5 ms·

Restaurants Place Big Bets on Cooking Robots

20 points by ecliptik 2y ago

ethegwo 2y ago
It reminds me of the operations related to organizing restaurant tables and grilling shrimp in the imitation learning-based project Mobile Aloha(https://mobile-aloha.github.io/ https://mobile-aloha.github.io/).
Workaccount2 2y ago
Probably still gonna prompt for 25% tip on the $18 burger I just had mechanized for me.
- gruez 2y ago
  I mean... yeah? Chefs at fast food places aren't usually tipped. If you're tipping you're tipping the delivery guy.
- tithe 2y ago
  And show a small sad face emoji on its screen if you decline.
  - geodel 2y ago
    Thats for first time offenders. Repeating ones are going to be dealt with increasingly aggressive tactics.
    - itishappy 2y ago
      Motor oil in your food.
      - geodel 2y ago
        Thats like Sharing is caring for robots. No?
      - Log_out_ 2y ago
        Robots in food companies mustvrun with foodsave oils
    - postmodest 2y ago
      "Surge pricing in effect" for non-tippers.
    - tithe 2y ago
      One less french fry with your burger, each time.
CraigJPerry 2y ago
Same mistake as the generative AI world. I don’t want a weird melody or a bad picture, I can have fun making those on my own if you’ll just please save me the time to sort through the laundry basket and get that stuff washed, ironed and back in the wardrobe. Don’t mistake what I’m asking for here, think ironing exoskeleton not laundry autonomous agent.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  We aren't the market here so it doesn't matter what we're asking for. A more honest headline would be "restaurant owners place big bets on eliminating workers."
- xg15 2y ago
  With the current trajectory, you'll still have to fold the laundry yourself - but your phone, the washer, the dryer, the laundry basket, the detergent bottle and the actual laundry itself will all give you personalized and very emphatic reminders when it's time to do so.
oldpersonintx 2y ago
[dead]
keiferski 2y ago
There will probably be a bifurcation here: - Lower-end restaurants adopt cooking robots and make it difficult to see the kitchen from the customer area - Higher-end restaurants make their humans even more visible and push a hibachi/omakase model where the chef makes the meals in front of you "Human made" is going to be the premium brand keyword of 2030.
- ghaff 2y ago
  It's probably inevitable that things with a large labor component either become more automated/industrialized or become more of a luxury good (or mostly fade away entirely).
  - ericd 2y ago
    Yeah, can’t raise everyone’s living standards without making human labor relatively expensive in material terms.
  - forgetfreeman 2y ago
    Inevitable only if you accept the premise that our society's primary function is and should remain enhancing shareholder value.
    - Turing_Machine 2y ago
      This was happening long before corporations were even a thing. At one point, roughly 90% of the human race worked in manual agriculture, generally as some form of unfree labor (serfs or slaves), with most of the other 10% as foot soldiers, then a thin veneer of nobles and priests at the top. Replacing human labor with machinery is pretty much the only thing that has ever improved the general standard of living, whether they are shareholders or not.
      - forgetfreeman 2y ago
        1. An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. 2. Comparing modern economics to serfdom is ridiculous on it's face. 3. What, exactly, are you thinking automated career tracks are going to get replaced with this time around? Keeping in mind you've got Industrial, AG, manufacturing, service, and white collar sectors, the first three are already heavily automated. Automating the last two results in massive unemployment. I'm not hearing any push for realocation of wealth so yeah, how exactly does this not completely brick the economy? While we're on the topic of "improving quality of life" how do you frame the near total economic collapse of rural communities in the US and the transition from a single breadwinner middle class to basically mandatory dual income households as "improving quality of living"?
xg15 2y ago
> Why it matters: Worker shortages and inflation continue to bedevil the restaurant industry — even as it enjoys record sales. Have they tried higher wages?
- jfim 2y ago
  Restaurants are a very thin margin business, and prices at restaurants are pretty high already.
  - xg15 2y ago
    Sure, but robots won't exactly be cheap either.
    - ghaff 2y ago
      And of course it's possible that some categories of restaurants just become less attractive to consumers over time.
    - digitalsushi 2y ago
      we can treat them like we used to treat humans, at least until they become sentient. if this makes you uncomfortable i'm with you
    - vlucas 2y ago
      The initial installation and setup of robots won't be cheap. But the ongoing costs will be vastly cheaper than paying per hour for human labor.
      - silverquiet 2y ago
        I've been in the business long enough to know that the suppliers of these robots are going to wring their customers for every cent of recurring revenue they can. Once the kitchen is literally built around and dependent on them, they've got your nuts in a vise and they'll gleefully squeeze as hard as they can.
      - 2y ago
