Automated food has always meant settling. A vending machine, a glorified microwave, limited options, parked where real kitchens can't reach: stadiums, hospitals, airports, campuses. The food is an afterthought, and anyone with a dietary restriction is mostly out of luck.
AI Vendtures™ launches today as an operating platform for autonomous food, alongside its consumer brand, Heavendly™. It puts real, oven-fresh meals where people actually are, and serves the dietary needs those venues overlook. It joins the EFFX Ventures portfolio as a company we are building and operating alongside its founding team.
This one started two decades ago.
The right technology, finally at the right time
In 2006, our co-founder Doron Fetman helped pioneer the hot food automation category, with technology that delivered restaurant-quality food from frozen to hot in under 90 seconds, on a proprietary oven rather than a microwave. At a time when most people had never ordered a meal from a machine they trusted, it helped introduce the category to the mainstream.
The technology was right. The timing wasn't.
"Twenty years ago, we believed food automation would transform the industry. The technology was right, but the timing wasn't. Today, consumers, operators, artificial intelligence, robotics, and market demand have finally aligned. What was once ahead of its time has become exactly the right technology for this moment." — Doron Fetman, Co-Founder and Executive Chairman, AI Vendtures
Twenty years later, the variables have caught up to the idea. Robotics can now prepare and serve a far broader range of meals on demand, with a consistency earlier systems could not reach. AI makes the operation intelligent. And consumers, after years of tapping a screen to order nearly everything else, now expect to.
A platform, not a machine
Most food automation companies are built around a single device or a single technology. That is also why most of them stall. The machine is rarely the problem. The infrastructure around it is: the operations, the partnerships, the consumer adoption, and the market access required to scale.
AI Vendtures is built as the platform that closes that gap. It acquires, builds, invests in, and scales autonomous food technologies under one operating infrastructure, with AI-driven intelligence underneath. Its anchor concept is Hot Nosh, a proven autonomous food program now in its 18th consecutive season at Fenway Park, led by co-founder and CEO Wayne Feder, who has spent nearly two decades proving that people will embrace high-quality food served through an automated experience.
"Hot Nosh is in its 18th season at Fenway Park, and over that time we've seen consumer behavior evolve dramatically. What excites me today isn't just the technology. It's the fact that consumers are ready for it. The combination of automation, AI, changing expectations, and proven operational models has created an opportunity unlike anything we've seen before." — Wayne Feder, Co-Founder and CEO, AI Vendtures
From there, the portfolio is designed to expand through strategic investments, operating partnerships, joint ventures, exclusive market rights, and acquisitions, reaching consumers wherever food is needed, from stadiums and airports to hospitals, universities, and corporate campuses.
The platform and the brand
AI Vendtures is the platform behind the technologies, partnerships, and operations. Heavendly is the brand in front of the customer, the name people will meet when they order. One builds the infrastructure. The other earns the customer relationship. Two layers, designed to scale together.
For us, AI Vendtures is more than a food automation company. It's a case study in what happens when industry expertise, intelligent systems, operational infrastructure, and market timing come together around the right opportunity.
This is what building looks like
AI Vendtures was co-founded by our own Doron Fetman and Toby Hassan-Fishman, alongside Wayne Feder, combining decades of food automation, operations, branding, AI, and business transformation in a single team. It is the kind of company we exist to build, and to build alongside the operators who have already proven the model. We are builders first. We architect the business, stand up the systems, and scale it for long term success.
"The future of food isn't one machine, one product, or one technology. It's an ecosystem of technologies, brands, partnerships, and experiences. AI Vendtures was created to identify opportunities, build the infrastructure behind them, and help scale the innovations that will define the next generation of food service." — Toby Hassan-Fishman, Co-Founder and Chief Strategy & Brand Officer, AI Vendtures
The best opportunities are rarely marked with a giant X. Sometimes they're hiding in industries everyone else stopped questioning.
Learn more at aivendtures.com
