The home-sized ones often take a cartridge of little plastic bins preloaded with the ingredients and coded with the instructions. Just slip one of those in the slot, push start, and get a good hot meal.
You want to compete with China, you need to know what's already been done there. Remember those "Bodega" clowns? They apparently didn't know that much more advanced automatic convenience stores already exist in China.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HkGRzzsKH4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCTv-4sFt_s [3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NTIciISVPA [4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-S--wwu4S-w [5] https://www.alibaba.com/showroom/automatic-wok-machine.html
Just to pick one: the supply chain is a real issue. Getting fresh ingredients into the machines, keeping them running, performing maintenance... all of that requires a well-tuned supply chain, knowledge of food sources, etc., especially since Spyce is targeting an upscale "fast-casual" (~healthy) demographic.
As a disclaimer I was pitched by this team in 2015-2016, and was pretty convinced that they weren't facing much local competition.
The innovation is now trying to make robots that are more flexible, smaller and low volume food production while not being super expensive.
Fast food could also be run by robots fairly easily. I am imagining in 15 years most places will have robots doing the majority of cooking in restaurants. They won't spread disease, make food consistently, won't call out sick nor require an hourly wage.
"All their food" at Applebee's is not "microwaved frozen food"; I know plenty of people who got their start as cooks and chefs there. Something like three-quarters is made in-house and you'd have to be blind and unable to feel your tongue to not be able to tell a microwaved steak.
You may want to consider asking dang to delete your comment.
As a side note, if you walk into an Applebee's you can actually be seated at a table with a view of the kitchen, where you can watch the cooks at work. Applebee's may not be the best cooked food, but it is actually cooked by real live people, and has been for decades.
And it really works. At a startup I worked at we had a guy from MIT and whenever the VCs talked to to the low ranks they inevitable ended up talking to him. And no, he was not the best engineer. Not even close.
[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/mit-students-invented-a-robot...
I'd envisioned a somewhat different robot. I thought the ingredients could be tube-delivered like caulking guns, on a rotating 'tool carousel' so you could cook different recipes by selecting and timing. And process vertically so you avoid most 'conveyor belt' issues. Finally do it as drive-thru with automated ordering (touch screen/phone app) to eliminate the rest of the human factor.
The result should be good quality, fast food at a radically cheaper price.
With that said, from the robotics progress I've seen/studied, more fundamental robotics progress needs to be made first. The approaches used right now are just not durable/reliable enough for mass market adoption. Best of luck to that team though.
Putting junk in a bowl is a much simpler feat. Also hard for robotics to win much on I should think because the labor for putting food into a bowl is not terribly expensive as is (and imo not a particularly exciting market) - see Eatsa. Though it's still cool that they end-to-end the process with dishwashing (according to video).
An photo of the updated device in background that appears it should have run in the New Yorker article: https://media.newyorker.com/photos/5ac80c69ae933e116601abbf/...
Pretty broad definition of "good" if Soylent fits in there.
That is a non sequitur. The most dangerous illness associated with fast food (poor nutrition aside) such as E. coli[1] and Hep A[2] are most readily attributed to ingredient suppliers, not improper food handling.
Most of the largest chains have pretty much automated nearly everything by now that's possible given reliability and safety standards. If you look in the kitchen of any McDonald's nobody is cooking or preparing the components. They're either pre-cut, loaded into dispensers, being cooked in a self-timing temperature-controlled fryer, or being cooked on a self-timing temperature-controlled clamshell grill. If you check out a Taco Bell, they've even eliminated the cooking part. It's all made off-site in large batches and rewarmed on the assembly line. Even the beloved Chipotle has moved to retherming their components where possible.
The human labor is merely in assembly and delivery. And automating that with robots is a generation away, if at all.
Here's a compilation video of various food robots from July 2017: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRngacYpi7E
With regard to health and safety, the robots will provide only small benefit. Humans are better equipped (i.e., we have noses) to detect bad food; and in any case humans will still be involved in the handling, storage, and transportation of ingredients. Although disgusting, cases where the cook doesn't clean the grill properly and people get sick are much rarer than cases where the ingredients are already bad.
I suspect the main benefit of these robots to a fast food chain would be consistency in product and preparation times.
The automated food industry is very, very good at producing quality safe food. And I reject that humans will still be storing nor handling food - a truck backs up, exchanges pallets with a food container carousel, the truck drives away with the empties. Robots all the way!
In their defense they also are quickly reconfigurable with visual and audible reprogramming options. I don't think you can get that Spyce robot to leave the kitchen and mop the floor when someone drops a drink. You also can't call in more robots when a bus full of high school kids shows up out of the blue.
