20 ms·
Burger Robot Startup Opens First Restaurant
- jayjay71 8y agoThat's a pretty sweet machine. Can't wait to see it first hand.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago> It might not be the best burger I’ve had in my life, but it’s certainly the best at that price. A lot of that comes from the savings on labor and kitchen space afforded by a robot cook. “We spend more on our ingredients than any other burger restaurant.” That's a great elevator pitch. Fluff-free and obvious ex post facto.
- greedo 8y agoLots of fluff in that. A well run small kitchen can run rings around something this size. It'll still need walk-ins to store the produce and beef, plus room for buns (which take up a crap ton of space). Other than the beef, all the other components are standard for a decent restaurant. Fresh baked buns aren't anything special, nor is custom grind meat. And bragging about spending more on your food cost is dumb. It shows that he has no real idea about the day to day of keeping a restaurant financially afloat. He'll find out when the VC money runs out.
- workinthehead 8y agoYour comment shows that you've never worked in fast food.
- greedo 8y agoAlmost two decades in the business.
- workinthehead 8y agoWell then. Good to see you're doing the work you're qualified for.
- periram 8y agoFood, laundry and house cleaning: Things that have not kept pace with technological advancements. I really hope they are successful. The second order effects of this automation, especially for a busy family like ours are hours of saved time, that can be spent with the children.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- uptown 8y agoCleaning the laundry is essentially solved. Folding what's been cleaned is where the gap remains.
- mlboss 8y agoOr wrinkle free clothes
- godelski 8y agoThis is solved by folding. Or hanging up your clothes.
- periram 8y agoAgreed! And perhaps very difficult to automate.
- uptown 8y agoThere have seen a few prototype solutions on the web but they all were extremely slow ... on the order of 8 hours to fold a load of laundry.
- kaybe 8y agoDryers are so energetically wasteful though, and the advantage to line drying can be low (barring high humidity climate or lack of space). There should be a better solution.
- deleted 8y ago
- DonHopkins 8y agoNow all they need is a robot waiter! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsUetUzXlg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXsUetUzXlg
- mythrwy 8y agoI can't wait. One reason I don't like eating out much is who is touching my food? That burger looks pretty good and $6 sounds pretty good.
- agitator 8y agoLol someone is always touching your food. It's not going to kill you.
- foobarbazetc 8y ago* unless it does. That one time.
- chillwaves 8y agoPeople touching food is not an issue, it is core to the process.
- mythrwy 8y agoThere are other things that can happen besides death though. And you know all those things you do with your hands? Well, those people do that also. Seriously, removing the dirty hairless ape element as much as possible from food prep is great all around! I'm really really surprised everyone doesn't feel this way but apparently not. I do though. Can't wait for these machines to get rolled out.
- workinthehead 8y agoMachines if not properly cleaned have the potential to become way more septic than a healthy animal. Shows how much you know.
- mythrwy 8y agoThat's ridiculous. Plus it's easier to keep a machine clean (which they no doubt will) than a fleet of fast food workers. Besides, it's not real potential, it's how I feel about it. Bring the machine on I say!
- overcast 8y agoRobotic fast food is basically inevitable. It's the same exact process, rarely do menus really change. Burger actually looks pretty dang good, and for $6? Heck yes.
- simplecomplex 8y agoIn-n-out double-double is $3.45, and they don’t use frozen or prepackaged patties. Automation isn’t doing much for consumers here.
- spunker540 8y agoThe one thing these burgers got on in-n-out is the freshly-ground beef trump card.
- gamegoblin 8y agoI would be interested to see some blind taste test data to determine if a majority of people can distinguish a burger made with beef that was ground 1 day before cooking vs. 1 minute before cooking.
- kevinmchugh 8y agoI haven't seen such a chart, but I don't know of any burger restaurant that grinds a la minute - not at any price point.
- choward 8y agoThat's a moot point if you can't tell the difference or if the one that was pre-ground ends up tasting better in a blind taste test. I agree, however, that the freshly ground one should taste better.
- kevinmchugh 8y agoMy point is that even high end restaurants haven't found it worthwhile to grind immediately before cooking, so it's probably a pretty minor difference
- megaman22 8y agoThis sounds like quite the Rube Goldberg machine; if it becomes a reality and is economical, that's great news. I have to think there is lower hanging fruit in the fast food industry, though. I just really want McDonald's or Dunkin Donuts to turn their POS machine around so I can key in my own order, or maybe they could cut a deal with Amazon or Apple to start using Siri or Alexa. The failure rate on the biological natural language processors currently in use are shockingly high.
