JD.com is betting again on the food service industry: 7FRESH chefs are entering homes, and robots continue to compete for the three meals a day market.

JD.com has brought cooking robots from the back kitchen of food delivery services into home kitchens.

On September 16, JD.com launched "Seven Fresh Chef," a new business targeting family health and nutrition, and began pre-sales in cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen. The founding membership price for family users is 19,888 yuan.

While the cooking robot, priced at nearly 20,000 yuan, is certainly eye-catching when it enters a home, for Chef Qixian, the machine is just one part of the whole service.

After users upload their medical examination reports and fill in their dietary preferences and family member information, the system generates a phased dietary plan and daily menu. JD.com then delivers pre-washed, chopped, and prepared vegetables according to the plan, which are then cooked by robots according to a preset program.

In addition to a home cooking robot "worth nearly 20,000 yuan", the package also includes 15,000 Chef Coins corresponding to RTC instant clean vegetable consumption rights, as well as a year of AI dietary analysis and nutritionist guidance services.

From introducing automated cooking to takeout kitchens, to 7Fresh Coffee experimenting with automated meal preparation, and then to 7Fresh chefs entering home kitchens, JD.com is putting robots into more real-world catering scenarios.

This is not a logical choice.

Back in 2018, JD.com launched the "X Future Restaurant," but the project was not replicated on a large scale afterward. The store operation, menu design, and customer acquisition required for catering were not JD.com's original core capabilities.

As robotics technology matures, it brings new variables to this business.

For the catering industry, automated equipment can reduce reliance on human experience and improve the stability of food preparation; for robotics companies, catering can provide continuous tasks, real orders, and operational data.

This gives JD.com a reason to continue investing in the catering industry: it wants to improve the standardization of kitchens with the help of robots, and also hopes to verify the commercial value of robots through the catering business.

Expensive chef

Judging from its price of nearly 20,000 yuan, the Seven Fresh Chef is not a kitchen appliance aimed at the general public, at least in its initial launch phase.

A test of the Seven Fresh Chef mini-program revealed that, taking the "Balanced Nutrition Plan" as an example, a 21-day program requires 4251 Chef Coins. Based on the initial package containing 15000 Chef Coins, this could buy approximately 3.5 cycles, corresponding to about 74 days.

After the Chef Coins in the meal plan are used up, users can continue to recharge and purchase RTC (Refreshed Cooked Vegetables) that match the meal plan.

A source close to Seven Fresh Chefs told Wall Street News and All-Weather Technology that subsequent top-ups will be calculated at 1 yuan to 1 Chef Coin.

Looking at the prices of dishes on the mini-program, a serving of "Gongjin's Bursting Egg" costs 30 Chef Coins, stir-fried shredded potatoes costs 22 Chef Coins, seaweed and egg drop soup costs 25 Chef Coins, and most meat dishes cost between 35 and 60 Chef Coins.

Based on the calculation that 1 yuan corresponds to 1 chef's coin, the price of a single serving of many dishes is close to the price of freshly cooked dishes in ordinary restaurants in first-tier cities.

Moving cooking robots from restaurants to homes is not a new idea.

All-Weather Technology previously learned from a person close to Guoquan that Guoquan had also researched delivering the cooking robot from "Guoquan Stir-Fry" to ordinary households along with pre-cleaned vegetables.

The difference between the two is that Guoquan's original business is more focused on community retail and high-quality, cost-effective ingredients; while Qixian Chef places health management at the forefront of product design and uses this to increase the added value of the entire service.

This also determines that JD.com's initial target is mainly families with strong payment capabilities and clear health management needs.

In the mini-program, different dishes are labeled with tags such as "iron supplement" and "low-calorie". The system recommends menus based on the user's medical examination data, physical condition and dietary preferences.

The fees paid by users include not only equipment and ingredients, but also the service premium brought by health analysis, nutritional guidance, and personalized recommendations.

In addition to the professional version priced at 19,888 yuan, the Seven Fresh Chef "Historical Edition" adds features such as master chef dishes for state banquets, digitalized family recipes, and customized home cooking by renowned chefs, thus entering the high-end family service channel; the solution for professional institutions delivers Health Brain, pre-cleaned vegetables, and smart cooking equipment in a modular form.

This model is currently in the pre-sale verification period.

A source close to 7Fresh Chef told All-Weather Technology that the initial pre-sale of 7Fresh Chef covers cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and the first batch of users will be delivered in order of their reservations. The service is still in the pre-sale stage, and the specific delivery time is yet to be determined.

The default serving size of the set meal, how the quantity of pre-prepared vegetables and the cost of chef coins will be adjusted when adding family members, and whether family members with different health needs can share a single menu are all issues that still need to be clarified.

