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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Automation

As Jobs Disappear, Could Restaurants Become a Battleground For Pushback Against AI & Automation?

Last month, after 29 months straight of job gains, the number of total available restaurant jobs dropped. It wasn’t a huge dip – 800 jobs – but compared to the previous month’s gain of 24 thousand and monthly gains as high as 81 thousand at the beginning of the year, the dip was somewhat surprising, especially as restaurant sales have slowly but surely inched upwards throughout the year.

Could this be a temporary setback? Perhaps, but there’s also a possibility that it’s an early indicator of a long-term, potentially irreversible decline in the restaurant industry’s job market as emerging technologies come into play.

And by new technologies, I primarily mean automation and artificial intelligence. All one has to do is scan the headlines for the past 12 months to find that the restaurant industry has caught automation fever. Big chains ranging from Chipotle to Sweetgreen to McDonald’s are experimenting with ways to automate their restaurants.

And then there’s AI. Last month Wendy’s announced a new partnership with Google in which they are piloting a new generative AI solution called Wendy’s Fresh AI in a drive-thru in Columbus, Ohio. The company said this is the first of what could potentially be many locations that use the technology. Mcdonald’s has also been trialing AI technology, which its execs believe, in some ways, is better at handling customer interactions than humans.

“Humans sometimes forget to greet people, they forget, they make mistakes, they don’t hear as well,” Lucy Brady, McDonald’s chief digital customer engagement officer, told CNN. “A machine can actually have a consistent greeting and remain calm under pressure.”

This wave of new tech goes beyond robotic arms and simulated voices taking orders at the drive-thru. There’s been a recent surge – accelerated during the pandemic – in digital kiosks, mobile ordering apps, and QR code ordering at tables. These have resulted in an increased number of digital touchpoints designed to speed up the process and, to some extent, reduce reliance on human intervention.

It’s hard to fault the operators. A significant number of restaurant employees permanently exited the industry during the pandemic, and since then, operators have struggled to fill vacant positions. Despite offering higher wages and improved benefits, many open positions remain unfilled due to a lack of interest. If employees are hard to find, why not let technology take over?

Which brings us back to how we humans will be impacted by all this new technology. Workers are increasingly tasked with working alongside all this new tech, transforming job descriptions into something that can sound like working an IT help desk. Others find that technology is increasingly eating away at opportunities at the human connection aspect of the job they enjoy.

“Those points of connection get lost in mobile ordering,” said one former Starbucks barista. “So, it’s just like, ‘Here’s your order, bye.”

Then there’s the threat of job extinction as automation and AI take hold. While no big chains have deployed robotics or AI so widely that they’ve eliminated key positions in the front or back of house, it’s only a matter of time before early pilots become the primary engine of production. Sweetgreen has essentially proclaimed its new bowl-making robot is the future, and both Wendy’s and McDonald’s have hinted at broader applications of automation and AI.

As we teeter on the precipice of an automated and AI-powered restaurant industry, are we beginning to see signals of pushback stemming from job loss fears? There are subtle signs. When Chili’s showed off their trial of the Bear Robotics server in a video on Facebook last year, some commentators pushed back. “Quit trying to erase people!” wrote one. Another commented, “Another reason why I will never set foot inside of a Chili’s. You cannot replace a human in the hospitality industry.” Others are penning editorials saying that while operators may benefit from automation, workers and customers lose.

In certain instances, workers displaced by new technology have begun to retaliate. As detailed in our interview with restaurant operator Andrew Simmons, he struggled when a former employee who resisted the deployment of automation at his San Diego area pizza restaurant started making negative comments on social media and called in complaints to the local health department.

Are these initial pushbacks a sign of a larger anti-technology movement? That remains to be seen, but ignoring these early indications of a neo-luddite movement would be ill-advised, according to one professor.