- donarb 8y agoMcDonald's already has ordering kiosks in some of its restaurants. They also have a mobile app that allows you to order and pay before you walk in the door, just show up and walk out with your food.
- subpixel 8y agoThis handles the transactions really well, but now you get 40 people standing around the cash registers waiting for their order grumbling about how this process sucks. It feels like a bread line.
- snarf21 8y agoThe UI is also awful. You have to touch in opposite corners for each successive selection or choice. It takes sooo much longer than saying a "#5 medium to go" > insert card > they finish > remove card. It is a reasonable choice if there is already a line of 4 people in front of you and you are waiting anyway. The thing I'd really like is a combination of voice (the above is trivial to parse) and a history of my last 6 orders to one touch order.
- periram 8y agoI have started using the app at DD. Very quick and the turn around time for the order is low.
- ansible 8y agoThey do have those order kiosks at Panera. I don't use them unless the line is long.
- Someone1234 8y agoIf I were looking to invest in one of those, the biggest questions I'd have are around reliability, cleaning routines, and maintenance. For example I could pay minimum wage for someone to cut veggies, or pay significantly more for an engineer to repair the unit because it isn't dispensing tomato right. Their demo unit is very fun, and adds to the gimmick, but like most industrial equipment ease of access is more important than appearances. I'd hate to have to take apart what they demoed for routine cleaning. And while it is laudable that they're taking the savings and using them on better ingredients, that only lasts until a competitor appears who is going to just lower the price (e.g. "50c burgers here!").
- tyfon 8y agoYes, I think you are right, the race to the bottom is inevitable unfortunately...
- lovich 8y agoThat's still allows you to segment the market. I like McDonald's but can't get it where I live because the majority of the people prefer higher priced fare. The McDonald's couldn't compete with a mid tier burger joint down the street and got replaced by an upscale Korean restaurant. If it manages to actually lower operating costs then it will lower prices in all the segments but it won't just get rid of segments
- Amygaz 8y agoWell McDo has been introducing electronic kiosks to order, while reducing the number of cashier stands.
- acchow 8y agoBut there hasn't been a race to the bottom in food. There are restaurants at huge ranges of price points.
- prawn 8y ago
- tyfon 8y agoI'd go for it as long as they use fresh undamaged and proper ingredients completely devoid of preservatives, corn starch etc. The cleaning of the machine has to be top notch too and done several times a day I think. If done properly it could be great, nothing turns me off food more than seeing a sweaty cook drip sweat onto the food while making it (yes it has happened, the food went into the garbage).
- simplecomplex 8y agoWhy is it so expensive?
- wolco 8y agoBecause they don't have burger king scale and need profits to expand quickly before their idea is copied.
- greedo 8y agoThey won't be making any profits at $72/hour in revenue.
- megy 8y agoHow do you get that number?
- zerostar07 8y agoit s a parallel machine, it seems
- arcaster 8y agoI don't really understand the appeal of these restaurants. While living in Boston I went to the MIT "automated" wock-esque' restaurants a few times. It wasn't even that, "automated" per-se outside of the wock-cooking. Humans still handled a majority of meal prep, stocking machines, and dealing with payment problems. IMO I'd rather have spent less money at the neighboring Chipotle for better food.
- xkcd-sucks 8y agoYeah but you can't actually see and hear the people getting paid shit to chop up veggies, so it feels less exploitative Also-- There's more than one company doing that?? Or just one with several locations
- robbyking 8y agoI recently left the Bay Area to live in a major city in another state, and now that it's a little easier to see the tech forest through the trees, I see that for now, very few people want a lot of these types services outside of usual tech centric hubs. It's like in the Kurt Vonnegut book Player Piano: there are certain services where people enjoy the human touch; I think food service is one of those.
- pretendscholar 8y agoI'd prefer less human touch on my food.
- notahacker 8y agoCertainly automation of food service was a problem solved in the early 1900s for those that wanted fast food and coffees without being asked by someone if they'd like fries or a muffin; just turned out that in most situations it was actually a less successful business model...
- colmvp 8y agoHonestly, when it comes to slices of pizza or a burger (fast food in general), I couldn't care less about the human touch, and I've been to some of the best pizzeria's / burger joints in NY/LA/SF. I might care my first time going, but anytime after that, I just care about getting my food and eating it.
- SeanMacConMara 8y agohttp://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm pops to mind. again.
- yifanl 8y agoThis seems more like the exact opposite scenario.
