This is a great idea and the execution sounds perfect. I don’t know about the pricing model though. For me, I see several advantages to a robot prepared meal - being safer and more consistent (same portions every time, no hair or other gross human stuff involved), not having to interact with anyone to get food, and presumably a really modern and slick ordering experience. I don’t need it to be cheaper at all, as long as it’s good quality food.
Your goal of bringing healthy food more cheaply to people is great, but based on the other advantages this tech has, I think the price should be much closer. Eg if chipotle is selling it for $10, yours should be $8 or $9 not $5.
I think at about $7-$9 for a decent sized lunch meal in say New York or SF would demolish the competition. Sub $10 is really the magic number. Mealpass tried to do this, but as was pointed out, the costs are real, so if you wanna lower the price, usually the size or quality (or both) goes down.
If you hit about $6-7 a meal, you'll be very close to competing with home-cooked meals on cost. Sure people can go a bit cheaper, but it isn't gonna be really a significant reduction, but there will be a large time cost to it for home-cooked.
A bowl of rice with some veggies, beans or protein cooked at home is way less than $6/serving. Heck an apple and a couple of hard boiled eggs is a pretty healthy meal and is less than $1.
You don't have to stand there and do nothing when beans or a lot of foods are on a stove.
Plus, I don't get the fascination of cooking "single" portions the last decade. The amount of time it takes to cook one portion of nearly everything, you can knock out 4-8 in the same 30-40 min time span. Leftovers next day, lunch or freeze it for a little while. You spent $3/serving and you technically saved more time in the long run and hassle just because you learned to utilize the whole pan instead of a small corner.
Yes pricing is still an open question: we're likely going to end up with a spectrum of brands, with some being more "budget" and some being more "upscale". We're excited about making good food more accessible but how to best balance that that with actually making enough of a profit is the question!
You, as an app developer, may not care about paying less. Understand that many are less fortunate than you. I can't imagine a robot in its first stages being as adept as humans at cooking and plating food. I'm optimistic it can be iteratively improved upon, however.
Your goal of bringing healthy food more cheaply to people is great, but based on the other advantages this tech has, I think the price should be much closer. Eg if chipotle is selling it for $10, yours should be $8 or $9 not $5.