The interplay between American grocery shopping and dining out says a lot not only about the economy, but our calorie consumption. In December, menu prices increased 4.1% YoY while grocery prices rose 2.4%, in line with overall 2.7% CPI. Innovations like automation have promised to create better economies of scale with the goal of someday making the cost of dining out cheaper than preparing food at home, especially for smaller households. This week, I visited the soft opening of Chubby Mart, the first self-service hotpot market and restaurant in the US that blurs the line between a supermarket and a restaurant. The concept is a joint venture between 160-unit Chinese hotpot chain Banu and Chubby Group, which operates 55 various Chinese and Japanese concepts across the US. I sat down with CTO Philip Le to talk about the group’s use of technology across loyalty, ordering, robotics, prefab construction, and AI that unlocks the ultimate customer experience at the right price point.