- SeanMacConMara 8y agoBoth stories literally feature mechanically automated fast-food outlets. care to elaborate your pov please ?
- jpao79 8y agoI think what's kind of interesting is if this actually makes it easier to start a restaurant. Assuming at some point, some food robot maker steps up and starts selling the robot itself to independent restauranteurs, instead of selling hamburgers to end consumers, do these robots put the power back into the hands of the small business/restaurant owner? I have to imagine a big complication in starting an independent restaurant is the overhead of hiring/managing/supporting employees (i.e. wait staff, cooks, dishwashers, etc.). A large employee base probably requires a large franchise with economies of scale to distribute the cost of centralized HR over many restaurants. Without that overhead, entrepreneurial restauranteurs can focus on differentiating the food, the location(s) of the restaurant and the ambiance.
- notahacker 8y agoI think getting the location right has always been the biggest obstacle to being a successful restaurant. And there's only so much you can change the menu and "ambience" when you're supplying self-service burgers. Plus the article does hint the robo-restaurant still has employees to manage customers, clean, load the machine and presumably sort out issues with it on a not-infrequent basis...
- greedo 8y agoRestaurants fail because of 1) poor location, 2) undercapitalization 3) poor QSC (quality/service/cleanliness).
- rm_-rf_slash 8y agoI kinda see what you’re saying, but I think for the economics to work at scale (another person mentioned location) then the device should be small enough to fit in a food truck or a street vendor stand. Once you have the size down to where you just need one person at a time operating it, I bet the big fast food companies will swarm all over the opportunity to create tens of thousands of micro-franchises. Why drive for Uber when you could set up a mini McDonalds wherever the health department lets you get away with it?
- 8y ago
- spunker540 8y agoI think these kinds of machines could potentially be mainstream someday, at least in fast food, and I see a lot of potential in both cost-savings and food safety improvements. One thing that struck me as humorous though is the founder's comparison to self-driving cars (from Bloomberg's article): “What you’re watching is a technological feat. Self-driving cars need a lot of mileage before they become reliable. You’re seeing something similar here” Not to dismiss the challenges with automating burgers, but its pretty straightforward compared to self-driving tech - there's basically no unknowns!
- rainbowmverse 8y ago>> Not to dismiss the challenges with automating burgers, but its pretty straightforward compared to self-driving tech - there's basically no unknowns! I always assume things are more complicated than they appear on the surface, so this is a surprise. You sound like you've explored this topic thoroughly. What is involved in having a robot produce a hamburger (not just the patty, of course)?
- pigscantfly 8y agoOP is referring to the likelihood that a blizzard blows through the prep kitchen as opposed to the likelihood of a hard rainstorm on the 101 during the morning commute. Self-driving cars have to reliably cope with a wider range of uncertainties than a robot cooking burgers in a carefully controlled (by comparison) environment.
- spunker540 8y agoI’m not saying it’s easy- there’s probably a reason no one’s done it yet. But the comparison seems a little off. There’s no decades long darpa research grants required, and probably very few phds. There’s no predicting what other humans will do, there are no lives at stake (other than food safety precautions). The amount of capital alone that’s been invested in self driving tech (and it’s still not good enough) compared to the amount invested in burger tech makes pretty clear how hard one problem may be. This is basically a precision automated assembly line, and to be honest plenty of things just as complicated as burgers have been assembled automatically.
- mmagin 8y agoIt looks hard to clean and does not look like it uses a lot of common off-the-shelf industrial parts. I'd want a very impressive service contract to go along with it.
- whitepoplar 8y agoI always thought robot-made burgers would be depressing, but this actually looks...not depressing.
- agitator 8y agoThis seems like it would quickly devolve into health hazard without constant maintenance. Idk, at this point, it seems like it would be a headache just to have this running smoothly. It's cool and all and yeah maybe robots will make our food in the future, but this machine is not something that I'm especially stoked about. As a person who cooks, 50% of the time is spent cleaning up. I can see gunk, pieces of stuff, residue messing with the machine. A normal person notices and cleans each bit as they go, whereas a machine like this (unless engineered to clean itself) will be cleaned periodically (most likely after business hours). So my point is, I feel like food made by humans is still cleaner and safer. Also what happens when something needs to be cleaned or replaced mid-lunch? You shut down the machine and open it up... the restaurant loses $. In a normal kitchen, you wipe things up, wash a knife, or grab a new one and keep going.
