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Flippy by Miso Robotics prepares fries.
Miso Robotics
Restaurants are increasingly using robots to handle mundane human tasks amid rising labor costs.Chipotle, White Castle, and Sweetgreen are using robots to prepare salads, fries, and chips. A fully automated burger restaurant debuts this month in Southern California.
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Restaurant automation is moving to the back of the house, where robots can be found flipping burgers, cooking fries, and assembling mega-size salads and bowls.
The biggest changes are happening in the fast-food industry, with chains like Chipotle, Sweetgreen, and White Castle tapping robots to automate mundane and highly-repetitive tasks such as peeling avocados and frying potatoes. The move comes as chains face rising labor costs due to inflation and state minimum wage mandates.
Some are going all-in with automation powering everything from ordering to preparing food.
On December 12, Sweetgreen opened its second restaurant with an automated kitchen. The Huntington Beach, California, store uses kiosks to process orders and a robot-powered assembly line that can crank out up to 500 salads per hour. That’s roughly 50% more output than a team of staffers preparing dine-in and digital orders.
“It’s quiet. It’s fast. It’s efficient,” Sweetgreen’s new head of culinary, Chad Brauze, told Business Insider during a preview tour of the automated restaurant in early December. The staff size of the restaurant is 14-16 people.
Investors are taking note. Venture capitalists invested $364.5 million in kitchen robotics in 2022, according to PitchBook. VCs spent $153.7 million as of September 30, 2023.
Here’s a closer look at the kitchen robots changing how fast-food chains prepare your meal.
Sweetgreen is leaning into restaurant automation with its Infinite Kitchen concept. It has two locations, but more are on the way.
This Infinite Kitchen is preparing salads. Roughly 50 dispensing tubes contain ingredients needed to automate the assembly of a salad or dinner plate.
Nancy Luna/Business Insider
Sweetgreen rolled out its first automation-powered restaurant earlier this year in Naperville, Illinois. The second one opened December 12 in Huntington Beach, California.
In 2024, the chain plans to deploy about seven to nine Infinite Kitchens into new units, as well as two to four existing restaurants, the chain told investors last month.
During an analyst conference in September, Sweetgreen said about half of its labor is involved in assembling food. The Infinite Kitchen automates about 70% of that half, Chief Financial Officer Mitch Reback said.
“It’s a meaningful number on the labor line,” Reback said.
The Infinite Kitchen can produce between 400 to 500 bowls and plates per hour. That’s 50% more volume per hour compared to the staff’s ability to prepare food for both digital and dine-in customers.
Infinite Kitchen stores like the one in Huntington Beach, California, process orders using kiosks.
Sweetgreen stores with an automated kitchen use kiosks for ordering. There’s no front of house assembly line.
Nancy Luna/Business Insider
A bank of six kiosks is available for customers to order, making nearly every aspect of this restaurant automated.
But staffers are still needed at Infinite Kitchen restaurants. The Sweetgreen in Huntington Beach employs about 14 to 16 people, with four or five people scheduled on a shift, the chain told Business Insider.
Employees put the finishing touches on salads, prep ingredients, interact with customers, and assist with kiosk ordering.
The Infinite Kitchen does all the assembling. After a customer orders from the kiosk, the robot prepares the bowl in about 3 to 5 minutes.
Chipotle is testing robots to make chips, bowls, and guacamole.
Cashews are dispensed using Hyphen’s automated makeline. Chipotle is an investor in the food tech startup.
Hyphen
Chipotle is leaning heavily into automation to streamline operations in stores and reduce the number of mundane tasks assigned to employees.
One internal test could change the way Chipotle prepares its bowls.
The chain is experimenting with Hyphen, a food tech startup that uses robotics to make up to 180 bowls per hour, Hyphen told Business Insider in an exclusive interview in September. By comparison, one employee can prepare about 20 to 30 bowls per hour.
Hyphen should launch in restaurants in 2024.
Chipotle is testing Hyphen, a startup that uses robotics to make bowls.
