Spyce Kitchen

Spyce Kitchen or just Spyce was a robotic-powered restaurant which prepares food in "three minutes or less".^[1]

Spyce
Restaurant information
Owner(s)	Sweetgreen
Head chef	Daniel Boulud
Street address	241 Washington Street
City	Boston
County	Suffolk
State	Massachusetts
Postal/ZIP Code	02201
Coordinates	42.3579°N 71.0581°W / 42.3579; -71.0581
Website	www.spyce.com

History

MIT mechanical engineering graduates^[2] Michael Farid, Brady Knight, Luke Schlueter and Kale Rogers^[3] developed the kitchen using seven autonomous work stations to prepare bowl-based meals using healthy ingredients such as kale, beans and grains.^[4] The four graduates wanted to make healthy meals more affordable,^[5] so they built the robotic technology^[6] and initially served the food to students at an MIT dining hall.^[7] The group received the $10,000 "Eat It" Lemelson-MIT undergraduate prize in 2016^[8] as one of America's top two collegiate inventors in food technology.^[9]

The four then teamed up with chef Daniel Boulud to create the new menu for their restaurant.^[10][11] Prices started at $7.50 for an entire meal in a bowl^[12] at their first real branch, which opened on May 3, 2018, in Boston, Massachusetts.^[13] Referred to as the "Spyce Boys",^[4] the four founders were inspired by their experiences as hungry student athletes on tight budgets. Spyce Kitchen automated cooking units also clean up after cooking and dirtying the cooking apparatus.^[14]

Funding

Spyce raised $21 million in series A funding in September 2018, led by venture capital firms Maveron, Collaborative Fund, and Khosla Ventures.^[15]

Restaurants

Spyce operated and then shuttered two restaurants in the Greater Boston area. Their first restaurant was located at 241 Washington St in downtown Boston.^[16] Their second restaurant, which opened in February 2021, was located at 1 Brattle Square, in Harvard Square.^[16]

Acquisition by Sweetgreen and closure

In 2021, the company was acquired by Sweetgreen, a chain of salad restaurants.^[17][18]

Both Spyce restaurants were closed following the Sweetgreen acquisition, "to focus on developing technology for Sweetgreen restaurants". The downtown Boston location closed October 22, 2021,^[1] and the Harvard Square location closed February 18, 2022.^[2]