In December 2020, Heroad Investments led a multi million level angel round investment in the domestic company "Shenzhen T-Chef Technology Co., Ltd.", which focuses on providing intelligent and standardized catering solutions, and Ningbo Jiacheng followed suit.
The funds invested in this round will mainly be used for the recruitment of marketing team members for T-Chef, investment in new product research and development, and quality and supply chain management.
Shenzhen T-Chef Technology Co., Ltd. was established in November 2018 and is a high-tech enterprise specializing in the research and development, production, sales, and overall solutions of intelligent cooking and smart kitchen systems for Chinese cuisine.
The company has currently launched 10 commercial cooking robot series products that can be sold, with approximately 1600 typical Chinese cuisine databases, and two major system platforms: cuisine development app+cloud big data, and food safety management system. It has applied for 31 invention and utility model patents.
The product has been sold and applied to well-known customers in various fields of domestic catering and overseas markets; At present, there are well-known catering enterprise customers in Hong Kong, such as Coral, Xibei, Rural Foundation, and Daoxiang.
The founding management team of T-Chef is an early pioneer in the Chinese cuisine cooking robot and smart kitchen industry, with a deep understanding of industry pain points and customer needs. We have accumulated rich industry experience and channel resources.
Founder Geng Kaiping is a leader in the field of cooking robots, who has been deeply involved in the standardization and intelligence of Chinese cuisine for many years and has taken a strategic lead. The T-Chef team has strong research and development capabilities, developing 7 products within a year. It is currently the most comprehensive commercial product in the market that meets various application scenarios, and provides customized services and solutions for major customers.
The catering robot industry is currently in the early stages of growth, and the cooking robot industry has a blue ocean market scale of hundreds of billions, with competition in the early stages. There are several core pain points in manual cooking, including high labor costs, urgent need to solve the standardization of Chinese cuisine, and food safety management. However, cooking robots can compensate for the disadvantages and limitations of the role of chefs. As robots gradually reach the production level of chefs, it has become a trend for cooking robots to partially replace manual cooking.
T-Chef aims to address the pain points of manual cooking and build its business model from three aspects: intelligent hardware, technical services, and food safety management to achieve cooking standardization and help catering enterprises reduce costs and improve efficiency. This business model is centered around products such as cooking robot hardware, dish development and big data management software, and food safety management software, and provides technical services and customized overall solutions around the core products, adding value to their core products and increasing user stickiness.
With the sales of core products and the accumulation of big data in catering enterprises, the artificial intelligence ecosystem of the catering industry will ultimately be realized. The empowerment of artificial intelligence in the catering industry can provide a more accurate, timely, and comprehensive analysis of Chinese cooking habits, dining consumption habits of diners, and the supply-demand relationship of the supply chain, thereby efficiently solving the core pain points of low production and operation efficiency, low supply chain efficiency, and food safety and standardization in the catering industry.
Heroad Investments, an advocate of social value economy, believes that the business model of T-Chef has been preliminarily verified, and the strategic plan has been steadily implemented, with the ability to replicate on a large scale.
T-Chef's products and services have been recognized by major clients such as Xibei, Hong Kong Coral and Singapore Daneng. In the future, it will rapidly expand its market and provide customers with higher quality products and services, with huge development potential.
At the beginning of its establishment, T-Chef established the development concept and values of "win-win cooperation and mutual benefit", integrating social values into its business model from three directions: management, operation, and technology. Its mission is to "empower traditional catering with technology and enhance the happiness of catering industry employees".
The application of T-Chef cooking robot promotes the formation of cooking standardization and provides guarantee for food safety. The smart kitchen management system will effectively solve employee management, food safety, equipment protection, and legal compliance issues in restaurants, and improve industry management efficiency. The company's products use food grade materials and advanced technology to reduce environmental pollution during the manufacturing process and minimize emissions of exhaust gas and oil fumes to the greatest extent possible.
The company will collaborate with the largest group catering enterprise in the country to empower it to provide safe and scientific nutritional meals for primary and secondary school students in over 300 counties. At the same time, the company also delves into the community and participates in the research and development of community feeding solutions for the elderly and disabled.