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San Francisco’s Newest Fast Food: Healthy, Cheap and Served by Robots
- Animats 11y ago"After you place an order at a kiosk, you pick it up a few minutes later behind a glass door or “cubby.” The only humans in sight are the concierges, who can answer questions that you may have about the software, and the dozen or so staff in the kitchen." They've re-invented the Automat, little glass doors and all.[1] The first Automat opened in 1887, and the last one closed in 1991. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
- LandoCalrissian 11y agoBeat me to it, I could not for the life of me remember what they were called. Thanks for the link.
- InclinedPlane 11y agoConveyor belt sushi is similar to an automat as well.
- dmix 11y agoOh interesting, I've never heard of this until now (although I was born in the 1980s). Was this a well known concept or did it remain fringe?
- Animats 11y agoIt was a big thing in New York in the middle of the 20th century; Horn and Hardart had about 60 locations. But it didn't grow beyond big cities. Once McDonald's, with their "Speedee Service System", was invented, the fast food industry took a different path. Cafeteria-type operations, with their bulk precooked food, started to decline, and today they're almost gone. This new Automat-like thing is really a cook-to-order, you-pick-up operation, like most eateries in mall food courts. It's not clear what value all the little windows add. The kitchen side is not, apparently, automated beyond usual fast food levels. Touchscreen ordering has been tried many times. McDonalds, Wendys, and White Castle have deployed it at some locations. But it hasn't really caught on. If you want to try it, Specialties, an SF bay area lunch chain, uses it. It's worth looking at again now that tablets are cheaper. Slow people at the ordering kiosk can bottleneck the whole system, but if you have lots of cheap tablets available, everybody can work their menu in parallel. I've been expecting The Counter, a local high-end hamburger chain (hamburger and fries, about $15 plus tip) to go this route. They give you a plastic order sheet and a grease pencil. Their user interface had a problem; the original grease pencils were too big for their closely packed check boxes. They've since upgraded to sharper grease pencils. There are still problems with check boxes being scrubbed out after you hand in your worksheet. If you're really into the mechanics behind fast food, see "http://www.qsrmagazine.com" http://www.qsrmagazine.com". They have an article on "Eatsa", from a industry perspective.[1] The kitchen is not automated, but it's organized on the "machines should think, people should work" principle: "The Eatsa team worked to take the complexity out of the kitchen as well, with each employee responsible for a singular task, paired with a system that tells them exactly what goes into each bowl and in what order, increasing the speed of service." [1] http://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/tech-forward-concept-makes-fast-casual-faster-healthier http://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/tech-forward-concept-makes-f...
- dmix 11y agoThanks for the reply and links. That's quite fascinating.
- ihartley 11y agoThey still exist in the Netherlands: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO
- DonHopkins 11y agoIt's called "eating out of the wall".
- serve_yay 11y agoThey were universally reviled when I visited Amsterdam years ago. I don't think I even tried.
- WalterGR 11y agoAs a tourist from the US, I thought that some of the selections were quite good, and I went back several times. There were always other people there. This was circa 2005. Whee anecdotes!
- notahacker 11y agoA friend wanted to open a FEBO franchise in London too. The failure of hot food vending machines to become more widely adopted over the last century, even in venues already selling only pre-cooked food with minimal service, is a pretty good indication that many customer service workers who could have their jobs automated out of existence by better technologies in future will end up keeping them.
- cag_ii 11y agoZero mention of robots in the article... disappointed.
- cookingrobot 11y agoThere are no robots here.
- DonHopkins 11y agoHere is a robot: http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Servitude.mpg http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Servitude.mpg And another one: http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Empathy.mpg http://donhopkins.com/home/RobotMovies/Empathy.mpg
- shostack 11y agoSince service workers can no longer afford to live in SF, this seems necessary at some point. I say that fully tongue in cheek, but it is an interesting reality to consider. If the labor market you are dependent on dries up because of housing and cost of living, and you can't afford to pay more to be competitive, you either go out of business or automate. This seems like a logical step for an industry with notoriously thin margins. The sarcastic side of me wonders if they'll still prompt for a tip...
- dmix 11y agoThere are many places that are inexpensive along the BART line that can get downtown SF in 15-20min. This is the true for many expensive cities. SF is not the first major city to have an extremely expensive core area which the service workers commute to from surrounding burroughs.
- hkmurakami 11y agoSounds somewhat analogous to the case for manufacturing automation too. I hope to live till the day that the search for cheap labor culminates in Africa, and the age of maximal automation arrives.
- IndianAstronaut 11y agoThis is the basic economics behind any automation that has happened for the last 200 years.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- swalsh 11y agoThis has a brilliant scaling strategy. If McDonalds decides to one day replace half it's workers with terminals, people will almost certainly see it, and it may impact sales. However here, with the food out of sight they can incrementally swap people for machines, and it'll only affect business if quality dips below acceptable limits.
- rayiner 11y ago> Eatsa’s team, led by Scott Drummond and Tim Young, are hoping to attract health-conscious types with its hearty salads and quinoa bowls stuffed with green beans, avocado, and root vegetables. The average meal will set you back about 500 calories, which is far lower than most fast food alternatives. That's just about the number of calories in a big mac. Or a bojangles canjun biscuit. Or a chik-fil-a fried chicken sandwich.