Hyphen
Hyphen’s automated bowl line is similar to Sweetgreen’s Infinite Kitchen, only smaller. Ingredients are stored in large bins that are accessible to employees.
Like Sweetgreen, Chipotle is striving for consistency and speed with automation.
Hyphen “will enable us to be even more accurate,” Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said in an April earnings call. “I think probably go a little bit faster, and I think give people more consistent experiences.”
In July, Niccol told investors that Chipotle expects to install Hyphen’s automated kitchen line in restaurants “in the next 12 to 18 months.”
Guacamole takes 50 minutes to make by hand at Chipotle. The Autocado robot can cut that time in half.
Chipotle is testing Autocado, a robot that cuts and peels avocados.
Chipotle
Chipotle is collaborating with the automation company Vebu on the Autocado, a robot that cuts, cores, and peels avocados.
The Autocado does a bulk of the tough work. Once the avocados are ready, an employee takes over. They hand-mash the avocados to make the chain’s signature guacamole.
The robot has been in testing for several months in the chain’s innovation lab in Irvine, California.
Autocado’s precision robotics also aims to increase avocado fruit yield, the company said. Chipotle’s 3,300 restaurants use about 4.5 million cases of avocados a year
“We are committed to exploring collaborative robotics to drive efficiencies and ease pain points for our employees,” Curt Garner, Chipotle’s chief customer and technology officer, said in July. “The intensive labor of cutting, coring, and scooping avocados could be relieved with Autocado.”
Chipotle is also testing Chippy, a robotic fry cook.
Chippy the robot, seen in the background frying chips at Chipotle.
Chipotle
Last year, Chipotle began testing Chippy, a robotic fry cook by Miso Robotics.
The Pasadena, California robotics company has been at the forefront of kitchen automation. The food tech startup introduced Flippy, the burger flipping robot kitchen assistant, in 2018. But Flippy’s frying abilities have taken center stage in recent years.
Chipotle is testing the robot to make tortilla chips. The company began in-store testing of Chippy last year in Southern California.
“Chippy is continuing to go through Chipotle’s stage-gate process,” a company rep said when asked about Chippy’s status.
White Castle is one of the largest burger chains to adopt Flippy.
Flippy is in 15 White Castles as of December 2023.
Miso Robotics
White Castle launched its first pilot test with Flippy, the robotic fry cook, in 2020.
Flippy does all the deep frying of french fries, chicken rings, cheese sticks, and onion chips.
White Castle said Flippy allows the chain to redeploy employees to tackle more hospitality focused roles.
White Castle said last year that it would expand a newer model of Flippy to 100 locations. To date, the rollout has been slow. Flippy is in 15 White Castles as of December 2023.
Flippy “alleviates the pain points that come with back-of-house roles at quick-service restaurants,” Miso Robotics said in a 2022 statement.
CaliExpress, billed as the world’s first fully automated restaurant, opens this month.
The CaliExpress by Flippy stands to be “the most autonomous restaurant in the world,” according to the CEO of PopID.
CaliExpress
The company behind Flippy is slated to open a fully autonomous restaurant in Southern California in late December.
Orders at CaliExpress by Flippy are taken at kiosks that use facial and palm biometrics authentication software for payment with consumer consent . A pair of Flippy robots, one for frying and one for grilling, cook and assemble a menu of Wagyu blend burgers, cheeseburgers, and french fries.
Flippy can cook about 100 burger patties an hour. His fry cook partner can prepare about 150 french fry orders per hour.
Only one person is needed per shift to run the restaurant.
CaliExpress by Flippy is a collaboration between biometric software company PopID and Miso Robotics. CaliGroup, a holding company with stakes in various food tech companies, is a major stakeholder of both companies.
“To our knowledge, this is the world’s first operating restaurant where both ordering and every single cooking process are fully automated,” John Miller, CEO of PopID and board member of Miso Robotics, said in a statement. “The marriage of these various technologies to create the most autonomous restaurant in the world is the culmination of years of research, development, and investment in a family of revolutionary companies.”