“The various signals currently circulating in public discourse are not immediately obvious, nor are they specifically anti-technology or anti-progress,” wrote Sunil Manghani, a Professor of Theory, Practice & Critique at the University of Southampton and Fellow of the Alan Turing Institute for AI. “Yet, arguably, the signals are of a nascent sense of ‘protest’. Just as Hobsbawm reminds us, the Luddites were not opposed to machines in principle, but rather to those machines that were threatening their livelihoods and communities, we will likely start to see opposition not to software in principle, but various instances of software; opposition, then, to how and who deploy new technologies in the particular.”

Today resistance may manifest in an employee fighting back here or there or the occasional social media pushback against new automation. However, these intermittent signals could become the norm, especially if job numbers continue to decrease while more restaurants deploy robots and AI. Some studies say that over 80% of restaurant jobs could be handled by robotics, and some experts see millions of jobs being replaced through AI or automation within a decade.

And, of course, it’s not just restaurant jobs. Other lines of work, from creative to industrial, are threatened by new technology. And as more and more workers see unionization as the front line to a fight for more equitable pay, it’s also apparent – as evidenced by the Writers and Actors guild strike – the biggest fear about making a living in the future is whether or not employees will be replaced by technology.

Still, the restaurant industry, perhaps more than any other, is ripe for an automation and AI takeover, which is why I think that it could become the central battleground for the pushback in the form of an automation neo-luddite movement. Restaurant chains are the second biggest employer in the US, and two – Mcdonald’s and Yum Brands – are two of the top three employers in the country. Although Andrew Yang’s campaign warning of societal destabilization due to robotics and AI didn’t gain much traction in 2020, there’s a good chance he was ahead of his time, and we may see future politicians campaigning on an anti-automation platform with restaurants as one of the primary areas of focus.

Readers of The Spoon know we’re not anti-technology around here. In fact, we’ve covered just about every food robot out there and will continue to do so. But as we see more signals about potential pushback against the rise of automation and AI, I think it would be wise for the restaurant industry to begin to get ahead of this growing issue and think about how to balance new (and often necessary) technology with taking care of their employees.

Otherwise, they risk losing control of the narrative as more people organize to resist the impending AI and robot invasion.

Come hear experts talk about the impact of automation and AI on food jobs at The Food AI Summit on October 25th.

Beer Made With a Beer Brewing Robot Wins Gold Medal

In July, a homebrewer using a BEERMKR home beer brewing appliance won gold at the National HomeBrew Competition.

According to a release from BEERMKR, a beer brewed by Christian Chandler of Phoenix, AZ, won the gold medal in the Porters & Stouts category, beating out 164 entries in the contest put on by the American HomeBrewers Association.

The win was an important milestone in that it’s the first time that a homebrewer used an automated beer brewing countertop appliance to help develop an award-winning recipe at the HomeBrew Competition.

So how did Chandler use the BEERMKR to develop his beer? From the release:

Chandler says that BEERMKR’s small batches and ease of use let him make multiple iterations of a recipe and “really tweak things on the fly.” Chandler was able to fine-tune his recipe into a national gold medal winner.  The repeatability of BEERMKRs process also helped him make consistently good beer as he advanced from the first to second rounds of the competition.

Chandler used the BEERMKR to do quick batches, which he later scaled up using a higher capacity brewing system called the Grainfather to increase batch size. While The Grainfather automates some parts of the brewing process, it still requires the user to monitor readings manually and transfer the wort to a separate container for fermentation after the brew. The BEERMKR, on the other hand, automates much more of the process of beer brewing. The brewer chooses the ingredients and builds a recipe, but from there the sensors and software of the BEERMKR monitor much of the process, from brewing through fermentation to carbonation.

In short, Chandler, an experienced brewer, integrated the BEERMKR as part of his recipe development process. He iterated recipes and brewed quick small batches with smaller portions of ingredients on the BEERMKR, and used his bigger machine to brew larger quantities once the recipe was dialed in.

