first stress test for ELLA – she was serving coffee to so many people at once autonomously, and many guests who saw her and tried our coffee wanted to explore working with us.

It was not long before ELLA was featured on the news, gaining attention internationally and being invited to more exhibitions around the world.

My tip for existing and aspiring business owners is to never stop networking. Find every opportunity to demonstrate your product.

Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.

When I realized I was facing challenges scaling my business due to manpower issues, I thought hard and pondered over the issue, before the idea of a smart cafe that could alleviate some of these concerns came to mind.

I walked up to the local Intel team one day while they were having lunch nearby, told them I had an idea to fully automate my coffee business, and was introduced to Intel's Internet of Things Group (IOTG). I shared my challenges as an F&B business owner, pitched my idea, shared how I intended to solve it with robotics, AI, and Intel's ecosystem partners, and the rest was history.

I learned robotics from scratch and designed the robot myself, while Intel facilitated connections and we built a prototype together with the rest of the ecosystem partners. After that, I hired software developers and took the rest of our operations in-house, including the creation of the ELLA mobile app, and sourced for a sheet metal fabrication partner in Malaysia.

Even though ELLA launched to the public in 2020 and attended numerous trade events in 2019, the research and development process now is still quite similar to when we first designed ELLA in 2018, because with robotics and artificial intelligence, it’s going to always involve extensive and consistent trial-and-error.

Right from the beginning, we have always worked towards perfecting a robot that is agile, nimble, and human-centric for retail spaces. This includes regularly rethinking a digital user’s customer journey from a UI/UX perspective, stress-testing from all angles to ensure ELLA fits into dynamic and fast-changing environments, continuously improving and adapting based on challenges encountered in different environments, and developing agile and intuitive moments that coincide with consumer purchasing habits.

Currently, our patent in China has already been approved, and we are now in the process of registering it globally.

Describe the process of launching the business.

From 2018 - 2019, I started Crown Digital mostly bootstrapped, and soft-launched ELLA by leasing her to numerous trade events, serving an average of 800 cups per day, including to delegates at the Asean Summit in 2018. The trade event attendees loved ELLA from the get-go, sharing very encouraging feedback about the coffee quality.

This was the best launch strategy – media publications started approaching us and word of mouth had spread. More people wanted to see and lease ELLA.

Through field testing around the world, we brought ELLA to over 40 events in multiple countries. It was only in October 2020, after two years of R&D, that we officially launched ELLA to the public in Singapore, and brought it to the consumer market in January 2021, launching at Plaza Singapura. In the same month, we signed our first landmark deal in Japan with East Japan Railway Company to bring ELLA into subway stations in Tokyo and Yokohama.

Now, we are working with our very generous and supportive international investors, including East Japan Railway, SMRT Singapore, and an upcoming collaboration with JR East.

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Throughout starting up Crown Digital and the launch of ELLA, I’ve learned that one of the most important things is to stay grounded, move fast, make decisions quickly and win every single day no matter how big or small.

It's also important to inspire your team and your stakeholders – at the very beginning of the business, all you have is an idea that you are selling, so it's up to you to paint that story for them to visualize it. The goal is to translate this idea and story into something that they can imagine and get their buy-in.

It’s easy to give in to moments of doubt and think that your business has fallen through as a start-up, but I’ve learned to overcome my doubts day by day, shake them off, solve my challenges and live to see another day.

Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers?

Because how we were one of the first movers to fill what we identified as whitespace, international news publications recognized that we were revolutionizing the F&B industry with never-seen-before tech solutions that benefit both business owners and the end-consumer, and featured both Crown Digital and ELLA extensively.

I invested time into sharing my story behind the creation of Crown Digital and ELLA with the media, which has paid off as the media features led to international interest in our tech solutions and coffee, leading many B2B and B2C customers straight to our doorstep to enquire more about our tech solutions and experience ELLA for themselves respectively. Taking time to speak to the media who published articles about us also helped to boost SEO, which played a part in convincing our corporate partners that Crown Digital is credible, especially when we were just starting out.

Examples of media coverage can be found here:

On the B2C front, beyond the fact that we simply offer a convenient, efficient, and consistently good cup of coffee, which naturally brings customers back, we also have a loyalty point programme that encourages customer retention rates. We also reward our end-consumers in other ways – for instance, customers who pay through their ELLA wallet in our mobile app enjoy 10% off their purchases, and we offer a subscription programme, the ELLA Pass, which offers vouchers.

My tip for existing and aspiring business owners is to never stop networking. Find every opportunity to demonstrate your product. Pitch it to potential investors and business partners whenever you can. When we brought ELLA to multiple trade events for field testing, once people witnessed what ELLA can do and tasted our coffee, they wanted to work with us and explore what we have to offer.

How are you doing today and what does the future look like?

We aim to secure Series A funding by the end of this year and are working towards an initial public offering in 2027. Currently, ELLA is in Singapore and Japan but eventually, I hope for ELLA to be all around the world in corporate offices, malls, train stations, and more. That said, my goal is to establish a strong, unparalleled presence for ELLA in our existing markets first, before scaling to other markets.

Working with my team of food scientists and tech engineers, we are also exploring how ELLA can be refitted for any F&B task that is manual, such as serving cocktails or maybe even whipping up a bowl of ramen...stay tuned.

Through starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?

It’s easy to give in to moments of doubt and think that your business has fallen through as a start-up, but I’ve learned to overcome my doubts day by day, shake them off, solve my challenges and live to see another day.

I’ve also learned to prioritize my team. With Singapore’s tight labor market, I’ve had to invest a lot in my team to keep them from being drawn to larger conglomerates with deeper pockets, but it’s all about perspective. Once you see the value in building up an experienced, diverse team with similar growth mindsets, you’ll know that it’s worth allocating the budget to retain top talents, without whom business owners cannot grow or sustain the business.

Advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?

Ensure that your product/service is a solution to needs faced by many, then take every opportunity to pitch and demonstrate your product/service on every platform possible.

Never stop networking, telling your story, what needs you are solving, and inspiring your stakeholders by helping them to visualize what your product/service can do.