Remy Robotics
Better Days by Remy Robotics wants to scale its wellness brand to 500 locations in five years.
Remy Robotics
Better Days, a virtual restaurant brand operating inside Travis Kalanick’s ghost kitchen in New York, debuted in November.
The restaurant concept, available for delivery, uses robots by Remy Robotics to prepare meals. The delivery-only wellness brand wants to scale to 500 locations in five years.
Remy Robotics, named after the aspiring rat chef in the popular Disney/Pixar animated film, “Ratatouille,” piloted its automated kitchen in Europe for two years before coming to Kalanick’s CloudKitchens.
Remy cooks ready-to-heat meals made in a commissary.
Remy Robotics’ automated kitchen can cook up to 70 meals per hour.
Remy Robotics
Most kitchen robots are assembling or frying foods.
Remy, on the other hand, is cooking meals prepared in a commissary in Brooklyn. The ready-to-cook meals are placed in a high-tech cold storage system that integrates with Remy’s robotic ovens.
After Remy receives an order, the robotics kick into gear.
A robotic arm selects the menu item from the cold storage bin. It transfers it to an oven where the food is cooked to exact specifications using AI-powered algorithms. Infrared sensors monitor the food’s internal temperature to ensure each dish is cooked perfectly and consistently.
The only human needed is someone who can package the meal in a takeout container for the to-go customer or delivery driver.
Separately from Remy, Uber founder Travis Kalanick is testing a bowl-assembly robot that can cut labor by 50%.
Travis Kalanick is the founder of CloudKitchens and Uber. His ghost kitchens recently began testing a kitchen robot.
Steve Jennings/Getty Images for TechCrunch
Kalanick, who is looking for a way to cut costs at his string of ghost kitchens dubbed CloudKitchens, recently introduced a 60-square-foot robot called the Bowl Builder.
News of the robot was first reported by The Spoon
The robot can crank out 80 bowls an hour, cutting labor by 50%, Business Insider’s Meghan Morris reported in mid-December. Lab37, which is a Pittsburgh-based unit of CloudKitchen’s parent company, is developing the robot. Eric Meyhofer, formerly the head of Uber’s self-driving unit, runs Lab37.
Canada food hall debuts automated salad and bowl making machine. Next up, the US.
Cibotica’s automated salad and bowl making machine Remy launched in early December.
Cibotica
“Ratatouille” appears to be a big inspiration for these culinary-focused robotics companies.
Cibotica is a Vancouver, Canada-based company that recently debuted an automated salad and bowl making machine. It’s called Remy.
Cibotica’s Remy launched in early December at a digital-focused food hall in Canada called Food Republic. The machine makes up to 300 salads per hour. Next year, a Seattle-based pizza chain named Moto plans to use Remy to expand its menu by offering salads.
Cibotica said its automated under-the-counter makeline can help restaurants save up to 30% on labor costs. Co-founder and co-CEO Ashkan Mirnabavi told Business Insider in a recent interview that he’s not out to replace humans with robots.
Mirnabavi, who owns Food Republic, said Cibotica’s plug-and-play robotic makeline aims to handle “boring” and repetitious tasks that restaurants find hard to fill.
South Korea’s Alpha Grill is planning a big splash in the US.
Aniai’s Alpha Grill leverages advanced artificial intelligence and robotics to automate grilling burger patties.
Aniai
Aniai is a South Korean kitchen automation company that hopes to bring its flagship product, Alpha Grill, to large-scale fast-food chains in North America.
The Alpha Grill, which won a kitchen innovation award at the 2023 National Restaurant Show, simultaneously cooks both sides of the patty. It lifts the cooked patty off the grill and transfers it to a heating tray, preventing overcooking. It automatically cleans the grill at the end of each cooking cycle.
It can cook up to 200 patties per hour. Aniai’s six robots are currently being used at various fast food restaurants in South Korea including Bas Burger. Burger franchise Lotteria, which has 1,300 locations in South Korea, plans to introduce the Alpha Grill in January.
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