So will it soon become commonplace for homebrewers to use brewbots like the BEERMKR to develop recipes for brewing competitions? I imagine so, in part because the machines essentially act as a tool for serious homebrewers to develop recipes faster. While purists might resent any use of technology when it comes to brewing up a batch, technology like the BEERMKR helps them get better at their craft by automating the boring parts like temperature control and leaving the creative parts up to them.

You can watch a video of Chandler below talking about developing his award winning recipe with the BEERMKR.

BEERMKR beer wins gold at National Homebrew Competition

Q&A: The Future of Restaurant Delivery Bots, According to Serve Robotics’ Ali Kashani

If Serve Robotics CEO Ali Kashani has his way, more restaurants in the near-term future will offload the last mile of their deliveries not to human couriers but to wheeled rover bots that can autonomously traverse the streets en route to hand over your food.

Serve started life as a part of Postmates, eventually spinning out into its own company when the latter was bought by Uber. The wheeled Serve bots are all-electric, autonomous sidewalk rovers that require minimal human supervision to deliver burritos, sandwiches, and other food items to customers. They’re also, according to Kashani, way better for the planet and the restaurant industry.

Ahead of our upcoming upcoming Restaurant Tech Summit on August 17 (that’s tomorrow!), we caught up briefly with Kashani to get his thoughts on how robots help the restaurant biz and what role they’ll play in the future. Read our full Q&A with her below, and if you haven’t already, grab a ticket to the virtual show here.

This Q&A has been lightly edited for clarity.

The Spoon: What problem does Serve Robotics solve for restaurants/the restaurant industry?

Ali Kashani: Moving a two-pound burrito in a two-ton car doesn’t make a lot of sense. Yet it’s what we do 10 to 20 million times a day in the United States alone. It’s resulting in carbon emissions, traffic congestion, and accidents. Beyond that, it’s also expensive. Restaurants are paying 20-30% of their revenue to fulfill their customers’ delivery demands. 

Serve Robotics is creating a fleet of all-electric, autonomous sidewalk robots that require minimal human supervision. They don’t cause congested roads or emit CO2. They also don’t cause safety risks — it takes 3,000 sidewalk robots to have the same kinetic energy of a single street car. And finally, they make delivery affordable for restaurants and local businesses by significantly reducing the underlying costs. This is a win-win-win, for restaurants, for customers, and for cities. 

Starting with sidewalks, autonomous deliveries will reduce the cost burden that’s carried by restaurants today, while enabling more customers to shop locally — whether it’s from a nearby restaurant, a convenience store, or a local mall. And cities win too. If we take 5% of restaurant deliveries off the road in five years, which is our goal, we’d be removing 80,000 vehicles off the roads in the U.S., which translates to over 1 billion fewer miles traveled by cars.

By the way, robotic delivery will also be better for employment, as it helps local SMBs, the backbone of our economy, be better positioned to sell to local customers and compete effectively against larger e-commerce players. 

What is the biggest change in terms of the restaurant industry’s approach towards technology as a result of the pandemic?

Some impact was very visible to everyone, such as the adoption of digital menus almost overnight. Some other changes were uniquely visible to us. For example, robotic delivery as a whole was validated as a necessary tool, a part of city infrastructure, rather than a science project. Before the pandemic passersby would often wonder what a delivery robot was doing, but after the pandemic, everyone immediately recognized what they were seeing was a contactless delivery.

The impact of the pandemic has continued. Driver shortages have increased the importance of having several available delivery modes, creating significant inbound interest for us.

3. Where will we see the most deployments of delivery bots in the near-term future (e.g., major cities, campuses, etc.)?

We know from having access to food delivery data on major platforms that over half of all restaurant deliveries can be addressed on the sidewalk. Closed environments like campuses are a great place too. We decided to focus on cities instead because on campus basket sizes are smaller, so it’s a lower-margin space, and the demand is more peaky and seasonal. So all and all, the steady higher-value demand of cities made them a more interesting market.

