The Rise of Food Service Robotics: A New Era in Culinary Automation

A recent trend has been gaining momentum in the food service industry, with companies and restaurants investing heavily in robots to streamline their operations and improve efficiency. One such example is Pizza HQ, a restaurant in New Jersey that has opted to make its robot the star of its business. The company has installed a conveyor belt system that feeds directly into ovens, which then cut and box the pizzas before they are delivered to customers via a hot pizza locker. Customers can track their orders on an app and pick up their heated pizzas at a designated pickup point.

This is just one example of how robots are being used in food service to automate repetitive tasks and free up human staff to focus on more complex and creative work. The concept of using robots to improve the quality of humanly service is also gaining traction, with companies looking to deploy robots in areas such as customer service, inventory management, and even emotional support.

One company that has made a big splash in this area is Pizza Maker by Picnic. A human puts the dough on the conveyor belt and with this modular system, it's dropping down the sauce, cheese, and toppings as it rolls on through each section. However, if you've got a module for every single topping option, well that can get a bit nuts, so you're limited in what you offer customers. The system was put to work in real situations, feeding mariners fans at the T-Mobile Park baseball stadium, and just a few weeks ago, the company announced that it's sold out of pre-sales of these machines, with deliveries set for the first half of 2022.

The cost of renting out this system is around $3,500 to $5,000 per month. While some may see robots taking human jobs as a negative development, there are several benefits to using robotics in food service. Robots can work around the clock without getting sick or needing time off, and they don't require breaks or meal periods. However, robots still need humans to be next to them to fill in the gaps and perform tasks that require a level of dexterity or creativity.

To address this limitation, some companies are investing in robotic arms with multi-joint designs, which allow for greater flexibility and precision when performing complex tasks. For example, the maker shaker robot bartender was recently added to a Royal Caribbean cruise ship and has since expanded to venues around the world. The robot is able to mix cocktails with ease and even performs tricks and stunts to entertain patrons.

Other areas where robotics are making an impact in food service include the use of conveyor belt systems to streamline kitchen operations, such as at Spice, a restaurant in Boston that uses a robotic system to cook and steam ingredients for custom orders. The process can get a bowl together in just two to three minutes and handles 300 bowls per hour.

Survey by Bear Robotics is another company making waves in the food service industry with its robot servers. For around $1,000 per month, the robots acts as a food runner, taking plates from the kitchen to the dining room, sometimes even mapped to go directly to the customer's table. This saves human waiters from having to run back and forth to the kitchen as much, freeing them up to focus on other tasks.

The pandemic has certainly boosted the adoption of robotics in food service, but companies like Survey by Bear Robotics have been around for years. The use of robots in restaurants across the country is becoming increasingly common, with many chains opting to add robot servers to their menu.

As for how customers feel about robots making their food, it's a mixed bag. Some see the benefits of automation and faster service times, while others may be uncomfortable with the idea of machines handling their meals. However, companies like Pizza HQ are taking a different approach, using robots to enhance the customer experience rather than replace human staff entirely.

The future of food service robotics is exciting and rapidly evolving. With advancements in technology and decreasing costs, it's likely that we'll see more robots being integrated into kitchens across the country. While there may be some initial teething problems as these new machines learn to navigate complex kitchen operations, the long-term benefits for efficiency and customer satisfaction are undeniable.

For now, companies like Pizza HQ and Spice are pushing the boundaries of what is possible with food service robotics. As more robots enter the market, it will be interesting to see how they impact the culinary industry and the way we think about work in restaurants. One thing is certain – the rise of food service robotics is just beginning, and it's going to be a wild ride.

In conclusion, the use of robots in food service is becoming increasingly prevalent, with companies like Pizza HQ, Spice, Survey by Bear Robotics, and others leading the charge. While there may be some initial hesitation from customers about having robots make their food, the benefits of automation and faster service times are undeniable. As technology continues to advance and costs decrease, it's likely that we'll see more robots being integrated into kitchens across the country.

The use of robots in food service is not without its challenges, however. For example, there may be issues with maintaining the accuracy and quality of food prepared by machines. Additionally, there are concerns about job displacement and the impact on human staff. However, many companies are addressing these concerns by investing in robotic arms with multi-joint designs that allow for greater flexibility and precision when performing complex tasks.

