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This robot serves up 340 hamburgers per hour
- brianbreslin 14y ago8 years ago i remember talking about how i wanted to do a fully automated pizza shop. with a atm like interface. i know nothing about the pizza business, and at the time labor was too cheap for pizzas to warrant building crazy complex machinery. now it could probably work, i think. I do wish there was a video of this hamburger machine in action. EDIT: Apparently these machines exist for pizzas: http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/nation/la-na-nn-pizza-vending-machines-20120613 http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/13/nation/la-na-nn-pizz...
- gmrple 14y agoWell, how do you think frozen pizzas at the grocery store are made?
- brianbreslin 14y agoWell I wanted something gimmicky where the patron saw it being made "fresh"
- shabble 14y agoShort segment on How It's Made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k5WVYu5GXY&t=5m35s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k5WVYu5GXY&t=5m35s
- hayksaakian 14y agoThanks for the link, that made my day.
- citricsquid 14y agoDoes anyone here have experience with fast food enterprises? It would be interesting to hear about how this sort of machine could affect companies like McDonalds and whether or not it's the future or just a cute idea that won't scale? I have the feeling that, if this sort of idea was as value as the article implies, McDonalds (or Burger King, or any other big chain) would have put serious money into developing this sort of thing and it would already be everywhere. (I wish there was a website or publication that took businesses and profiled how they work, the challenges they face and the costs associated with parts of the business consumers might not understand, so these sort of questions were easy to answer. I would love to read how McDonalds works (as a business))
- kposehn 14y agoThe question is going to be reliability in the long term. Carls Jr. uses a burger conveyor to cook burgers (stick the patty in and in a fixed amount of time it comes out perfectly cooked) for example, but they also have many moving parts and if it breaks, that is half the burger capacity gone (they have two per store usually). With a complex machine like this, keeping it from breaking is the key. If it works well though...this really could change things.
- pcl 14y agoit comes out perfectly cooked That's a somewhat subjective statement.
- froo 14y agoNot necessarily, if you look at it from the perspective of a meat's internal temperatures.
- kposehn 14y agoTemperature-wise, it does. I'd still rather eat a brick. Carl's Jr. continues to insist on using very un-marbled top sirloin and then they cook it to death, with it ending up extremely dry usually. At one point I think they must have experimented with using Gelatin to hold more of the moisture in the meat. It tasted like meat Jell-O. Ugh...
- jonah 14y ago"For their next model Momentum Machines plans on ... giving it gourmet cooking abilities that seasoned chefs use such as charring the burger while retaining its juiciness."
- froo 14y agoI'm not entirely sure they could. They probably felt that simple cooking of pre-prepared ingredients and then assembly wasn't an interesting problem to solve, especially since staff can also handle the other requirements of food prep (keeping equipment clean and sanitary for example). The addition of providing a superior experience (custom meat combos? Slicing ingredients on the fly) might not have occurred to them. I think that emphasising the high output gourmet burger is the way forward. Especially since McDonald's has already proven that "Masstige" does have a spot in the food prep industry.
- anandkulkarni 14y agoWhen I met the Momentum Machine guys here in San Francisco, I was shocked that they were planning to open a restaurant chain instead of licensing the technology out to existing players. Opening restaurants? Making food? Very un-startupy, right? But it turns out that if anyone can do it, these guys can. The brick-and-mortar restaurant business is massive, bigger than many technology sectors, and prime for disruption with new food and models: there's a $184 billion global fast food market, a $2.1 trillion global market, and just about everybody needs to eat. This has the potential elements of greatness: serious, hardcore mechanical engineers as founders, with a background in the restaurant industry. More power to John and Alex -- can't wait to try my first one.
- prewett 14y agoMcDonalds actually operates something like 30% of its stores directly instead so that it eats it's own dogfood. It can try out new ideas in a production setting, etc. My guess is that Momentum Machines is doing something similar. Think of it as a public-facing R&D center, not as unstartupy. Plus, "startupy" is about designing to scale up. Having a physical store is not necessarily unstartupy. Operating it as a mom-and-pop restaurant would be, but operating it with machines seems distinctly startupy. New store? No problem, rent the space, install the machines, boom, done!
- tfb 14y agoAh, man. I've been planning on doing the same thing as these guys for years, but I haven't yet had the time or the financial freedom (still relatively young) or the luck of environment. But this is just plain awesome to see someone way ahead of me with a working prototype. I knew there were plenty of people with the same idea... I just didn't expect to see it become a reality so soon!
- kokey 14y agoThere's so much potential in this industry, when making burgers, pizza and cocktails are done to a high standard with machines, ordering is done on terminals, it could drive the costs down for social venues in the cities and leave human staff to focus purely on customer service.