Granted, cities are a harder problem to solve. We had to invest significantly in developing the right vehicle capable of navigating city sidewalks. But that’s a worthwhile investment that serves as a competitive barrier. With years and millions of dollars invested, we now have the most suitable robot for sidewalk delivery, with the largest cargo capacity, longest mileage range and battery life, and most capable drivetrain for handling the roughness of city sidewalks.

4. What are you most excited about when it comes to the impact of restaurant technology?

We’re excited by the experiences restaurants can potentially offer customers when delivery robots become a part of everyday life. There’s so much waste in how we deliver today — not just the car emissions mentioned earlier, but also in the packaging. Delivery is also not yet on-par with the experience of dining at the restaurant. 

Now imagine if the cost of last mile logistics was so low, that restaurants could send food in fine china and silverware. Similar to room service at a hotel, the robot would wait to return the dishes at the end of the meal. We could create new experiences that are similar or even better than dining in a restaurant, and do so at less cost and with less waste.

5. What do you think the restaurant industry will look like in five years?

Our goal is to take at least 5% of restaurant deliveries off the road, and bring down the cost of delivery overall. The impact this can have on our cities is enormous. From congestion and emissions, to the increase in customer adoption of local delivery, to the increase in employment and commerce opportunities.

Think about the kind of impact Ford had when they introduced the first car. Our cities look different today because of it. This would take longer than five years, but new forms of mobility offered by Serve and other companies in this space have similar potential to reshape our cities into more liveable and green places.

EBar Raises £670,000 for its Mobile, Automated Beer Vending System

EBar, the Aberdeen, U.K.-based beer vending machine company, announced today that it has raised a £670,000 (~$916,000 USD) equity round of funding. In an email to The Spoon, EBar Managing Director Sam Pettipher said that of the new money, £150,000 (~$205,000 USD) came via equity crowdfunding via the Seedrs platform, £300,000 (~$410,000 USD) came from an Irish events consortium, and the rest came from various investor groups. This brings the total amount raised by EBar to £1.4 million (~$1.9M USD).

Built for large events like soccer matches, festivals, concerts and more, EBar makes high-volume automated beer vending machines. EBar machines offer just two drink options, feature a touchscreen for ordering and can pour a beer in under 30 seconds. EBars are also mobile and meant to move around wherever there are events to create what the company calls beer as a service. Instead of leasing the machine, EBar charges each venue a commission on sales, so there is no upfront cost for set up or installation.

EBar launched its equity crowdfunding campaign earlier this year with the goal of raising £275,001 (~$387,827 USD). Pettipher said the company has closed the equity crowdfunding campaign and has moved on to the execution phase of its business, getting fleets of units out and growing the team.

EBar is part of a growing movement towards automating beer service, especially at large events. Macco Robotics, Revolmatic and Hop Robotics all make automated beer pouring machines that can dispense beers in seconds. This type of automation could potentially be huge for events and venues because a robot can churn out hundreds of drinks in an hour without stopping. Human bartenders could then shift their focus to selling more complex (and expensive) mixed cocktails, and would allow event attendees to spend less time in line for drinks.

The bigger question hanging over all of these services isn’t the functionality of the technology, it’s when large events will be able to come back in full force. With the COVID-19 Delta variant flaring up around the world, the pandemic is far from being over. Sporting events and concerts are making a comeback, but there is the constant threat of them being shut down again in the fight against the virus.

Botrista Raises $10M Series A for Its DrinkBot Automated Drink Dispenser

Botrista, the company behind the commercial DrinkBot automated beverage dispenser, announced today that it has raised $10 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Purestone Capital and La Kaffa International with participation from Sony Innovation Fund, Middleby Corporation and PIDC. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Botrista to $16 million.

Meant for restaurants an other foodservice companies, the DrinkBot is a cloud-connected automated drink maker, dispensing mocktails, infused teas and lattes, iced coffees, lemonades and more without the need for a full bar. Drinks are ordered via an on-board touchscreen, so the experience is contactless, and they are mixed and served in less than 20 seconds.