- jdmichal 11y agoI don't think the general populace realizes that fast food burgers, in general, are not really all that bad. I mean, maybe the fat vs other stuff is not quite as balanced as some would like, though I'd like to point out the French paradox here. [0] The fries and carbonated sugar water and other accoutrement are where things really go bad. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_paradox
- lechevalierd3on 11y agoNot really a paradox, eating all day with no moderation is bad, quite simple.
- hkmurakami 11y agoDon't forget the very large portions offered at many of these fast food outlets.
- gyc 11y agoThose fast food items you listed are usually a part of a meal that includes fries, which add another 400-500 calories.
- rayiner 11y agoI must be getting ripped off--they always charge me extra for fries.
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- bpodgursky 11y agoSeems like they're pointlessly limiting their market. No people, fine, but why make it vegetarian? They already have to overcome one barrier to get people in the door.
- nawitus 11y agoMaybe because it's the right thing to do? Well, probably not, but one can always hope.
- PretzelPirate 11y agoBecause of their "Better for us, and the planet" section, I would have said that they were concerned about the resource strain created by the meat and dairy industry and they were trying to use an interesting restaurant concept to introduce people to more efficient food. I decided that wasn't the case when I found that they use dairy.
- hkmurakami 11y agoCost reduction / supply chain simplification / spoilage reduction would be my conjectures. (also a bit of branding)
- Mikeb85 11y agoVegetarian food is easier, logistically. There's a lot of food handling precautions you take with raw meat and fish that doesn't apply to raw vegetables... Cook times are also shorter, and as everything can be served raw or cooked, food safety is more or less a non-issue.
- amalag 11y agoIf it means the money which went to servers goes to cooks and ingredients it makes sense
- tcdent 11y ago"...in fact, the price of a burrito bowl and quinoa bowl are roughly equitable at just under $7, although the latter contains about half the calories" They demonstrate the same oversimplification of food health included in every fast food chain's marketing. It's literally ironic that a lower calorie count is considered 'healthy'. Low calorie food will help you lose weight. If you are not overweight, you should not be limiting your caloric intake. Healthy food is rich with a variety of nutrients, low in harmful components and high in calories.
- dibujante 11y agoYeah :( I am increasingly dismayed by food providers trying to sell me on the notion that, between two items of similar price, I should pick the one with fewer calories. This is a swindle: we are literally being told to pay more for less.
- abandonliberty 11y agoMany reasons why the marketing is like this: * The public is confused with low calorie vs healthy * The public hasn't caught on to cheap sources of healthy calories (ie, healthy fats and whole grains) [1] * The other types of healthy calories cost more * This enables businesses to charge more for smaller portions! Hilarious example: There are tons of fake healthy 'wheat' breads. Multigrain, Farmers, Rustic, Subway wheat. None of them are anywhere near whole grain. These fake-healthy foods have been tricking people for years. [1] http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/ http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-p...
- dmitrygr 11y agoThe flip side of demanding $15/hr -> robots become the cheaper option
- alrs 11y ago"Healthy" if you're still using 1990s health guidelines. I've got no need for carbohydrate-filled root vegetables, couscous, or quinoa in my diet.
- NovaS1X 11y agoI came hoping to see robots making food; I left disappointed seeing no robots at all.
- Mz 11y agoa meal is slightly cheaper than Chipotle, which may appeal to cash-strapped people who work in the area (in fact Little known fact: You can get a great meal for under $6 at Chipotle. You just have to know how to order. I often wish I knew how to make money off information of this sort. Alas, that escapes me. :-/
- Goladus 11y ago> But what’s unique about Eatsa is the focus on health and taste. What's so unique about that? Restaurants have focused on taste since there have been restaurants and have focused on health since there's been demand for it (last few decades). I had an avocado-kale-lemon smoothie this morning from a new place that just opened up in my neighborhood...
- zw123456 11y agoThis is seems inevitable, we have seem something similar with bank tellers being partially replaced by ATM's and grocery clerks partially replaced by self serve, we are probably going to see something similar for fast food first but eventually in more and more restaurants. You know the old adage, if your job could be done by a robot eventually it will be.
- Eridrus 11y ago"At the dawn of the self-service banking age in 1985, for example, the United States had 60,000 automated teller machines and 485,000 bank tellers. In 2002, the United States had 352,000 ATMs—and 527,000 bank tellers." - http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/technology-and-unemployment http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/06/te... It hasn't kept track of population growth, so the % has gone down, but only by about 10%. So bank tellers don't seem like a particularly good example.
- zw123456 11y agoInteresting, I was not aware of that, but it just seems like there would be a lot more bank tellers if not for ATM's. It may not be a good example, although, on the other hand, it might be prescient in that food service workers will probably not ever be completely replaced perhaps for the same reason bank tellers haven't, there is a segment of the population who wants to be served by a human whether at a restaurant or at a bank. It might end up being a similar percent mix in the end ?
- Eridrus 11y ago> it just seems like there would be a lot more bank tellers if not for ATM's Depends on how you look at it. If you believe that ATMs were instrumental to the growing of retail banking to the otherwise underbanked (lower cost of providing a service), then without it you wouldn't really have more bank tellers, you'd just have more unbanked people. The full article has some more details. But these machines are still making very simple foods and most people (ignoring soylent fans) enjoy variety in their food, so it seems like it will be quite a while before robots will take over large parts of the restaurant/take-out market.
- ilaksh 11y agoWow Monsanto opened a whole restaurant just to advertise quinoa.
- imaginenore 11y ago> and the dozen or so staff in the kitchen. That's already way more than an average McDonalds.