Overall, the rise of food service robotics is a significant development in the culinary industry, and it's likely to have far-reaching implications for the way we think about work in restaurants. As more robots enter the market, it will be interesting to see how they impact the industry and the way we approach customer service.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhello my fellow humans today we're looking at actual robot chefs that can cook for us in the kitchen oh that's so sweet of you i meant robots that can actually use ovens and knives not just hand me a sandwich but i appreciate the gesture everyone wants to talk about how robot assistants will be in our future homes doing chores like taking care of the dishes picking up after us messy humans helping us unwind after a hard day of doing our human things but i'm sorry to break it to you that future is not going to be real for a while and certainly not at a practical cost i mean amazon did show off this little astro bot it's working on and even he is more of a camera on wheels but the helper robots that you are going to interact with today the ones that are rising in popularity these are robots in food service the most common are robots at restaurants they're handling meal prep in the back some are bringing the meal to your seat and although it's not always perfect we are at the point where people can order a working robot chef for their home kitchen i wanted to go through and introduce you to the tech that's out there because if you're going to make a robot friend today it's most likely a robot that's going to feed you let's start with the luxury dream having a robot make a home-cooked meal earlier this year in london molly robotics went all out and showed us what a fully robotic kitchen would look like preparing freshly cooked meals from start to finish this is a product that took six years to develop and it's on sale now at the center of the system are two robotic arms with fully articulated robot hands and with those hands it can retrieve ingredients from the fridge units above it can fetch pans and utensils and pour things and mix things yes and even plate it it's doing all the things that i can't stand about cooking which is the cooking so great awesome but wait who is putting everything in those containers yes you the human still have to do the prep work before you begin there is a touch screen that guides you on what ingredients you need to chop up for the dish you have to measure the right amount of each item and then you put those ingredients in special containers and tell the computer which items are in which containers for the robot hands to grab during the cooking right now molly knows 30 different meals and the company has goals of continuously adding thousands of more recipes and you can teach it your own family favorites it's loaded with cameras and sensors and the system maps where all the cookware is and all the utensils are located the handles and the pan lids they all have this special design on them they're designed for the moly robots they have these markings to help the robot identify each item are you ready for the price moley list this as starting at 248 000 pounds or when converted that's more than 341 thousand dollars holy moly so maybe that's out of your price range now when you pay all that you would hope you didn't have to do any of the prep work right well the folks at moley tell me they could teach this robot to do the chopping but it's too complex and costly to make that happen so the company is working on a ready prepped meal kit so everything's measured out ahead of time and pre-prepped and it's mailed directly to the customer so you can order a week's worth of meals in advance for molly to cook later this year molly says it will be announcing a version of these arms that will work in commercial use so maybe even if you don't have it in your own home you could see these arms at work at restaurants or cooking up orders at upscale resort lounges moley isn't the only one with robot arms this is the bot chef by samsung and samsung says it's trying to get to this point where robot arms are not at a cost that is totally out of reach maybe someday we can think of it as the same as an expensive refrigerator rather than a small yacht the samsung bot chef was shown off at ces 2020 and this does something the molly does not do yet it wields a blade for merciless toffee chopping it can turn on the stovetop it can pick up a bottle of olive oil you can pour it into the pan and it can even open up cabinets and give you some hot sauce but wait how did the tofu get on the counter and who put the tofu in the pan okay so samsung's bot chef is more of a helper than a full service chef so humans need to be working in the kitchen next to the robot but if a human arm does get in the way of a knife samsung says it will be smart enough to stop moving because no one wants robot murder salad i mean what's the point of tofu if you get blood everywhere right but seriously we need to address the tofu because it is one thing to chop a cube of soft mush but chopping veggies itself is a very difficult task to teach a robot because when you're chopping the pressure you're exerting on the chop changes as the knife breaks through as you can see in this video demonstrated by researchers at iowa state university where a team tried to teach a robot how to chop an onion and a potato i mean i'm pretty horrible at chopping but this has given me great self-esteem so chopping veggies is a bit too complicated right now robots have found success with flipping robot arms are now working the fryer and the grill at restaurant chains this is flippy by miso robotics it uses computer vision and temperature sensors to cook hamburgers it had a bit of a rough start when it began its career at callaburger there were