coldcode 2y ago
Zume failed big time. I wonder if anyone will ever get it to work. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-failed-428-m-robot-pizza-startup-can-u3mwe/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-failed-428-m-robot-pizza...
- jfim 2y ago
  Zume was ridiculously over engineered though. They had a large commercial delta robot in a safety cell to spread tomato sauce (https://youtu.be/TkhWonFm-Lw?si=18ihEFyY04IWRdEL https://youtu.be/TkhWonFm-Lw?si=18ihEFyY04IWRdEL). Contrast this with the very simple robot Costco uses to put sauce on their pizzas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaMFqgslxRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaMFqgslxRc), which is basically a turntable.
oidar 2y ago
Putting the workforce concerns aside, this is pretty exciting. I think the two easiest parts of the problem to tackle are the prep part and the delivery part. The part in the middle will be the hardest. I expect that the first really successful robot staffed restaurant will be a pizza restaurant. Pretty much all of the parts are already mechanized in the industrial production of frozen pizzas, and the challenge would be to downscale it to a restaurant sized machine that could do the cooking as well.
rglullis 2y ago
Somewhat off-topic, but I will ask anyway: if preprocessed foods are so strongly linked to the illnesses of modern society, wouldn't be interesting to establish a policy to heavily tax preprocessed foods, like we do for cigarettes? Then, we stop this charade. If these cooking robots are just glorified assembly lines that require uniform inputs, they should be taxed to the point they do not displace a human. And if you manage to get a "robo-chef" that actually can make good food starting with fresh ingredients, you get all the incentives to put this on every home, school or office building.
- beardicus 2y ago
  > If these cooking robots are just glorified assembly lines that require uniform inputs, they should be taxed to the point they do not displace a human. A human line cook is also part of a "glorified assembly line that requires uniform inputs". This does not preclude the use of real/fresh ingredients, and also of course requires the employ of a human prep team to turn lumpy items into uniform ingredients.
  - rglullis 2y ago
    But a human gets paid for it. The local economy benefits from that. A fully automated system removes any possible middlemen from the chain and exacerbates the concentration of wealth.
    - gruez 2y ago
      >But a human gets paid for it. The local economy benefits from that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Paying people to dig holes only to fill it back again also results in humans getting paid and the local economy "benefiting". That doesn't mean we should be mandating that companies do that, or get the government to enact such programs.
      - rglullis 2y ago
        - Digging holes and covering them again does not produce wealth or material well-being. Work in the service industry is nothing like that. - At no point I said that the only alternative is to keep people employed sub-optimally. If automation does indeed produce more wealth and if the people that are out of the job can pursue better opportunities, then sure let's use it. But it should also be taxed. If we really are aiming for a society that is so automated that will rob the opportunities for the large majority of people to have meaningful work and a living wage, then at the very least some of this wealth needs to be distributed to everyone.
0xbadcafebee 2y ago
Maybe this is a weird take, but I wish most eateries would ditch waiters. They're a relic of the industrial revolution making "fine dining" available to the common folk. And a large amount of the frustration at restaurants is one of two things: how something's cooked, and the service someone receives. Remove the waiter and there's no more frustration over service. I don't need a personal attendant to bring me water; I see a jug of water, I have legs/arms, I go get my water. In Japan you can order your katsu curry on a machine, pay, hand in a ticket, and grab your food when someone calls your number. Same for sandwich shops in the US. Automats used to have bays where you'd just go up to a window, put in a quarter, and take out some premade food. There's no reason you couldn't handle pancakes, bacon & eggs, spaghetti, etc the same ways. Your cooked food is already sitting under a heat lamp in the kitchen waiting for the waiter to bring it to you; why not just get up and get it yourself? You get your food faster, or when you're ready for it. Yeah this would displace a lot of workers. But that's what progress does: an advancement displaces old workers, and new efficiency creates an opportunity for new products and services which need new workers. The treadmill of labor in a progressing society.
- ghaff 2y ago
  I'm not sure it's that weird a take. Fast casual is a pretty popular category with better burgers etc. that you order at the counter. In the UK, it's pretty common to order and pay for pub food at the bar and have someone just deliver it to your table. If I'm by myself and there are seats at the bar for eating that's what I'll often do. Totally depends on the experience you're looking for. On the other hand, if I'm having a "nice" meal out, I probably do expect table service.