Botrista is taking a vertically integrated approach as it comes to market. The company provides the hardware for free, charging a monthly maintenance fee and selling the drink ingredients, which as of last year were $1.40 – $1.90 per drink. DrinkBots connect to the Botrista CloudBar for drink recipes, automated inventory management, as well as sales and menu performance analytics.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, Botrista said it experienced 10x growth year-over-year, which isn’t that hard to believe. The pandemic is driving demand for more contactless food and beverage preparation, as well as the need for takeout and delivery-related tech. The Botrista can churn out drinks continuously, quickly and at the touch of a button — perfect for high volume establishments like ghost kitchens and restaurants with high off-premises volume.

Automated mocktail and juice dispensing is becoming a hot little sub-sector of the food and beverage robotic space. Over in Switzerland, Smyze’s robot baristas also make a bevy of juice beverages. And last year, SomaBar, which makes a countertop drink dispenser, pivoted away from Soju-based cocktails to have its machine create juices, teas and regular mixed drinks.

It’s worth noting that both Sony and Middleby participated in Botrista’s latest funding. Last year Sony set up an artificial intelligence unit to work on both recipe creation and robotics. It’s easy to see how DrinkBot’s combination of data and automation fits in with that endeavor. And Middleby, a giant in foodservice automation, could open up a large network of customers for Botrista.

Botrista said it will use its new funding to scale up deployment operations to roll out DrinkBot nationally.

McDonald’s Drive-Thru Plans Need to Factor In Franchisees

The big to-do in the drive-thru lane of late is news that McDonald’s is testing automated ordering at 10 locations in Chicago, Illinois. 

The tech is based on an acquisition McDonald’s made in 2019 of voice-tech company Apprente. Through it, intelligent systems, rather than human beings, take the drive-thru customer’s order and send it to the kitchen for fulfillment. At an investor conference last week, McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski said the company is seeing 85 percent accuracy on orders, with only about 20 percent of orders across the 10 stores requiring human intervention.

While Kempczinski is confident we’ll see voice-ordering at all McDonald’s drive-thrus in the next five years, he added that consumers shouldn’t expect to see it widespread as soon as next year. “There is a big leap between going from 10 restaurants in Chicago to 14,000 restaurants across the U.S. with an infinite number of promo permutations, menu permutations, dialect permutations, weather — I mean, on and on and on and on,” he said at the conference.

Separate from the technical feats the system must accomplish, there is also a huge number of franchisees to consider in the process of a wide-scale implementation. There are currently 38,000 McDonald’s operating across roughly 115 countries. The majority — 93 percent — are franchisees. Getting them onboard may be no small feat, either.

Disputes over technology have created tension between McDonald’s and its franchisees for years now — going all the way back to when some franchisees argued against having to offer Uber Eats to customers. The latest disagreement between the two groups concerns a $423-per-month fee corporate has been charging franchisees to cover a $70 million lag in outstanding technology fees. The National Owners Association (NOA), a group of McDonald’s franchises that formed a few years back, has gone as far as suggesting it create a technology cooperative to give owners more control over technology-related decisions. Ernst & Young is currently conducting a third-party audit of the fees in question.

All of which is to say, now may not be a great time to attempt a major rollout of what will probably be a costly system. How costly voice ordering will be for franchisees is unclear just yet, but it would presumably require setup and maintenance costs at the very least. And as we saw with McDonald’s Dynamic Yield acquisition, implementation, and eventual downgrade, not all new tech brings a justifiable amount of return on investment for franchisees. 

Labor also presents some urgent items to consider. 

While automating drive-thru ordering via a system like Apprente’s could aid in the current struggle against the current labor shortage, franchisees will still have to spend time and money training their employees to use the tech and work alongside it. In many cases, that means training them to learn when to not get involved.

At the investor conference, Kempczinski said one learning from the existing 10 implementations of the new tech was training crew to “not want to jump in” as soon as there is a question or pause from the system. “We’ve had to do a little bit of training of ‘just keep your hands off the steering wheel, let the computer do its work,’” he told investors, adding that it took time for crew members to learn to “trust” the technology. 

