Vended fresh hot meals will soon be on the menu at a major airport in southern California. According to the Airline Passenger Experience Association (APEX), Yo-Kai Express will install four of its vending machines, billed as 24-hour robotic restaurants, at Ontario (CA) International Airport.
Yo-Kai Express has more than 20 vendable meal items, prepared in less than minute, which include ramen, over-rice dishes like gyu donburi and chicken teriyaki, and soups. It also vends deserts like tiramisu and kakigori (Japanese shaved ice).
The company, headquartered in Hayward, Calif., was founded in 2016 by Andy Lin, a semiconductor engineer.
In operation, Yo-Kai Express’s meal ingredients are prepared off site, flash frozen and then stocked in a machine. When an order is enabled, the machine rapidly heats up the broth and cooks the meal’s remaining fixings. Little more is known about how the machine works; with all the press the machine has attracted, Lin is said to not allow reporters to look inside it. Yo-Kai Express operates by charging clients a monthly fee to maintain a machine on site.
