As the restaurant industry continues to struggle with labor challenges, many are turning to robotic solutions.
On Friday (March 25), Newark, New Jersey-based robotics company RoboBurger announced the launch of its fully autonomous robotic burger chef at a mall in Jersey City and stated that there will be more locations to come. Consumers order and retrieve their food vending-machine-style.
“I started RoboBurger in my garage 17 years ago, and now there couldn’t be a better time to bring it to life and have everyone experience it,” RoboBurger co-founder and CEO Audley Wilson said in a statement. “RoboBurger gives everyone freshly grilled, delicious burgers — while ensuring a safe, contactless experience.”
A handful of next-gen vending machines have been popping up in recent years, with the rise of off-premise ordering and self-service checkout making it less important to consumers to see a human face when collecting their food orders.
In January, Pizza Hut made headlines for testing a fully robotic location in in Bnei Dror, Israel. Earlier this month, Tortoise, a company that has historically focused on providing robotic solutions for last-mile delivery, announced that it is turning its focus to providing automated mobile shops that function somewhat like roving vending machines.
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Research from PYMNTS’ 2021 How We Eat Playbook, created in collaboration with Carat, from Fiserv, which drew from a census-balanced survey of more than 5,200 U.S. adults, found that restaurant customers are now 31% more likely to purchase meals for off-premise consumption than they are to dine on-site.
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Granted, burger making is a more complex task to automate than some of the other kitchen routines that have gotten the robotic treatment in recent years.
“A lot of things can be automated, like drink pouring. Do you need a person to watch over a drink being poured, or can you do that with sensors and technology?” Rajat ‘Raj’ Suri, founder and CEO of Presto, told PYMNTS’ Karen Webster in a December 2021 interview. “Do you need [staff] to put fries into like little carton? No, you don’t. Condiments, all that stuff can be automated. It gets a bit more tricky when you’re assembling a burger, but assembling a pizza is not that hard. Some things are low hanging fruit, and they’re already being worked on.”
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Still, the space is advancing quickly past those initial forays into the simplest kinds of automation.
“I’d say partially automated or semi-automated food production — that’s going to be the norm within five to 10 years, no doubt,” Stephen Klein, co-founder and CEO and of kitchen automation company Hyphen, told PYMNTS in an August 2021 conversation. “If you’re ordering from your phone, and the only interaction you’re having with the restaurant is through that digital device, it really doesn’t matter who’s making your food, as long as it’s fresh, fast and consistent.”
See also: Hyphen’s Restaurant Robotics Fend Off Delivery Giants