- greedo 8y agoJust imagine how fast this could spread food borne illnesses. Unless the meat grinder is cleaned between each burger, that's a huge potential risk. Just a little e. coli on the outside of the beef, and each blade will be contaminated. And as anyone who's worked fast food knows, the higher tech the food prep device, the more delicate it is. Cooking beef results in grease, which gets everywhere. You can put gaskets, physical barriers etc etc, and grease particles will coat everything. Then things will break down. Add in robotic mandolines for the tomatos/onions, the necessary refrigeration of all the components and you've got something that won't be robust, reliable, or efficient. Then there's tamper resistance. This thing will need to be hermetically sealed to keep people from doing the usual fsckery that happens in kiosks etc. And the economics looks "challenging." From the article, it looks like it stocks 30 buns. 30 burgers at $6 is $180 in revenue before someone needs to restock it. And restock the beef. And make sure the artisanal beef deliveries are handled properly. Sounds like a prep cook... Then you'll need cashiers, and people to clean tables, and restrooms, and all the other accoutrements of restaurants. Yeah, it looks cool, and people do like to see their food cooked. The novelty will attract people at first. Then the lines will deter them. Restaurants are all about volume. And at $6 a burger, you'll need to crank them out fast.
- 8y ago
- rightbyte 8y agoWell this was done in the 60s allready. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE&t=545s https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE&t=545s It was most likely cracy expensive just as these news machines are compared to a ordinary restaurant grade kitchen and you still need people going around unstucking things that get stuck. Bringing industrial processes into street food seems ... unpractical.
- Nition 8y agoOn top of that the article says it takes around a full five minutes from ordering to your burger being ready, and all those ingredients in tubes look pre-prepped to some extent. Plus it can't be easy to clean. That one from the 60s actually looks more impressive, wow!
- greedo 8y agoLOL. 5 minutes a burger, at $6/per. So this thing can sell $72 worth of burgers per hour. At that rate and price, there's no way this will ever be profitable. Even with add on sales of artisanal, hand shaved potato chips with bespoke cream soda bumping the cost up to $10 a customer, this is DOA. Interesting technology, but as a business, DOA. Edit; I missed that he's paying his employees $16/hour (good for him). So if he has 2 employees fulltime, he's got $32/hour + payroll taxes/unemployment insurance etc to earn before he can pay off the R&D for this, his rent, his food cost, his utilities, his advertising, and then have an ROI for his investors. And he has "experience" and a family in the business! Why they didn't talk him out of this is beyond me.
- xtirpation 8y ago5 minutes to make a burger from start to finish isn't the same as making 12 burgers per hour - the machine can probably prepare multiple burgers at a time (just speculation from the video, of course).
- jfoutz 8y agoIt’s not clear how many can be in the pipeline.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- WaylonKenning 8y agoEveryone is obsessing about the detail when there's already a company that pretty much does this - Subway! You could pretty much automate the sub construction process since the ingredient prep process is done at an industrial scale and just shipped in bags to each Subway location.
- BinaryIdiot 8y agoYeah I'm actually really surprised Subway hasn't at least tested an automated restaurant. Seems like they would be perfectly positioned to do it. They even pre-portion many of their meats to make it even easier.
- ovao 8y agoA typical Subway has a lower staff count than most fast food joints, I think. At most times, when I worked at one, we needed fewer than three heads on the line.
- maerF0x0 8y ago> When I ask how a startup launching one eatery at a time could become a $10 billion company, Creator co-founder and CEO Alex Vardakostas looks me dead in the eye and says, “the market is much bigger than that.” A $10B valuation company better understand the profit between $1 sale of SaaS and $1 sale of food ...
- gkoberger 8y agoI mean, McDonalds seems to be doing just fine.
- greedo 8y agoMcDonalds is a real estate company that sells hamburgers...
- gkoberger 8y agoSure, and why can't this company do that eventually? Maybe expand into other foods, rent out machines, do maintenance, etc. (I don't necessarily think they'll ever be worth $10Bn, but... eventually, some company doing something similar will be)
- workinthehead 8y agoI know you guys all like to feel so clever by saying that, but it's not as if their burger business is some big money-loser that they are propping up out of sheer altruism.
- dalbasal 8y agoI would be curious to see what the actual economic case is for burger automation like this. What's the labour cost savings here, all in? Restaurants aren't food factories, not even mcdonaldses. We food factories too, but this doesn't appear to be for them. This was to be more about whether or not people would like to have their burger made by a robot. Price-wise, I'd wager its much of a muchness.