reports of it being turned off after one day on the job and humans had to learn to choreograph their movements around the bot to put the burger on the grill without getting in the way of the arm but that didn't stop flippy in fact flippy's use continued to grow it started frying all sorts of foods at dodger stadium like chicken tenders and tater tots and the robot arm also now has a gig at white castle flippy got a sibling called wingy and that's in development now to cook chicken wings at buffalo wild wings miso robotics has an updated version of the flippy it's a brand new flippy ii it's a slightly slimmer model it handles more tasks now a computer sensor can tell what kind of food is in the basket and it picks up the basket drops it in the hot oil and when it senses that it's done it's gonna pick the food back up and dump it on a slide down it goes and it moves the hot basket back and if that doesn't seem impressive just know it's all done to eliminate some human contact so humans don't have to dodge hot oil baskets like before and miso robotics says this can handle cooking 60 baskets of food an hour this ramp up of robots and food service can help ease staffing challenges during the current labor shortage the national restaurant association reports that four out of five restaurants right now are understaffed and flippy costs a restaurant five thousand dollars to install and from there it would be an additional three thousand dollars or so a month now the idea is if you insert a robot in a repetitive job you could get humans to do other humany service better but it's only good if it actually saves time right some robot kitchen jobs don't make a lot of sense to me check out this pizza making robot by picnic a human puts the dough on the conveyor belt and with this modular system it's dropping down the sauce the cheese the toppings as it rolls on through each section but if you've got a module for every single topping option well that can get a bit nuts so you're limited i guess into what you offer customers and when we saw a demo in action at the ces trade show in 2020 it looked good but it sure felt very slow compared to what a human could do that was a demo but it has been put to work in real situations the system has gotten practice feeding mariners fans at the t-mobile park baseball stadium and just a few weeks ago the company picnic announced that it's sold out of pre-sales of these machines and it's going to be delivering systems to customers in the first half of 2022 a customer would pay around 3 500 to 5 000 a month as a subscription service to rent out this system there is one pizza joint in new jersey that wants to make this robot the star of its business the restaurant is called pizza hq it has a bunch of these machines that feed directly into ovens and there's this whole plan to have the pizzas cut and boxed and then put in a van and that van takes your hot pizzas to a hot pizza locker and the customers will track them on an app and go pick up the heated pizzas in the locker as a pickup point it's a lot of automation with some human mixed in but we'll have to wait until early 2022 to see how it works when pizza hq opens now this conveyor belt system is picking up in other areas over in boston mit grads created a robot restaurant called spice they call this the infinite kitchen is cooking and steaming different ingredients and as your bowl travels down the machine it's dropping down the ingredients needed for each custom order the process can get a bowl together in two to three minutes and it's said to handle 300 bowls an hour but soon you may not have to travel to boston to see it in action because spice was just acquired by the salad chain sweet green and sweet green said it wants to incorporate this tech into its locations the other area you're gonna run into robots and food service is robot servers a popular one now is called survey by bear robotics and for the cost of about a thousand dollars a month it acts as a food runner taking plates from the kitchen to the dining room sometimes it's even mapped to go directly to the customer's table but it saves human waiters from having to run back and forth to the kitchen as much it can also be used to bust tables so a waiter or waitress can put dirty dishes right back on the robot and send it into the kitchen the servie robot is now at restaurants all over the country it's even being added to a number of chili's restaurants i could just hear the new jingle now i want my robot back ribs i'm sure they'll work it out the pandemic really boosted this whole movement of hiring robots but i actually have met a robot in food service years ago back in 2014 and this robot is still shaking things up because it's a robot bartender that shakes things up the maker shaker made a big splash when it was added to a royal caribbean cruise ship when i got a demo but maker shaker has expanded to venues around the world and what was appealing as entertainment now really can help when a bar is short-staffed there are so many robotics and food service that i didn't mention lots of machines that just do one job some machines that no longer do the one job because the business changed but these are just some examples of how the tech is being adopted today and i want to hear what type of food service robotics you have come across so do go in the comments and share your stories and also how do you feel about robots making your food i know it can feel weird when we see robots taking human jobs but it's not exactly a replacement robots have the perk of working in the kitchen around the clock and not getting sick unless you count maintenance downtime of course but it is still expensive and robots still need humans to be next to them to fill in the gaps at least until robots get better with knives here's hoping they don't well i'll keep