Robotic Smoothie Kiosk: From Automats to ABB Arms

A robotic kiosk is a glass box that does the work of a counter and the people behind it. You order on a screen or in an app, and inside a robot arm or a row of dispensers measures the fruit, blends it, pours the cup and rinses up afterwards. Smoothies were among the first fresh foods these machines handled well, and the robotic smoothie kiosk is now in hospitals, with hot food following. This post traces the idea from coin vending and the automat to Blendid's smoothie kiosks, looks at the hospital and convenience store kiosks launched in 2026, and asks where ABB robots such as YuMi and the IRB 1200 Hygienic could fit.

A robotic coffee kiosk from Mt. Comfort Coffee, with the arm working behind glass, 2026. Photo: Oleg Yunakov / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

From coin slots and automats to fresh juice machines

Selling without a shop assistant is an old idea. In the first century AD Hero of Alexandria described a device that took a coin and released holy water. Modern vending began in London in the early 1880s, when Percival Everitt's 1883 machine sold postcards, and in 1888 the Thomas Adams Gum Company put gum machines on New York train platforms. Prepared food came next. On 9 June 1902 Horn & Hardart opened an automat at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, using machines from Max Sielaff's factory in Berlin. Diners dropped coins, opened a small glass door and took out a plate that staff had filled from behind the wall.

Postcard photo of the Horn & Hardart automat on 57th Street in New York. Photo: Horn & Hardart / Lumitone Photography via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The automat looked automatic, but people cooked the food and refilled every compartment by hand. Horn & Hardart opened in Times Square on 2 July 1912 and closed its last automat, in Manhattan, on 9 April 1991. Long before then, vending machines had settled on cans, bottles, snacks and cups of coffee, all made somewhere else. Preparing fresh food inside the machine stayed hard. Orange juice was one exception: machines that cut and press whole oranges behind glass now stand in metro stations, malls and parks in Europe and Asia. Our post on fast food kitchens follows the automat's hot food side.

A fresh orange juice vending machine that squeezes whole oranges behind glass. Photo: Anna Frodesiak / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

A smoothie asks more of a machine than juice does. Each order mixes several fruits, liquids and powders in different amounts, and then the cup has to be blended, poured and the blender cleaned. Blendid, founded in 2015 by Venki Ayalur, Vipin Jain and Vijay Dodd, built a glass kiosk around a robot arm it called Chef B, with blenders, refrigeration and dispensers. It opened in the Market Café at the University of San Francisco on 25 March 2019. Customers ordered at the kiosk or in an app, and a 12 ounce drink cost $6. Chef B was designed for 35 to 45 orders an hour including cleaning, with each blend taking about two minutes.

A robot arm serving ice cream inside a glass kiosk in Tyumen, Russia, 2023, the same layout smoothie kiosks use. Photo: RG72 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Smoothie kiosks in hospitals and hot food at the gas station

Blendid later teamed up with Jamba. A Jamba by Blendid kiosk ran at Georgia College & State University, and in January 2023 another opened at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, serving around the clock. Others went into malls, Walmart stores and Love's travel centers. In July 2026 Blendid and Morrison Healthcare put Blendid Pro into service at Mayo Clinic's Methodist Campus in Rochester, Minnesota, after about two years of joint work. The system uses three robotic arms, handles up to six orders at once and measures ingredients to a tenth of a gram. That precision matters when a dietitian has set the recipe for a particular patient.

A Jamba Juice store in 2021; Blendid later ran robotic kiosks under the Jamba name. Photo: Kzoo Cowboy / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Hot food is going into kiosks as well. In August 2026 Murphy USA said it would trial automated White Castle kiosks from Automated Retail Technologies at some of its larger convenience stores. Customers order on a touchscreen and get hot sliders in about two minutes. Preparation, heating and delivery all happen inside a closed unit, so the store needs no kitchen and no cooks. Murphy USA has not said how many stores will get one. Our post on robot-run convenience stores covers the wider move toward shops that run with few or no staff.

An automated pizza kiosk in Finland that bakes to order, 2022. Photo: Ypsilon from Finland / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

We found no ABB smoothie kiosk, and Blendid has not said whose arms it uses. ABB robots have still served food and drink in public. From August to December 2018 a dual-arm YuMi IRB 14000 made coffee for shoppers at the Smartech store in Selfridges, London. At BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California, an IRB 360 FlexPicker and a YuMi assemble burgers every day. For a kiosk, the closest ABB match is the IRB 1200 Hygienic. It has an IP67 body, an IP69K stainless flange and food-grade H1 oil, and ABB aims it at quick service restaurants, kiosks and central kitchens.

ABB's YuMi making coffee at the Smartech store in Selfridges, London, 2018. Photo: ABB

Where robotic kiosks go next

Kiosks will most likely spread in places that stay open long hours with few staff, such as hospitals, airports, campuses and highway stops. Hospitals are the interesting case, because a machine that logs every gram can follow a patient's diet more closely than a busy cafeteria line. A kiosk built around an ABB arm is possible. A single-arm YuMi IRB 14050 or a GoFa CRB 15000 could fetch cups and work the blenders, while SafeMove watches the zone around the arm when a door opens for service. Nobody has announced such a product, so treat it as a design idea, the kind usually worked out first in RobotStudio.

An ABB GoFa CRB 15000 cobot at a work table. Photo: ABB

Most of the hard problems come from the food and the money. Fresh fruit spoils, so someone still has to restock and check the fridge every day. Blenders, nozzles and drip trays must be cleaned and sanitised to food safety rules, and health inspectors have to accept how it is done. A kiosk with an arm, refrigeration and payment costs far more than a vending machine, so it needs to sell a lot of cups each day to pay for itself. Hospitals add infection control and strict allergen rules, which helps explain why the Mayo Clinic version took an 18 month development effort.

An ABB IRB 1200 Hygienic robot picking bananas, a food handling demo. Photo: ABB

For now kiosks are a public product, and a home version would look different. Countertop blenders with preset programs already do most of the work, and nobody sells a home robot that peels, measures and blends. If one arrives, it will probably borrow from the kiosk, with sealed ingredient pods and weighed portions plus an automatic cleaning cycle. On the safety side, ABB's GoFa shows part of the answer for an arm in a kitchen, since it slows and stops when it senses contact. Price, counter space and daily cleaning are still open questions for anyone buying one for home.

A home smoothie maker on a kitchen counter, still the usual way to blend at home. Photo: Air fans / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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