20 points by ecliptik 2y ago

It reminds me of the operations related to organizing restaurant tables and grilling shrimp in the imitation learning-based project Mobile Aloha(https://mobile-aloha.github.io/ https://mobile-aloha.github.io/).

Workaccount2 2y ago

Probably still gonna prompt for 25% tip on the $18 burger I just had mechanized for me.

gruez 2y ago
I mean... yeah? Chefs at fast food places aren't usually tipped. If you're tipping you're tipping the delivery guy.
tithe 2y ago
And show a small sad face emoji on its screen if you decline.
- geodel 2y ago
  Thats for first time offenders. Repeating ones are going to be dealt with increasingly aggressive tactics.
  - itishappy 2y ago
    Motor oil in your food.
    - geodel 2y ago
      Thats like Sharing is caring for robots. No?
    - Log_out_ 2y ago
      Robots in food companies mustvrun with foodsave oils
  - postmodest 2y ago
    "Surge pricing in effect" for non-tippers.
  - tithe 2y ago
    One less french fry with your burger, each time.

CraigJPerry 2y ago

Same mistake as the generative AI world. I don’t want a weird melody or a bad picture, I can have fun making those on my own if you’ll just please save me the time to sort through the laundry basket and get that stuff washed, ironed and back in the wardrobe. Don’t mistake what I’m asking for here, think ironing exoskeleton not laundry autonomous agent.

giraffe_lady 2y ago
We aren't the market here so it doesn't matter what we're asking for. A more honest headline would be "restaurant owners place big bets on eliminating workers."
xg15 2y ago
With the current trajectory, you'll still have to fold the laundry yourself - but your phone, the washer, the dryer, the laundry basket, the detergent bottle and the actual laundry itself will all give you personalized and very emphatic reminders when it's time to do so.

oldpersonintx 2y ago

[dead]

keiferski 2y ago

There will probably be a bifurcation here: - Lower-end restaurants adopt cooking robots and make it difficult to see the kitchen from the customer area - Higher-end restaurants make their humans even more visible and push a hibachi/omakase model where the chef makes the meals in front of you "Human made" is going to be the premium brand keyword of 2030.

ghaff 2y ago
It's probably inevitable that things with a large labor component either become more automated/industrialized or become more of a luxury good (or mostly fade away entirely).
- ericd 2y ago
  Yeah, can’t raise everyone’s living standards without making human labor relatively expensive in material terms.
- forgetfreeman 2y ago
  Inevitable only if you accept the premise that our society's primary function is and should remain enhancing shareholder value.
  - Turing_Machine 2y ago
    This was happening long before corporations were even a thing. At one point, roughly 90% of the human race worked in manual agriculture, generally as some form of unfree labor (serfs or slaves), with most of the other 10% as foot soldiers, then a thin veneer of nobles and priests at the top. Replacing human labor with machinery is pretty much the only thing that has ever improved the general standard of living, whether they are shareholders or not.
    - forgetfreeman 2y ago
      1. An error doesn't become a mistake until you refuse to correct it. 2. Comparing modern economics to serfdom is ridiculous on it's face. 3. What, exactly, are you thinking automated career tracks are going to get replaced with this time around? Keeping in mind you've got Industrial, AG, manufacturing, service, and white collar sectors, the first three are already heavily automated. Automating the last two results in massive unemployment. I'm not hearing any push for realocation of wealth so yeah, how exactly does this not completely brick the economy? While we're on the topic of "improving quality of life" how do you frame the near total economic collapse of rural communities in the US and the transition from a single breadwinner middle class to basically mandatory dual income households as "improving quality of living"?

xg15 2y ago

> Why it matters: Worker shortages and inflation continue to bedevil the restaurant industry — even as it enjoys record sales. Have they tried higher wages?

jfim 2y ago
Restaurants are a very thin margin business, and prices at restaurants are pretty high already.
- xg15 2y ago
  Sure, but robots won't exactly be cheap either.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    And of course it's possible that some categories of restaurants just become less attractive to consumers over time.
  - digitalsushi 2y ago
    we can treat them like we used to treat humans, at least until they become sentient. if this makes you uncomfortable i'm with you
  - vlucas 2y ago
    The initial installation and setup of robots won't be cheap. But the ongoing costs will be vastly cheaper than paying per hour for human labor.
    - silverquiet 2y ago
      I've been in the business long enough to know that the suppliers of these robots are going to wring their customers for every cent of recurring revenue they can. Once the kitchen is literally built around and dependent on them, they've got your nuts in a vise and they'll gleefully squeeze as hard as they can.
    - 2y ago

coldcode 2y ago

Zume failed big time. I wonder if anyone will ever get it to work. https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-failed-428-m-robot-pizza-startup-can-u3mwe/ https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-failed-428-m-robot-pizza...