- ahallock 8y agoIt could be a draw for the novelty and consistency. I hate having an amazing experience destroyed by the follow up visit, where someone decides to check out for their shift.
- briandear 8y agoLabor costs are by far the most expensive costs for a restaurant. Employee turnover is also a significant problem. You typically aren’t able to hire A players to make burgers.
- ahallock 8y agoI'm not very impressed with this. It automates some steps, but they need to take this to the next level, where everything is prepared in a compact, self-cleaning machine. I know people love the art of cooking and there's the question of jobs, but honestly, I hate that my food is created in these chaotic, dirty kitchens. People get tired, apathetic, etc, and the consistency really suffers. How many times have you had an amazing meal only to be completely disappointed the next time.
- ohazi 8y agoI want to see a high-end robot restaurant that's run as a work of art rather than a race-to-the-bottom. Think Benihana, but run by KUKA robots. You'd sit facing a kitchen behind a glass wall and watch the robots fling things around dangerously -- knives, cutting boards, frying pans, etc. You'd order a complicated dish and watch in amazement as the robots prepare it in front of you.
- bcassedy 8y agoI'm really curious how something like that would be received. Is Benihana entertaining to watch because of the tricks themselves or because it's impressive that a human has learned to perform the tricks consistently?
- workinthehead 8y agoIf I ever had the chance to go see a robot doing Benihana tricks it would definitely be worth going at least once. Perhaps I have more appreciation for the degree of engineering that would go into something like that though.
- imglorp 8y agoMaybe the bot can get the shrimp in my mouth.
- cookingrobot 8y agoNow you’re talking.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y agoHeh, unrelated but my wife and I decided to visit the "Robot Restaurant" in Shinjuku Tokyo expecting exactly this. Turns out it's a glorified strip club with lasers.
- AndrewKemendo 8y agoI had the idea for the Sub sandwich version of this on my way home from Iraq in 2010. I wanted a sub sandwich, and was still on middle east time, however Baltimore airport didn't have anything open at 2AM when I landed. So the thinking was, why not have a completely automated sandwich shop, that cut everything fresh as it was ordered? The thinking goes, that if you automate the ends of the farm to table process, cooking/service and Growing/picking, then automating the logistics (transport) will make more sense. After about a year or two of engineering sketches and business planning I gave up on it because it would take a few years for the technology to be capable and people to be ready for a wholly automated restaurant - with one person there for QC/fixes. Plus it would probably be 1-2M just for a prototype. Sure enough in 2011 Momentum machines came out with their prototype, and now 7 years later they have a new brand and a working shop. Kudos to them. If they do it right, these guys could automate field to table and drive food costs to zero with minimal waste.
- CamelCaseName 8y agoI'm a little disheartened that nearly everyone so far has immediately jumped to finding flaws in this stories and ones like it. I get it, there is a long history of such robots failing economically. However, automating food assembly could free a huge number of people from menial restaurant work. Perhaps we would see an explosion of food culture and personalization that simply doesn't exist when you have several fast food chains operating tens of thousands of stores worldwide and the cost of opening up a unique restaurant is greater than many people's lifetime earnings. I hope this problem is solved one day in my lifetime, and that we all benefit from lower food assembly costs and increased dietary options.
- ranci 8y ago"Free" them? They need that work in order to survive, mostly. They were "free" before having that menial job and that freedom didn't seem to help turn them into software engineers or nurses before...
- _0nac 8y agoWhich is why we should immediately un-mechanize mines and bring back hurriers and trappers! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrying https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurrying https://thoroglove.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/trappers-hurriers-and-hewers-working-in-a-coal-mine/ https://thoroglove.wordpress.com/2015/03/12/trappers-hurrier... Simply put: if a job is so repetitive that it can be automated out of existence, it's in the interest of humanity overall that it should be.
- ranci 8y ago> Simply put: if a job is so repetitive that it can be automated out of existence, it's in the interest of humanity overall that it should be. Quite a different way of framing it than your original comment. Here you tout how it's good for "humanity" in general. Before you were touting how this is good for the people being put out of work.
