How many robots can a restaurant have before it's just a vending machine?

Humans are always delighted by the idea of getting food from machines — whether it’s the old automats of the 1900s or a replicator from “Star Trek.”

But what’s the difference between a restaurant and what is functionally a vending machine? If it’s that a human cooks or serves the food, modern restaurants have already transcended that.

For instance…McDonald’s makes you order on a screen and robot waiters are becoming ubiquitous (though it’s debatable if a table on wheels constitutes a “robot”), but there’s so much more:

• Sweetgreen just opened its eighth location using its automated “Infinite Kitchen”tech, which can assemble 500 salads in an hour. (Humans still prepare all the ingredients and interact with customers.). Going beyond speed, consistency and cost control, the robot is improving the quality of the work experience for employees. As per Cody Fessel, an area leader for Sweetgreen, “It removes the repetitive nature of putting ingredients in bowls and that’s a part of the job where it’s hard to get passionate about. People are passionate about hospitality. People are passionate about the food, the culinary side of it, and that’s exactly what we’re embracing here.”
• Walmart will open 20 robot-run restaurantsin its stores after successful trial runs in Illinois and Georgia. The first of Walmart beverage robots was installed in a Dawsonville, Georgia, Walmart in July. The robot, ADAM is projected to serve between 100 and 200 cups of coffee and tea each day, makes coffee and tea.
• CaliExpress by FLIPPY serves as a test kitchen for Miso Robotics, which builds robots for use in restaurants. How it works: orders are received by the kitchen, where two robots get to work. Flippy is essentially a fry cook. It makes up to 150 pounds of fries per hour, but it’s capable of other recipes — chicken tenders, onion rings, mozzarella sticks, etc. Another robot, made by Cucina, grinds wagyu beef, then grills up to six patties at a time. A human employee salts the fries, grills onions, assembles the burger, and serves the orders. They’re also responsible for “managing” the robots.

Asian countries are showing greater urgency in restaurant automation, per Restaurant Business. In Tokyo, E Vino Spaghetti’s automated pasta robot (P-Robo) can make 90 meals in an hour. It’s simply amazing that all types of pasta on the menu can be cooked al dente with sauces blended in, in 45 – second intervals. What is most unique, is it even washes the pans on its own which leads to less human labour and prep time.

Not only is the technology cool, but the demand for restaurants is outpacing the supply of workers; more than 30% of the population in China, Japan, and South Korea will be 65+ by 2050.

So, what’s a vending machine and what’s a restaurant?

The answer is probably that all food service will eventually fall somewhere on the vending machine-restaurant spectrum.

Source: External

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