jfim 2y ago
Zume was ridiculously over engineered though. They had a large commercial delta robot in a safety cell to spread tomato sauce (https://youtu.be/TkhWonFm-Lw?si=18ihEFyY04IWRdEL https://youtu.be/TkhWonFm-Lw?si=18ihEFyY04IWRdEL). Contrast this with the very simple robot Costco uses to put sauce on their pizzas (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaMFqgslxRc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YaMFqgslxRc), which is basically a turntable.

oidar 2y ago

Putting the workforce concerns aside, this is pretty exciting. I think the two easiest parts of the problem to tackle are the prep part and the delivery part. The part in the middle will be the hardest. I expect that the first really successful robot staffed restaurant will be a pizza restaurant. Pretty much all of the parts are already mechanized in the industrial production of frozen pizzas, and the challenge would be to downscale it to a restaurant sized machine that could do the cooking as well.

rglullis 2y ago

Somewhat off-topic, but I will ask anyway: if preprocessed foods are so strongly linked to the illnesses of modern society, wouldn't be interesting to establish a policy to heavily tax preprocessed foods, like we do for cigarettes? Then, we stop this charade. If these cooking robots are just glorified assembly lines that require uniform inputs, they should be taxed to the point they do not displace a human. And if you manage to get a "robo-chef" that actually can make good food starting with fresh ingredients, you get all the incentives to put this on every home, school or office building.

beardicus 2y ago
> If these cooking robots are just glorified assembly lines that require uniform inputs, they should be taxed to the point they do not displace a human. A human line cook is also part of a "glorified assembly line that requires uniform inputs". This does not preclude the use of real/fresh ingredients, and also of course requires the employ of a human prep team to turn lumpy items into uniform ingredients.
- rglullis 2y ago
  But a human gets paid for it. The local economy benefits from that. A fully automated system removes any possible middlemen from the chain and exacerbates the concentration of wealth.
  - gruez 2y ago
    >But a human gets paid for it. The local economy benefits from that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window Paying people to dig holes only to fill it back again also results in humans getting paid and the local economy "benefiting". That doesn't mean we should be mandating that companies do that, or get the government to enact such programs.
    - rglullis 2y ago
      - Digging holes and covering them again does not produce wealth or material well-being. Work in the service industry is nothing like that. - At no point I said that the only alternative is to keep people employed sub-optimally. If automation does indeed produce more wealth and if the people that are out of the job can pursue better opportunities, then sure let's use it. But it should also be taxed. If we really are aiming for a society that is so automated that will rob the opportunities for the large majority of people to have meaningful work and a living wage, then at the very least some of this wealth needs to be distributed to everyone.

0xbadcafebee 2y ago

Maybe this is a weird take, but I wish most eateries would ditch waiters. They're a relic of the industrial revolution making "fine dining" available to the common folk. And a large amount of the frustration at restaurants is one of two things: how something's cooked, and the service someone receives. Remove the waiter and there's no more frustration over service. I don't need a personal attendant to bring me water; I see a jug of water, I have legs/arms, I go get my water. In Japan you can order your katsu curry on a machine, pay, hand in a ticket, and grab your food when someone calls your number. Same for sandwich shops in the US. Automats used to have bays where you'd just go up to a window, put in a quarter, and take out some premade food. There's no reason you couldn't handle pancakes, bacon & eggs, spaghetti, etc the same ways. Your cooked food is already sitting under a heat lamp in the kitchen waiting for the waiter to bring it to you; why not just get up and get it yourself? You get your food faster, or when you're ready for it. Yeah this would displace a lot of workers. But that's what progress does: an advancement displaces old workers, and new efficiency creates an opportunity for new products and services which need new workers. The treadmill of labor in a progressing society.

ghaff 2y ago
I'm not sure it's that weird a take. Fast casual is a pretty popular category with better burgers etc. that you order at the counter. In the UK, it's pretty common to order and pay for pub food at the bar and have someone just deliver it to your table. If I'm by myself and there are seats at the bar for eating that's what I'll often do. Totally depends on the experience you're looking for. On the other hand, if I'm having a "nice" meal out, I probably do expect table service.