While McDonald’s hasn’t officially confirmed this, it’s likely franchisees would be in charge of training for the above. That in turn would mean operators and manages must first get comfortable with the tech themselves. And, given the high rate of turnover in QSRs, this could potentially eat up a lot of time if a manager were continually having to train new hires.

Many see the digitization of the drive-thru as essential. The drive-thru lane has become progressively slower over the years. The pandemic didn’t help that latter point, since lockdowns turned the drive-thru into one of the main order channels for restaurants, making overall wait times even longer. Other QSRs, including Chipotle, KFC, and Burger King, have all announced plans to make their drive-thrus more high tech to speed up wait times and improve order accuracy. Clearly McDonald’s needs to compete. This time around, though, it also needs to make sure it thoroughly considers its franchisees’ needs in the process.

More Headlines

Presto Launches a Bundle of Tech Tools to Help Restaurants Reopen With Fewer Staff – Restaurant tech platform Presto today launched a new product bundle it says is meant to help restaurants keep their operations up-to-par in the midst of the ongoing labor shortage.

Tesla May Soon Open Its Own Restaurant – Tesla has filed a trademark under restaurant services, which suggests the automaker may be finally working to realize its dream of combining its charging stations with an old-school drive-in restaurant.

Yum China’s New Program Will Teach Digital Skills to Children in Rural Areas – Yum! Brands spinoff Yum China is investing in more digital education for underserved areas. 

Will We See More Conveyor Belts in Post-Pandemic Restaurants?

Consider the sushi conveyor belt. That wondrous, autonomous carrying mechanism that brought delicious bits of salmon, toro and more, right to your seat. While this used to be a kind of fun novelty (here in the U.S. anyway), with the pandemic forcing restaurants to re-think their operations, could we see more conveyor belts once we eat out again?

Restaurant automation company AUTEC thinks so. Admittedly the company, which makes sushi robots and automated conveyor belts for restaurants, has an interest in pumping up such a concept. But according to an email AUTEC sent to The Spoon, it has seen a 100 percent increase in in-bound interest from not just sushi restaurants, but from bakeries and other types of restaurants as well.

Again, we should take AUTEC tooting its own horn with a grain of salt. But if you strip away the marketing aspect, the idea of restaurant conveyor belts, or any type of rail system that brings food to your table makes sense in a post-COVID world. After all, conveyor belts provide a contactless method of food service.

Granted, there would be some kinks to work out to keep hot food hot and not have it go to waste (no one wants that burger and fries that have been around the track three times already). But we’re already starting to see different types of automated table service akin to conveyor belts emerge in restaurants. At the Country Garden robot restaurant complex in China, food is carried from the kitchen to the table via an overhead rail system and then dropped down by tether to the customer. At Alibaba’s Robot.he restaurant, also in China, automated robots on tracks deliver food directly to a table. The Robo Cafe in Dubai has a similar system of Roomba-like robot waiters for customers sitting at the counter.

We know that many restaurants right now are focused on off-premises eating by expanding drive-thrus and building out ghost kitchens for delivery (FWIW, Burger King plans to add conveyor belts for its drive -thrus). But as the vaccines continue to roll out and people return to eating indoors, we could see more dining rooms outfitted with all manner of high-tech conveyances.

If you’re interested in the future of restaurant automation, you should attend our upcoming ArticulATE food robotics virtual conference on May 18! Get your ticket today!

Cecilia.ai Mixes Chatbot Capabilities with Its Robot Bartender

The robot bartenders we’ve covered so far at The Spoon are either just autonomous, articulating arms (Glacierfire), or high-volume vending machines (Rotender). Cecilia.ai, the latest entrant in the autonomous cocktail-making space, went live today and “she” is serving drinks a twist.

In addition to automated drink-pouring, Cecilia.ai features chatbot functionality to have a “conversation” with a customer. Cecilia looks like something out of a Vegas. The machine sports a big screen with a CGI female bartender. Walk up to Cecilia and start talking to order your drink. The Cecilia.ai website provides a sample conversation that goes something like this:

CUSTOMER: Hi there.

