by Flippy is making burgers, Chippy is cooking french fries, and Remy is serving salads. Customers may not even notice them, but robots are becoming more common behind the counter in fast food kitchens.
At Food Republic, a quick-service joint in Vancouver, Remy looks like a giant stainless steel box. Inside, he receives the order to divide out each salad ingredient. Cucumbers tumble down a tube into a takeout bowl, which then moves along a conveyor belt to collect the next crop.
Ashkan Mirnabavi is the co-founder of Canadian robotics startup Cibotica, which designed Remy using artificial intelligence and machine learning. He describes it as an automated assembly line that can make up to 300 salads per hour. “All ingredients are dispensed accurately and precisely because of that core technology,” he said.
Ashkan Mirnabavi is the co-founder of the Vancouver robotics startup Cibotica, which created the salad assembly robot Remy. (Nicholas Allan/CBC)
Mirnabavi, a former restaurateur himself, said Remy could help businesses create consistency, cut customer wait times, and cut labor costs by 33 percent. Cibotica lets clients “rent” Remy for a monthly subscription fee and said demand is promising.
“We received many inquiries and purchase orders from companies in the United States and Canada.”
Remy is far from the only robot in fast food kitchens. As companies grapple with staff shortages and try to cut costs, more large chains are turning to automation to make food faster and cheaper.
Robots rising
Since the pandemic, fewer people want the fast-paced and demanding jobs on the front lines of the restaurant sector.
By 2021, more than 250,000 restaurant workers had quit to find new careers, according to a report by the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives.
Flippy is a robot developed by Miso Robotics in California. (Miso Robotics)
Amidst these staffing shortages, labor costs are also rising. Companies are looking for solutions to fill the gap, many of which are designed to replace human workers on the assembly line.
Domino’s is running trials with a pizza making machine at one of its locations in Berlin. White Castle has deployed giant mechanical arms to flip burgers (nicknamed Flippy) and cook French fries (Chippy) at locations across the U.S. At a pilot restaurant in Fort Worth, Texas, almost all servers are robots McDonald’s customers.
Sweetgreen American salad outlet going all in. In 2023, CEO Jonathan Neman told investors that he expects all sites to be automated in five years.
Making fast food faster
Chipotle Mexican Grill is also buying in, testing some options that could be rolled out in its Canadian locations later this year.
“They can do the same task over and over again with a very high level of efficiency and success,” said Curt Garner, Chipotle’s chief technology officer.
The California-based company is testing a machine called Autocado. He cuts, cores and scoops avocados, helping to serve up a batch of guacamole in half the usual time. There are plans to add machine learning capabilities to the Autocado that will eventually help it assess the quality of avocados without human assistance.
Garner said workers there are freed up to focus on less repetitive tasks, moving to other kitchen or customer service roles.
Chipotle Mexican Grill unveiled the Autocado, a robot that cuts, cores and scoops avocados. (Chipotle Mexican Grill)
Garner said jobs will become easier so the remaining staff can spend more time dealing with guests. He doesn’t expect robots to replace all the workers at Chipotle since there are some things machines can’t do.
“They don’t learn like humans do. They’re not as adaptive to environmental change.”
Although the technology is still expensive, fast food chains are starting to weigh the benefits of staff members who can work around the clock and won’t call in sick. Garner said a piece of equipment like Autocado will pay for itself in a year or two.
Restaurant jobs ripe for automation
Restaurants have traditionally lagged behind other sectors in introducing industrial robots, even though they could replace 82 percent of jobs, according to one forecast from industry consultants Aaron Allen & Associates. Some experts suggest that the labor force is on track to shrink permanently.
Dr Robin Yap, professor of management at George Brown College, said that while technology will increase opportunities for innovation, he warned that it is vital for employers to plan to retrain their employees.
Domino’s is running trials with a pizza assembly machine made by a start-up called Picnic at one of its locations in Berlin. (picnic)
Yap suggested that companies could move human workers into customer-facing roles, or into management positions. They could also provide technical training to employees.
“Maybe they’re now technicians for the robots because eventually you need maintenance. I mean, these are machines, they don’t just go away forever,” he said.
Yap predicted the robots will become ubiquitous in a few years, though he said throughout history the workforce has been able to adapt to the disruption.
“When we had the typewriter, when we had the phone … all those things were transferred. So it’s not new that there will be changes in the place … that people need.”
With files from Laura MacNaughton
