PASADENA, CALIF. – On the heels of a collaboration with Santa Monica, Calif.-based Wave Maker Labs, the food tech incubator that launched Miso Robotics, that will deploy Flippy at its 20 forthcoming Southern California locations to handle the frying station for chicken wings and other fried menu items, Wing Zone has announced a partnership with Miso Robotics to make Flippy 2 a standard in all of its new restaurants.

"With over 100 new shops in our current development pipeline, our technology roadmap relies heavily on strategic partnerships with companies like Miso, a pioneer in the field of food automation, that has the knowledge, data and resources to design robotics solutions that maximize our efficiency and provide a better overall customer experience," said David Bloom, chief development and operating officer of Wing Zone. "Our industry is in dire need of automation, and we are more than ready to deploy it at scale to continue growing our business."

Miso Robotics, a crowdfunding success, receives its primary funding from individual investors. The company has raised more than $50 million through crowdfunding to date and has more than 18,000 shareholders. To date Miso is currently in its Series E round, which kicked off with a market valuation of $500 million.

"We couldn't be more excited to announce a truly groundbreaking partnership with Wing Zone to incorporate back-of-house automation into all of its future restaurants from this point forward," said Mike Bell, chief executive officer of Miso Robotics. "No other brand has accepted automation to this degree, and we don't take their trust in us lightly. We want to establish Wing Zone as the franchise of the future, and this is just the first step in doing so."