- 8y ago
- contingencies 8y agoSo they finally came out with the rumored restaurant, with 8 years + USD$25M down. Spyce[0] (slammed by HN[1]) beat them to it, on a smaller budget, with the same 'restaurant with partial automation' model. By all accounts (including the friendly founder of Bistrobot, who was unfairly slammed in the article), US regulations are not friendly toward innovation in this space making a restaurant-based launch an effective requirement. Previous statements from the company included Our alpha machine replaces all of the hamburger line cooks in a restaurant. It does everything employees can do except better and that US restaurants can save USD$150,000/year on staff salaries. Current reality: many staff, USD$16/hr each, manual finishing, manual preparation of sides and drinks, manual cleaning. In 2016 I founded Infinite Food here in China. We're developing a fully automated model more akin to a wholly owned and operated network of futuristic vending machines and logistics fleet than a restaurant. Consumers order and pay through an app. Starting from fresh ingredients stored in a fridge within each unit, we cook noodle, pasta and soup dishes to taste, with an average 3 minute hot meal preparation, packaging and retail time and mere seconds for cold dishes. Think ramen/soba/udon/nyangmyeon/pho/pad thai/laksa/various pasta/various Chinese noodles with total customization. In addition, we provide real time nutritional feedback on personalization, allow for ordering in any human language and 24x7x365 availability. Our core idea is to get physically closer to the high density Asian urban consumer than any other food retail option, and offer a broader choice of fresher food. Early on we looked at the whole problem took the strategy of simultaneous innovation at the appropriate layer: central facility, logistics network or service location based upon available technology and allowable tradeoffs. There's no public evidence any of the US players have much investment in this area, whereas we have a provisional business method patent filed for our solution with more on the way. Currently we are relocating across the Pearl River Delta from Shenzhen to launch operations in Zhuhai and take advantage of the new HK-Macau bridge while hedging regulatory risk across three launch markets (HK/Macau/Guangdong - China's most populous province) and are raising Series A to deploy 300 locations next year. Total relative spend vs. MM/Creator: ~5% + 1/3 time. Some of the things we've achieved they haven't: full personalization, zero in-field maintenance, true self-cleaning, automated packaging and cutlery provisioning, logistics innovations. Estimate net profit/sale in initial markets: ~USD$2+. Max hot sales/hr: 80. Max cold sales/hr:200+. Meals/restock: 200+. Parallel meal prep.: Up to 4x. Footprint: 2x1 square meters. Prospective investors are welcome to check us out at http://infinite-food.com/ http://infinite-food.com/ or email in profile. [0] https://www.spyce.com/ https://www.spyce.com/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792371 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16792371
- MatekCopatek 8y agoTechnical feasability aside, I really cringed when the founder started talking about how this gives their employees time to do more meaningful things, like reading books. Just face it - you're automating a job. If your company succeeds, more people will become unemployed. That's not to say you shouldn't do it, but call it what it is and take responsibility.
- asfasgasg 8y agoUnemployment is really low right now, and burger flipping is just about the least desirable type of work available. This has been said countless times, but it's worth noting that although there are very few blacksmiths or peat cutters today, somehow we are still pretty close to full employment.
- wavefunction 8y ago>full employment We have folks living in tent cities. 12.8% is "on disability" Yeah we're at full employment as long as you consider U6 rather than the old standard of U5.
- adventured 8y agoFortunately, disability applications are declining soundly. June, 2018: "Disability Applications Plunge as the Economy Strengthens" "The number of Americans seeking Social Security disability benefits is plunging, a startling reversal of a decades-old trend that threatened the program’s solvency. It is the latest evidence of a stronger economy pulling people back into the job market or preventing workers from being sidelined in the first place." https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-security-applications.html https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/19/business/economy/social-s...
- verylittlemeat 8y agoHow many of those people in tent cities would even take a job if you offered them one? How many are drug addicted or mentally ill to the point of being unemployable? Society shouldn't pretend these people don't exist but they're rightfully a different class of unemployed.
- bsenftner 8y agoHe's automating the wrong part. Making the burger is cheaper made by humans. He needs to read this: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
- wnkrshm 8y agoAnd the chapters afterwards? Fully automated luxury space communism is a worthy goal.
- tom_mellior 8y ago> Making the burger is cheaper made by humans. Non-fiction citation needed. One of the points in the article is that those humans take up space that you need to rent.
- TheCoelacanth 8y ago> The idea is that when you bite into the burger, your teeth align with the vertical strands so instead of requiring harsh chewing it almost melts in your mouth. Is this for real? I don't think I've ever had a burger that required "harsh chewing".
- workinthehead 8y agoIf you've never experienced the difference between a burger that melts in your mouth vs a burger that uses tough, grade C or D frozen patties... you've never experienced a burger.
- black6 8y agoSpeaking from the point of view of a professional brewer, cleaning and sanitizing that mechanized butcher/line cook would be a nightmare.
