Shin Starr’s robotic food truck kitchen will serve up Korean BBQ at TechCrunch Disrupt 2025

Summary

When Shin Starr set out to build an autonomous kitchen, the company knew that the gimmick of robotic cooking wouldn’t carry the business. What would make Shin Starr’s OLHSO Korean BBQ food truck successful is 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 about the type of rocket science that 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’re getting.” Han Sungil, a chef with over 18 restaurants in Korea, came to the U.S. to lead Shin Starr’s culinary operations, which includes a brick-and-mortar restaurant in San Mateo — so there’s high expectations for the food. We can’t say from experience whether the food is a hit, but we’ll certainly be taste-testing some wagyu galbi and tteokbokki when the food truck rolls up to TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, where Shin Starr is part of the Startup Battlefield 200. VIDEO Companies like DoorDash are experimenting with autonomous delivery robots, but Shin Starr is doing the reverse: A human drives the truck, but the body of the vehicle is outfitted with the company’s “Autowok,” a modular, AI-powered robotics system that automates cooking, serving, and cleaning. Once Han preps the ingredients, the Autowok handles the rest. While the truck heads down the highway, Shin Starr’s robotic system retrieves the prepared, fresh ingredients from a refrigerator, then places them on a conveyor belt. They’re then dropped into a tilted cylindrical canister, which climbs to high heats like a wok and rotates to cook the food. After the food is cooked and tipped into its packaging, the system can clean and sanitize the canister and put it back into the flow for cooking. “It was designed to be able to serve food and cook en route,” Shin said. “So, if you have 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] ...