When Shin Starr set out to build an autonomous kitchen, the company knew that the robotic cooking gimmick wouldn’t benefit the business. What would Shin Starr’s do OLHSO Korean BBQ Truck successful if it could cook and deliver a hot, fresh, tasty meal at a reasonable price.
“At the end of the day, customers don’t care what kind of rocket science is in your truck or in your kitchen,” Kish Shin, co-founder and CEO of Shin Starr, told TechCrunch. “They care about the value they get.”
Han Sungil, a chef with more than 18 restaurants in Korea, came to the US to lead Shin Starr’s culinary operations, which include a brick and mortar restaurant in San Mateo — so there are high expectations for the food. We can’t tell from experience if the food is a success, but we’ll definitely be sampling wagyu galbi and tteokbokki flavors when the food truck arrives at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, where Shin Starr is part of the Startup Battlefield 200.
Companies like DoorDash are experimenting with autonomous delivery robots, but Shin Starr is doing the opposite: A human drives the truck, but the body of the vehicle is equipped with the company’s “Autowok,” a modular AI-powered robotics system that automates cooking, serving and cleaning. Once Han prepares the ingredients, the Autowok handles the rest.
While the truck heads down the highway, Shin Starr’s robotic system retrieves ready-to-eat, fresh ingredients from a cooler and then places them on a conveyor belt. They are then dropped into an inclined cylindrical canister, which is heated up like a wok and rotated to cook the food. After the food is cooked and placed in its package, the system can clean and disinfect the container and put it back into the flow for cooking.
“It was designed to be able to serve food and cook on the go,” Shin said. “So if you ordered a wagyu beef dish from your location, let’s say the truck was 15 minutes away. It takes us eight minutes to cook wagyu beef [so it] it won’t start cooking your food until it’s seven minutes closer to your location, so when you get your food, your food is literally freshly cooked.”
Other robotic kitchen startups have struggled to find the right products to market, but Shin Starr believes it can find a niche in airports. The company will soon open an OLHSO micro-restaurant at a top California airport, and if that goes well, the company has other airports interested in implementing the technology.
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Since their small airport restaurant does not need to be staffed by humans, it can operate at any time of the day.
“At 11 p.m., all restaurants close. There’s no food for the next eight hours, and yet 10% of all people fly to the US during those hours, from 11 p.m. to 7 a.m.,” said Tord Olav Dønnum, CMO of Shin Starr. “This thing will finally give you a fresh, high-quality restaurant experience without having to buy a Snickers bar from a vending machine or a dry sandwich.”
Shin Starr tapped Gower Smith as CPO, a wise hiring decision, as there are few people in the world who know as much about automated high-tech retail as Smith does. He is a serial entrepreneur in the space and recently led Swiftwhich partners with companies like Best Buy and CVS to create luxury vending machines in places like train stations and airports. This allows brands to set up stores without dedicating human labor or a significant physical footprint.
Smith said the automated nature of the diner makes it easier to provide customers with an estimate of how long it will take to cook their order. it’s useful in an environment like an airport, where people may be rushing to catch a flight. The micro restaurant needs periodic intervention from a human worker to refill the fridge and prepare ingredients, but otherwise, it should run smoothly on its own.
“Airports are where we’re going to start, but we’re going to go into hotels; people are hungry at 2 in the morning when they come in from their travels and they want a high-quality meal,” Smith told TechCrunch. “Whether it’s in a hospital or on a campus at 2 a.m. … There are a lot of these environments where we can bring that kind of experience.”
If you want to learn more about Shin Starr from the company itself — while checking out dozens of others, hearing their pitches, and listening to guest speakers on four different stages — join us at Disrupt, October 27-29 in San Francisco. Learn more here.