- chasontherobot 8y agoI don't trust anyone to make my burger when they talk about french fries like that.
- samnwa 8y agoThis company would be cool if it were helping existing burger employees to have ownership in the coming wave of automation. Let me know when you find that company and I will invest the little that I have!
- kyleperik 8y agoGet ready for the legislation that attempts to enforce taxing this https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-job-should-pay-taxes/ https://qz.com/911968/bill-gates-the-robot-that-takes-your-j...
- RickJWagner 8y agoSounds delicious. (Maybe I shouldn't read when I'm hungry.)
- adamonkey 8y agoI think what this company is doing is great. Unlike all the other automated food startups, this one focuses on COST. I would definitely buy a $6 burger with great ingredients. The founder cares about people's wellbeing, and seems to have a mission. He's been grinding this out for 8 years. It doesn't sound like the other automation food startups out there.
- ada1981 8y agoPeople still eat meat?
- digi_owl 8y agoReminds me of a video from Sexycyborg i ran into a a while back where she visited what may well be described as a walk in vending machine. She could pick out what she wanted to buy on a touch screen in the wall, it would come out pre-heated in a slot nearby, and there was a "bar" of sorts were one could sit and eat, that would basically dump anything left on it into the trash upon leaving.
- contingencies 8y agoSounds like https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/f5-future-store https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/f5-future-store ... there's a human behind the wall.
- broose_goose 8y agoFounder says he was inspired by flipping burgers, when in all reality he got the idea while watching jimmy neutron[1] as a kid... [1]http://jimmyneutron.wikia.com/wiki/Men_at_Work http://jimmyneutron.wikia.com/wiki/Men_at_Work
- creade 8y agoThe bowling equipment manufacturer AMF was here in 1964 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FmXLqImT1wE
- SomewhatLikely 8y agoI think it would make a lot of sense to do this for food that wouldn't be cost effective today due to preparation costs. Open a restaurant that serves food no one else does because it would be too labor intensive.
- EnderMB 8y agoFrom a tech perspective, I think it's a good thing to step towards automation for low-quality burgers, especially in chain restaurants where a recipe has been modified to ensure that the flavour is consistent across the country/world. What I'd like to see more from this kind of startup is a desire to ensure that anyone that loses a job due to their product has the opportunity for retraining. Sure, it won't be great for profits, but if we're heading towards a time where low-paying jobs are to be automated then I'd love to see a trend start where people who will lose their jobs to automation can opt to move into management or train towards an entry-level job in the engineering required to run these tools. What I really don't want is some smug SV type spouting a load of bullshit about how automation makes peoples jobs easier. It only makes them easier by relieving them of their duties.
- thunfischbrot 8y agoI agree with your point that it would be great if proverbial disruption would come with more ideas of how the people in jobs potentially eliminated could get jobs elsewhere. Moving into management or engineering though may be out of the question for many of the current employees in those jobs, as they (by and large) may not have chosen/ended up in those jobs if they were qualified and suitable for management/engineering. The maintenance and potentially manufacturing may be more likely transitioning paths, what do you think?
- EnderMB 8y agoDefinitely, as long as they have the first opportunity to move into these jobs. I suppose the benefit of management is that it can apply outside of their line of work, but general manufacturing can too. The key would be to ensure that anyone that is to lose their job in the future through it being automated by innovative tech be given the opportunity to retrain for a better job. This kind of enforcement means that the job market isn't swamped by mass redundancy, and a consistent time period of retraining for people to re-enter that job market.