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- kposehn 14y agoSo long as the first restaurant is called Cafe Alpha and is staffed by an overenthusiastic female android, I'm happy. (Go read Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou to get the joke ;)
- zinssmeister 14y agoNo doubt this is the future of fast food. Been wondering for years why a big player like McDonalds wouldn't come out with such an automated process and came to the conclusion it must have something to do with the economic consequences this would bring along. The amount of minimum wage jobs this would destroy, would have a very devastating impact on the U.S. economy.
- awakeasleep 14y agoIn the future, underdog McDonalds asks for subsidies to keep human labor competitive
- zanny 14y agoThis is almost assuredly the future of all food. In 20 years (at the latest) I imagine some kind of make-all food crafting machine will be the de-facto standard in new homes and would have a very reasonable cost associated (maybe 10 - 20k) considering time saved. But even then, that is only a hairs step away from 3d molecular printers just building amino acids and proteins up into the food you want anyway. Significantly fewer moving parts and things to break, too. I hope that happens in our lifetimes.
- runeks 14y ago> But even then, that is only a hairs step away from 3d molecular printers just building amino acids and proteins up into the food you want anyway. Significantly fewer moving parts and things to break, too. I hope that happens in our lifetimes. IMHO, "printing" food is a dream that will never happen. Much like flying cars. It sounds futuristic and all, but you just can't do it both cheaper (and better) than dropping a seed into the ground and waiting. But we shall see, I guess :)
- ippisl 14y agoPronutria is working on bacteria/algae that converts sunlight into protein. They talk about 10x reduction in the cost of protein, i.e. meat. Another company(forgot it's name) is working on algae that manufactures sugar as an input for the biofuel industry. Their target is 4x cost reduction vs plant grown sugar. If they succeed it would be interesting to see the dirsuption to the food industry.
- Kerrick 14y agoThis may seem like a bit of a brazen comment, but... what about french fries? A burger is boring, a burger and fries is a very American meal. They point to elimination of tile floors, aprons, hair nets, and the like, but if the customer cannot get an order of fries from this robot, the restaurant will still have to have traditional kitchen infrastructure to make french fries.
- froo 14y agoFries shouldn't be a difficult problem to solve. Donut Machines have been doing something similar for a long time (production line deep frying) and I imagine that Fries wouldn't be very similar if you wanted a consistent output.
- kposehn 14y agoWe designed a continuous liquid-bath cooking machine that can turn out fries, etc. in a relatively small space. Does pasta too! It was a fun experiment. The biggest problem was having demand that continues unabated; a machine like you're describing is used in industrial food production I believe.
- SoftwareMaven 14y agoThe donut machines exist in every Krispy Kreme store, but I think you nailed it: the automation problem gets much harder when your food doesn't stay fresh more than 10 minutes. Going after the higher-end market will help these guys: people won't wait for McDonalds but they are more willing to wait for Five Guys or better.
- forgotAgain 14y agoWhy should people wait? If they're automated wouldn't they also take orders from mobile devices? If those devices provided GPS location and if local traffic sensors gave road conditions then the food would be ready just as the customer arrived.
- rorrr 14y agoI almost feel bad for all the people without education. Robots are killing their jobs, one niche at a time.
- mhaymo 14y agoWhy almost?
- dlitz 14y agoI wonder if we could build machines to educate these people, too.
- plansurf 14y agoThere are also highly educated people that are losing jobs because what they do is so repetitive and can be done more efficiently with a robot or program.
- rorrr 14y agoIt's happening to stock traders I've heard. I don't have much sympathy for them. I can't think of any other major educated group that's losing jobs because of technology.
- AndrewKoszela 14y agoI can't wait till robot can do every job so that we can all just kick back and let the robots serve us beers on the beach. Your framing it all wrong by saying "robots are killing their jobs" in reality their jobs are still getting done, just more efficiently. This lowers the cost of the product and frees up individual to do more rewarding jobs.
- jhuni 14y agoIt should free up individuals to do more rewarding jobs, but unfortunately we still live in a capitalist society. The only individuals that benefit from increased automation are the capitalists that own the robots, not the members of the working class that are losing their jobs.
- Uhhrrr 14y agoI saw this machine in action at an event at the hardware accelerator they're part of. The guys behind it are cool and they have solved a number of problems so far. But I do not think they have solved all of them. When I saw it the rate of production was far below 340/hr, and the machine wasn't doing all of the assembly. So I think the headline's use of the present tense is very misleading.
- whyme 14y agoAm I the only one looking at the image and imagining chain grease flicking onto the burgers... Yuck. Afterthought: I suppose that might be better than humans handling my food.
- likeclockwork 14y agoThey could lubricate the chain with lard.