Disposable, self-healing robots also do other things like assemble your iPhones and laptops but they're an ocean away so out of sight out of mind, right?
In some parts of the world service workers belong to unions that stand up for fair wages and working conditions. Where you live might not see that as viable or perhaps it conflicts with local religious or political views, so your conditions may vary.
But yes, I think you can make a blanket statement that decisions will be made on the margins and any savings to the consumer will be incidental.
Applebee's
Also, whenever someone wanted to order a 'medium rare' steak, and I had to say we only make them 'pink' or 'no pink.' That's because most of the kitchen is a row of microwaves. The steaks were cooked on a stove top, but then microwaved to death. Pink or no pink only referred to how microwaved to death you want your meat."
https://www.cosmopolitan.com/food-cocktails/news/a52288/chai...
You might be getting 30 seconds of time from people making minimum wage for a combo, but that's about it and even at 15$/hour that's well under 15 cents per order.
Appetizers are all frozen and pre-packaged they just deep fried at almost all chains.
Heck I worked at Ethan Allen Inn in Danbury CT a LONG time ago and all the meals were frozen and prepared in France and shipped over. Easily $75 to $125 per person in the 90s.
Smell outside a restraunt is certainly a true statement. No HVAC (A/C or Heater) is going to filter the kitchen's vent. Tell me you can't smell the difference between Burger King's fake grilling and McDonald when your outside of them? Same thing with restaurants. The one's that microwave a ton will
If a restaurant has a ton of items on the menu I guarantee you that most of that is just prepared food that is microwaved.
Seems like people are mad that I believe that most food in restaurants are not cooked.
That is so false that you must be trolling. I've been to plenty of restaurants where you couldn't smell the food outside the restaurant, even though you could see them cooking the food inside and the air ducts carrying the smoky air from the kitchen to the outside. This ranges from small mom-and-pop taco stops to Michelin-starred restaurants.
On a side note: I've been to both Burger King and McDonalds, and you can smell them cooking the burgers at both. You can't "fake grill" a burger, as microwaving ground beef patties produces a different texture than grilling or pan-grilling.
[0]: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S03091...
There's more to the equation! Robots feeding robots built by robots and programmed by robots! A clean solution for a clean planet earth!
(And if there's any wind at all, modern roof-mount kitchen venting will ensure you don't smell much of anything if there's even moderate wind.)
I either state my person experience from many years ago. (Don't need to present a research link) OR I present my research. Sorry you don't find me as a positive addition on HN.
I was stating my personal experience of working at a restaurant that had their meals prepared in France was frozen and shipped to America. The preparation was boiled in bags or microwaved and got high dollar for the meals. That is my personal experience.
Long time ago most chains like Applebee's and Tuesday's meals were prepared hours, days or weeks before a person would eat them and either they were boiled in a bag, microwaved or deep fried. This still happens more than people know. That is my statement.
Here is an article on expensive French Restaurants use of pre-pared food.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/728...
So I guess me saying that if I can't smell a kitchen cooking food it probably is making pre-pared meals. I could also state that if the menu has hundreds of items they are also pre-pared meals, but to you that is poor posting?
I much rather have a few option that are fresh and that is what the OP Restaurant is doing with robots and one human at a garnish station. Most of America's restaurants do not use fresh food or prepare your food that day. Applebee's has gone out of their way to change the way they make food.
"Today, the country's largest casual dining chain lights up 2,000 new wood-fired grills for a revamped menu with steaks that Applebee's hand-cuts on the premises. Amid the barrage of price-driven industry promotions, Applebee's thinks its upgrade to USDA Choice beef, along with the stacks of logs outside restaurants and the aroma of wood smoke inside, will pique consumer interest. That's something the chain needs right now: In the last fiscal financial year, same-restaurant sales were flat, and this year, Applebee's expects sales to range from a negative 2 percent drop to a 2 percent gain." http://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/applebees-bets-big-rel...
Or, you know, you're just talking out your ass and it's not even remotely true. A lot of menu items just means there's either a lot of prep being done, a lot of the menu items have a reasonably similar set of bases, or both. There's always going to be a certain degree of Sysco stuff that's just bought and dunked into a fryer, but claiming most of a given menu is reheated from a microwave without any further backup other than "lol you can't smell it" is ridiculous.
People should be mad at falsehoods. What better use is the feeling for?
I stated I didn't know Applebee's changed the way they prepared food and that's good.
My point is robots can cook most of what we eat out.