- Kagerjay 8y agoI design restaurants. I'm well versed on all the latest trends in food technology. I helped a few companies grow including some that have hit national news. I work with some international chains spanning 200+ restaurants and have worked with a couple fortunre 500 companies. I've met some famous chefs as well. Visited a few factories that span 2 square miles that produce only equipment. I can tell you people want to buy the cheapest stuff possible to get stuff done. Unless they've tried the cheapest stuff possible, and realize that paying more for extra features might be worth it(but not always sometimes the cheaper things are better). The only end users that would use this are high-end establishments willing to invest in both footprint space, maintenance, and high upfront cost. The 2nd market would be for the marketing appeal in an open kitchen and the cool robotics. The 3rd market would be for someone who wants to cook patties but need a self contained hood system, and those run for about $10k, so adding an initial investment might be worth it. Some of the problems that this robot solves are solved by independent machinery already. - There's already machines that cut, slice, and toast buns on a timed conveyor belt. Examples: http://www.bellecocooking.com/services.html http://www.bellecocooking.com/services.html . These are used in panera bread - Someone dedicated to burger flipping is generally cooking multiple patties all in one go. There are also few pieces of machinery that broil on both sides at specific cooking curve temperatures, so you cook a patty like you would a panini. This eliminates the need for "flipping burgers" producing a more consistent dining experience, with an operator needing to attend to the beeping noise when the burger is finished. http://www.taylor-company.com/en/products/commercial-grills/commercial-grills http://www.taylor-company.com/en/products/commercial-grills/... - Cutting onions, tomatoes, and lettuce is a completely unnecessary step. Most places would buy from sysco or another food distributor that precuts it at a factory. When we look at labor intensity of making a burger, tasks are generally divided into the following approach - 1. One person flips burgers and handles raw meat only (Cross contamination) - 2. Another person assembles the burger + the precut veggies + adds sauce + assembles + wrapping it. - 3. Another person handles the register (Cross contamination) - 4. Same person usually calls number and delivers person the order ------------------------------------------------------------------ While one person can fulfill multiple roles, you have to swap out gloves constantly (cost of swapping tasks), so its more feasible to have a dedicated person to each task. The most important step in making a burger is the patty itself, its the MVP and the longest step in the process. Assemblying the burger is already fairly precise as well, there are specialized squeeze bottles for dispensing specific amount of sauce, everything is precut, etc. The actual burger bot production line style is not new. There are a few pieces of specific foodtypes that capitalize on assembly line production inside of a restaurant, these are the following: - Donut production (Krispy Kreme). Step 1 would be dipping the donut in a fryer, step 2 is coating it with sugar and frosting, etc. When you think of assembly line production inside a physical kitchen, this is the first thing that comes to mind. They machinery operates automates step 1 in the process. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l013vVp3OU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l013vVp3OU - Japanese restaurants in Japan. Or go to a fancy McDonalds, Wawa, airport restaurants, etc in the states. Many times you'll see step 3 automated, because let's face it I'd rather deal with a kiosk that never makes an ordering mistake over some fresh hire from some high school. Step 4 is sometimes automated in Japan as well with conveyor belts, especially in sushi restaurants. You'll see steps 1 and 2 automated with specialized sushi packing rice machines and rollers. Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R47tfK1dna8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R47tfK1dna8 - Sandwich prepackagers for grocery stores. Tesco is a good example. This is a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS_hnmHWEcg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HS_hnmHWEcg. But the thing with this though, when you scale to an industrial level - your demands for production are consistent and predictable. This is not true for restaurants. Some hours are incredibly crazy while some are incredible dead (3pm to 5pm). Certain reasons might be booming others might be slow, depending on a number of factors. Not all restaurants cater to the same crowd - some cater to locals, others tourists and convention goers, etc. - In addition, Step 4 is currently being automated by many companies. Servers and hostsess are generally not the MVP in a fast casual dining restaurant, people come for food not service. Think of delivery based robots, there's a couple of them I can't remember their names offhand. - Burgerfi merges step 3 and 4 so the service staff knows where you are sitting for that order. ------------------------------------------------------------------ This machine is looking to do both assembly and cooking. Unless this robot provides more value than its costs (upfront cost, maintenance, footprint oppurtunity cost) vs 2 waged employees, most business owners won't go for it. There are machines such as the misorobot that capitalizes only on the raw meat step, https://misorobotics.com/ https://misorobotics.com/. You can't really compare this same process to something like subway. Everything at subway is already either precooked so cross contamination with raw meat is not an issue. Next, lots of moving parts or generally relying on one "assembly line" production has a few fatal flaws. Namely, these are the following: - 1. Lots of moving parts means potential for many things to break. - 2. If your entire burger making process relies solely on the machine, you are screwed if it breaks on rush hour. Anyone who throws their eggs in one basket doesn't know risk management. - 3. The veggies are not refrigerated. This is a health hazard if you aren't moving enough burgers at a time. Looking at the prototype this could be implemented though, since veggies are all roughly next to each other. This unit comes to mind when I saw the burger bot https://www.silverking.com/project/lettuce-crisper-dispenser/ https://www.silverking.com/project/lettuce-crisper-dispenser... - 4. You might be limited in variations of what burgers you can make. Manual labor cooking allows for infinite customization, machines do not. Many burger chains are going for "green" based low-fat burgers as well, where you use lettuce leafs over burger buns. In addition, a few burger chains also stamp their logo on the bunn by burning part of the top. Some customers might request things like no pickles, double onions, etc. Machines wouldn't account for it probably.