covering the latest in robotics so subscribe to the channel and i'll make sure to warn you when they start mastering the blade i want my robot rack back rib well it takes a little practicehello my fellow humans today we're looking at actual robot chefs that can cook for us in the kitchen oh that's so sweet of you i meant robots that can actually use ovens and knives not just hand me a sandwich but i appreciate the gesture everyone wants to talk about how robot assistants will be in our future homes doing chores like taking care of the dishes picking up after us messy humans helping us unwind after a hard day of doing our human things but i'm sorry to break it to you that future is not going to be real for a while and certainly not at a practical cost i mean amazon did show off this little astro bot it's working on and even he is more of a camera on wheels but the helper robots that you are going to interact with today the ones that are rising in popularity these are robots in food service the most common are robots at restaurants they're handling meal prep in the back some are bringing the meal to your seat and although it's not always perfect we are at the point where people can order a working robot chef for their home kitchen i wanted to go through and introduce you to the tech that's out there because if you're going to make a robot friend today it's most likely a robot that's going to feed you let's start with the luxury dream having a robot make a home-cooked meal earlier this year in london molly robotics went all out and showed us what a fully robotic kitchen would look like preparing freshly cooked meals from start to finish this is a product that took six years to develop and it's on sale now at the center of the system are two robotic arms with fully articulated robot hands and with those hands it can retrieve ingredients from the fridge units above it can fetch pans and utensils and pour things and mix things yes and even plate it it's doing all the things that i can't stand about cooking which is the cooking so great awesome but wait who is putting everything in those containers yes you the human still have to do the prep work before you begin there is a touch screen that guides you on what ingredients you need to chop up for the dish you have to measure the right amount of each item and then you put those ingredients in special containers and tell the computer which items are in which containers for the robot hands to grab during the cooking right now molly knows 30 different meals and the company has goals of continuously adding thousands of more recipes and you can teach it your own family favorites it's loaded with cameras and sensors and the system maps where all the cookware is and all the utensils are located the handles and the pan lids they all have this special design on them they're designed for the moly robots they have these markings to help the robot identify each item are you ready for the price moley list this as starting at 248 000 pounds or when converted that's more than 341 thousand dollars holy moly so maybe that's out of your price range now when you pay all that you would hope you didn't have to do any of the prep work right well the folks at moley tell me they could teach this robot to do the chopping but it's too complex and costly to make that happen so the company is working on a ready prepped meal kit so everything's measured out ahead of time and pre-prepped and it's mailed directly to the customer so you can order a week's worth of meals in advance for molly to cook later this year molly says it will be announcing a version of these arms that will work in commercial use so maybe even if you don't have it in your own home you could see these arms at work at restaurants or cooking up orders at upscale resort lounges moley isn't the only one with robot arms this is the bot chef by samsung and samsung says it's trying to get to this point where robot arms are not at a cost that is totally out of reach maybe someday we can think of it as the same as an expensive refrigerator rather than a small yacht the samsung bot chef was shown off at ces 2020 and this does something the molly does not do yet it wields a blade for merciless toffee chopping it can turn on the stovetop it can pick up a bottle of olive oil you can pour it into the pan and it can even open up cabinets and give you some hot sauce but wait how did the tofu get on the counter and who put the tofu in the pan okay so samsung's bot chef is more of a helper than a full service chef so humans need to be working in the kitchen next to the robot but if a human arm does get in the way of a knife samsung says it will be smart enough to stop moving because no one wants robot murder salad i mean what's the point of tofu if you get blood everywhere right but seriously we need to address the tofu because it is one thing to chop a cube of soft mush but chopping veggies itself is a very difficult task to teach a robot because when you're chopping the pressure you're exerting on the chop changes as the knife breaks through as you can see in this video demonstrated by researchers at iowa state university where a team tried to teach a robot how to chop an onion and a potato i mean i'm pretty horrible at chopping but this has given me great self-esteem so chopping veggies is a bit too complicated right now robots have found success with flipping robot arms are now working the fryer and the grill at restaurant chains this is flippy by miso robotics it uses computer vision and temperature sensors to cook hamburgers it had a bit of a rough start when it began its career at callaburger there were reports of it being turned off after one day on the job and humans had to learn to choreograph their movements around the bot to put the burger on the grill without getting in the way of the