Yummy Future / Mission
Fleet3 STORES · LIVE
FoundedSEP 2018
Cups poured240,000+
Team~60 PART-TIME
Yummy Future's flagship robotic unit at the production bar
// THE WHY Why we build robots for food & beverage — and what it changes for the people behind the counter.
ORIGIN — UIUC ADVANCED DIGITAL PROJECTS LAB
SEPTEMBER 2018
STATUS · LIVE

Take the repetitive work off humans. Move them up the value chain.

A specialty barista pulls the same shot all shift long — the same motion, again and again. That same person knows the regulars, picks the music, runs the store. We think they're better than the dirty work. So we built a robot to do the prep — pulling shots, steaming milk, whisking matcha. The person does the welcome, the menu, the brand, the ownership. Same craft. Better job. Better business.

2018
Founded · UIUC lab
3
Stores live today
240,000+
Cups served
§ 01 / ORIGIN
Seven years, honestly dated

Seven years in.
Still the same backbone.

Every date on this page traces to
our canonical fact base. No number here is invented.
SEP 2018Early Yummy Future robotic prototype inside UIUC's Advanced Digital Projects Lab
Founded
UIUC's Advanced Digital Projects Lab. One early robot, a handful of engineering students, and a thesis: a machine could pull a real drink.
2019Yummy Future robot — the year the company won the Illinois Cozad New Venture Challenge and the Amazon Alexa Prize, and joined Y Combinator S19
Cozad · Alexa Prize · YC S19
The Illinois Cozad New Venture Challenge, the Amazon Alexa Prize, and Y Combinator S19 — all in the same year.
2022Side view of an early-generation Yummy Future robotic unit — the machine running the first store
First store
Green Street, Champaign — running the old machine. A local paper's headline: "A robot is now serving coffee."
OCT 2025Yummy Future cup at the Palo Alto storefront, opened October 2025
Palo Alto opens
Second state. Same robot, same thesis, a new counter.
MAR 2026Champaign store relaunched as a dedicated matcha shop, March 2026
Champaign relaunches
Same hardware, same software — new brand, new recipe. Concept to live in under a week.
3
Stores live
240,000+
Cups poured
Today
§ 02 / THE HUMANS STANCE
What the robot takes. What people keep.

We think people are better than the dirty work.
So the robot took it.

Every shift, the same motion.
That part moved to the robot.
Robot · what's lifted off
Robotic arm with an orange gripper positioning two cups under the espresso heads
The dirty work
Pulling shots · steaming milk · whisking matcha
The same motion, every shift
Human · where we move up
A barista laughing while handing a matcha cup across the counter to a customer
Hospitality & ownership
Welcome · menu · regulars · brand
The work humans do best
A barista working the counter at a Yummy Future store today
§ 03 / WHAT WE BUILD
One platform, the whole chain

We could just sell the hardware.
We chose to run the stores instead.

Three stores. All ours.
No outside operator yet.
01 · Designed
Hardware and software, one system
The robot and the software that runs it are built together — not a machine with an app bolted on after.
02 · Engineered
The same drink, every time
Every pour is recipe-versioned. Dose, timing, and technique get logged and repeated — the craft, made consistent.
03 · Operated
We run the counter ourselves
Palo Alto, and two stores in Champaign. We don't license the machine out and hope — we operate it, and the results are our own.
// Honesty check

We call this a platform because that's the direction we're building. Today, all three stores are ours — we design it, engineer it, and operate it end to end. No outside operator runs our machine yet. That's not a hedge; it's the proof rig.

§ 04 / TWO WAYS IN

Come see it pull a shot.

// In person

Visit a store

Three stores, two states — watch the robot work, then talk to the person running the counter.

// Join the team

Careers

About 60 part-time roles today, mostly college students — many picking up robotics-adjacent skills on shift.