The intention behind bundling pre-prepared vegetables with cooking robots is to lower the barrier to entry for operating the machines by using standardized ingredients, and to eliminate the need for users to relearn how to prepare and mix ingredients. However, once these highly standardized devices enter the home, they still have to deal with highly unpredictable dietary needs.

Chain restaurants need to prepare a large number of repetitive meals every day, with a relatively limited SKU and a need for consistent taste. At the same time, they face pressure from chef costs and the need for rapid store replication.

Robots can process fixed recipes continuously, and it is relatively easy to calculate how much manpower is saved and how long it takes to recoup the equipment cost.

A family can only cook a limited number of times each day. Family meals are also highly unpredictable – how many people are eating today, whether to add dishes on the spot, whether to eat out, and how much food is left in the refrigerator can all change the original plan.

The more realistic barrier comes from the kitchen itself.

Commercial kitchens can be redesigned in terms of space and workflow based on the equipment, but home kitchens vary in size and decoration. If robots cannot be adapted to existing kitchens, consumers are not just buying a small appliance, but rather undertaking a small-scale kitchen renovation.

Until these questions are answered clearly, it remains difficult to judge whether Seven Delicacies Chef can move from a service targeting a small number of high-paying families to a broader family market.

JD.com needs catering, and catering also needs robots.

JD.com's investment in catering robots has been a continuous process, beginning with two rounds of investment in Oak Deer Robotics. According to Oak Deer's official website, JD.com invested tens of millions of yuan in December 2023 and an additional nearly 200 million yuan in July 2024.

In 2025, Oak Deer's "Meishanshi" cooking robot was introduced into "Qixian Xiaochu," a self-operated catering project that adopts a "takeout + self-pickup" model.

In 2026, Oak Deer's "Fresh Coffee Ark" entered 7FRESH Coffee's unmanned stores to be responsible for beverage production, and then UniX AI's Panther wheeled dual-arm robot delivered the beverages to the pickup cabinet.

Based on its current actions, JD.com has not shown a clear intention to become a manufacturer of complete catering robots. It prefers to act as a distributor, scenario provider, and comprehensive service provider, enabling robots to complete demonstration, sales, testing, and delivery.

JD.com has announced plans to invest 10 billion yuan in the robotics industry by 2028, helping 100 brands achieve sales exceeding 1 billion yuan each. To achieve this goal, simply displaying robots on e-commerce pages is clearly insufficient.

Unlike mobile phones, it's difficult for consumers and business clients to make purchasing decisions about robots based solely on specifications.

The value of robots needs to be validated in real-world environments: what is the success rate of their tasks, how long does it take to recover after a malfunction, is it necessary to modify the site, and can they truly save on labor costs?

7Fresh Kitchen and 7Fresh Coffee are not only catering businesses, but also testing grounds, showrooms and sales model rooms built by JD.com for robotics companies.

JD.com's advantage lies in its ability to integrate robots, food supply chains, and instant fulfillment capabilities into a complete catering solution.

For JD.com, food delivery remains a high-frequency consumption activity that occurs multiple times a day. Takeout, fresh produce, and pre-prepared vegetables can share the same procurement, warehousing, cold chain, and instant delivery network, increasing orders for JD.com's existing supply chain and fulfillment system.

Zheng Xiaodan, head of JD Retail's Embossed Intelligence Business, said at the 2026 World Robot Conference that JD hopes to become a bridge connecting technology and products, as well as an "ecosystem partner" that accelerates the industry.

Specifically, JD.com can showcase and sell robots on its online platform and in offline stores, and provide feedback on the needs of consumers and enterprise customers to manufacturers; its logistics, retail, health, and catering businesses can provide real operating environments.

After the equipment is sold, JD.com also attempts to undertake leasing, installation and maintenance, and supports robot model access, human-computer interaction and product iteration through capabilities such as JoyInside and JD Cloud.

However, JD.com faces an inherent disadvantage in playing this role: compared to established restaurant brands, it lacks a large-scale store network that can be directly used for testing and replication.

When 7Fresh Coffee launched in November 2025, it set a goal of 10,000 stores within three years. As of now, 7Fresh Coffee has fewer than 50 stores in operation, while 7Fresh Kitchen has only around 100 stores.

Scaling up is a question that 7FRESH must answer, but robots and standardized production are also lowering the barrier to store replication.

Cooking and coffee making involve repetitive and continuous processes, which can accumulate operational and fault data for robots. Robots can reduce the catering industry's reliance on chefs' experience, improve the stability of food preparation, and increase the efficiency of store replication.

This economic account still lacks key data.

However, JD.com still needs to prove that robots can truly reduce catering costs and that businesses such as 7FRESH Kitchen and 7FRESH Coffee can obtain enough orders to cover the investment in stores and equipment.

Otherwise, the so-called test sites, showrooms, and sales models will hardly escape the experimental nature of continuous investment.

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