arm but that didn't stop flippy in fact flippy's use continued to grow it started frying all sorts of foods at dodger stadium like chicken tenders and tater tots and the robot arm also now has a gig at white castle flippy got a sibling called wingy and that's in development now to cook chicken wings at buffalo wild wings miso robotics has an updated version of the flippy it's a brand new flippy ii it's a slightly slimmer model it handles more tasks now a computer sensor can tell what kind of food is in the basket and it picks up the basket drops it in the hot oil and when it senses that it's done it's gonna pick the food back up and dump it on a slide down it goes and it moves the hot basket back and if that doesn't seem impressive just know it's all done to eliminate some human contact so humans don't have to dodge hot oil baskets like before and miso robotics says this can handle cooking 60 baskets of food an hour this ramp up of robots and food service can help ease staffing challenges during the current labor shortage the national restaurant association reports that four out of five restaurants right now are understaffed and flippy costs a restaurant five thousand dollars to install and from there it would be an additional three thousand dollars or so a month now the idea is if you insert a robot in a repetitive job you could get humans to do other humany service better but it's only good if it actually saves time right some robot kitchen jobs don't make a lot of sense to me check out this pizza making robot by picnic a human puts the dough on the conveyor belt and with this modular system it's dropping down the sauce the cheese the toppings as it rolls on through each section but if you've got a module for every single topping option well that can get a bit nuts so you're limited i guess into what you offer customers and when we saw a demo in action at the ces trade show in 2020 it looked good but it sure felt very slow compared to what a human could do that was a demo but it has been put to work in real situations the system has gotten practice feeding mariners fans at the t-mobile park baseball stadium and just a few weeks ago the company picnic announced that it's sold out of pre-sales of these machines and it's going to be delivering systems to customers in the first half of 2022 a customer would pay around 3 500 to 5 000 a month as a subscription service to rent out this system there is one pizza joint in new jersey that wants to make this robot the star of its business the restaurant is called pizza hq it has a bunch of these machines that feed directly into ovens and there's this whole plan to have the pizzas cut and boxed and then put in a van and that van takes your hot pizzas to a hot pizza locker and the customers will track them on an app and go pick up the heated pizzas in the locker as a pickup point it's a lot of automation with some human mixed in but we'll have to wait until early 2022 to see how it works when pizza hq opens now this conveyor belt system is picking up in other areas over in boston mit grads created a robot restaurant called spice they call this the infinite kitchen is cooking and steaming different ingredients and as your bowl travels down the machine it's dropping down the ingredients needed for each custom order the process can get a bowl together in two to three minutes and it's said to handle 300 bowls an hour but soon you may not have to travel to boston to see it in action because spice was just acquired by the salad chain sweet green and sweet green said it wants to incorporate this tech into its locations the other area you're gonna run into robots and food service is robot servers a popular one now is called survey by bear robotics and for the cost of about a thousand dollars a month it acts as a food runner taking plates from the kitchen to the dining room sometimes it's even mapped to go directly to the customer's table but it saves human waiters from having to run back and forth to the kitchen as much it can also be used to bust tables so a waiter or waitress can put dirty dishes right back on the robot and send it into the kitchen the servie robot is now at restaurants all over the country it's even being added to a number of chili's restaurants i could just hear the new jingle now i want my robot back ribs i'm sure they'll work it out the pandemic really boosted this whole movement of hiring robots but i actually have met a robot in food service years ago back in 2014 and this robot is still shaking things up because it's a robot bartender that shakes things up the maker shaker made a big splash when it was added to a royal caribbean cruise ship when i got a demo but maker shaker has expanded to venues around the world and what was appealing as entertainment now really can help when a bar is short-staffed there are so many robotics and food service that i didn't mention lots of machines that just do one job some machines that no longer do the one job because the business changed but these are just some examples of how the tech is being adopted today and i want to hear what type of food service robotics you have come across so do go in the comments and share your stories and also how do you feel about robots making your food i know it can feel weird when we see robots taking human jobs but it's not exactly a replacement robots have the perk of working in the kitchen around the clock and not getting sick unless you count maintenance downtime of course but it is still expensive and robots still need humans to be next to them to fill in the gaps at least until robots get better with knives here's hoping they don't well i'll keep covering the latest in robotics so subscribe to the channel and i'll make sure to warn you when they start mastering the blade i want my robot rack back rib well it takes a little practice\n"