- DigitalTurk 14y agoYum!
- ginko 14y agoFood machinery is greased with nontoxic oil. Gun oil like Ballistol is often used.
- damian2000 14y agoHere's what they need to do to create an automated restaurant... Combine: - Their invention, the robot burger maker - iPads at every table to order (payment via stripe or similar service) : http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-01/may-the-tablet-take-your-order http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-01/may-the-tabl... - Robot waiter : http://www.sfgate.com/business/tech/slideshow/Robots-work-restaurant-in-China-55341.php http://www.sfgate.com/business/tech/slideshow/Robots-work-re... But you'd still need people for cleaning, maintenance & troubleshooting.
- ghshephard 14y agoMy long bet says that we'll see the "Totally Automated" restaurant (exception being original construction, and periodic "high level" engineering) - I.E. A restaurant that can do basic maintenance, self repair, cleaning, food cooking (the trivial portion), receiving) - in about 25 years. The cleaning/cooking/receiving part will be up and operating in about 15 years.
- JackpotDen 14y agoWelcome to the kitchen of the future. By the year 2000, all of mom's cooking and cleaning duties will be performed by Rosie the maid.
- rdl 14y agoI have always wanted one of these sushi robots: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=QPPwXRZCqew http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Q...
- aaron695 14y agoThe technology here could easily have been done 50-70 years ago (And it probably was) I think it's not about robots but the spread of ideas and commerce is now much easier with the internet.
- hooande 14y agoThe big issue with robot cooks isn't a machine that can cook food...those have been around for some time now. The real question is can the robots cook safe and healthful food with no human assistance? Any Board of Health will agree that the real challenge in cooking isn't the mechanical combination of the ingredients, it's inspecting the food and noticing potential problems that will stand out to any person. Robots that can cook on their own have enormous benefits to society. The preparation of the food is made slightly cheaper and overall quality of the food improves (if a robot can make the perfect burger once, it can do it again and again). There's no need to worry about washed hands or cooks with colds, and for simple or repeat orders it's usually easier to interface with a machine instead of a person. But the real benefit to the world is freeing up the processing power of human minds for something other than flipping meat every X minutes. These machines take a lot of the human labor out of food preparation, but at least one person will still need to be around to answer certain questions: Did this meat go bad before it was cooked? Were there rat droppings on the grill? Is there any chance that someone could get sick by eating this? Of course these things will take breakthroughs in machine vision technology and herculean data collection efforts. But once we get there, we can really cut costs and fight hunger with food factories.
- aaronbrethorst 14y agoGiven that they're grinding meat on the spot, and that ground meat has a significantly higher risk of bacterial contamination than its non-ground equivalent, my guess is that this negates some of the risk. There still has to be a human involved to be sure, but I'd eat a burger from one of these any day of the week over the McDonalds equivalent (assuming I ate beef, of course, which i don't).
- neumann_alfred 14y agoThis assumes that lower production costs lead to lower prices; instead of higher profits for select few individuals. I also don't see how being unemployed frees people up for something more worthwhile to do.
- powatom 14y agoOne question I have is this: if we let robots produce our fast food, what guarantees of food hygiene do we have? I imagine it can be pretty difficult to get a robot to self-clean all of the relevant parts, and it's not hard to imagine critters getting inside and making a nice home for themselves. The picture in the article does nothing to convince me that a burger produced by this machine will not give me food poisoning.
- sbarlster 14y agoWhat Americans really need right now is the ability to eat burgers faster and cheaper... http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/19/fat-america-keeps-getting-fatter/ http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/19/fat-america-keeps-getti... Duh.
- roc 14y agoThis thing sounds almost purpose-built to enable a gourmet burger food truck business -- a restaurant niche where revenue is largely tied to how quickly a fixed number of staff can churn out food. There's also plenty of inherent down time for that same small staff, technical entrepreneur or centralized maintenance crew, to clean/maintain the machines. One could set up a 'fleet' of such trucks and a centralized 'headquarters' with cleaning, stocking, and technical staff to handle any necessary maintenance and repair, as well as centralized and scalable data-driven inventory management and routing.
- chebucto 14y agoThe machine may automate the slicing, cooking, and stacking, but cleaning seems like a major concern. The chutes with vegetables, cooking surfaces, and especially the meat grinders would all need close attention on an daily (or even hourly) basis.
- jakejake 14y agoI worked in fast food growing up and it seems hard to imagine a machine would be a huge cost saver because the actual burger production was rarely a problem. Most of the work is in the pre-prep, cleaning, stocking in preparation for the lunch rush. The machine would be nice during a rush but I have a hard time seeing it actually replacing an employee unless the robot also knows how to use a mop.