CECILIA: Hello there, what can I get you to drink?

CUSTOMER: Any recommendations?

CECILIA: My favorite is the Rusty Ale, but it’s a bit strong.

CUSTOMER: Do you have something sweeter?

CECILIA: Sure! Try the Green n’ Tonic.

And… scene.

According to website, Cecilia can make 120 drinks per hour (with reduced chit-chat), offers conversational script customization to fit a location, hundreds of available mixes and hold 70 liters (it doesn’t specify booze or mixer ratios). Voice control means ordering is contactless, and the large screen can be used for advertising purposes.

We’ve reached out to the company to find out more details like pricing and availability, and will update this when we hear back.

There are actually a number of robot bartenders coming to market right now. In addition to the aforementioned Glacierfire bar and Rotender robot, MSC Cruises is installing a robot bartender on one on of its ships, Macco’s robot is serving beer in Spain, and Makr Shakr continues to sell its robot bartender solution.

One reason for all this automated mixology is probably, like so many other things, the pandemic. Having hundreds of strangers yell out their orders into the faces of human bartenders isn’t such a great idea any more, thanks to COVID. A robot bartender eliminates that vector of human-to-human transmission. But another reason is that robot bartenders are machines that can crank out drinks around the clock without taking a break, and they do so without spilling or overpouring (which may suck for customers but is good for a bar’s bottom line).

From what we can gather, Cecilia isn’t aimed at high-volume nightclubs and bars, but instead is more for hotels, airports, VIP lounges, etc. This makes sense since a crowded bar blasting music in the background would make it difficult for Cecilia to hear a patron order a Patron with only their voice.

The only question that remains is whether sage wisdom and funny anecdotes are programmed into her chatbot capabilities.

In 2021, Restaurant Tech Investment Will Be All About the Back of House

Restaurant tech investment reached new heights (and dollar amounts) in 2020, but the bulk of that went to software, devices, and other tools meant to power the restaurant front of house. By contrast, in 2021 we will see that balance shift. This time next year, I expect to be writing about the vast amount of investment funneled into making the back of house safer, more efficient, and more automated in many cases.

Investments in 2020 were, understandably, geared towards reopening the dining room in ways that were seemingly safer and less dependent on human-to-human interactions. However, as restaurants closed and reopened, then closed again, interest shifted to ghost kitchens and restaurant formats with little to no front of house in their design. As we’ve said many times over the last couple months, the restaurant industry is not retreating from this focus on to-go orders. Even when dining rooms are once again safe to eat in, ghost kitchens will remain and QSRs will have fewer seats indoors.

That makes now, heading into 2021, the time for optimizing kitchen operations. 

Anyone who’s spent time in the restaurant back of house knows it’s in a league of its own when it comes to orchestrated chaos. Un-orchestrated, too, since dozens of variables can change at any moment and affect the speed and quality at which food leaves the kitchen and gets to customers. Missing ingredients. Workers calling in sick last minute. Eggs cooked too early and drying out under the heat lamp. All of these things the food, the customer experience, and a restaurant’s margins, the majority of which are made and lost in the kitchen. 

There’s already a handful of restaurant tech solutions available right now that hint at how digitizing and automating the kitchen might help the above scenarios. 

San Diego-based Galley Solutions offers an intelligence platform that digitizes processes in the kitchen (inventory and recipe management, purchasing) and uses that data to create a more efficient framework by which kitchens can operate. This centralized data source could bring the many disparate pieces of back-of-house technology together for smoother processes when it comes to meal prep and kitchen management. For example, a centralized data source could populate the digital order forms sent to vendors and at the same time tell the chef how long to leave the burger on the grill.

SousZen, meanwhile, wants a GPS for the kitchen. At Smart Kitchen Summit: Japan, Paul Levins, who helps run the company, explained how the SousZen platform uses machine learning to recognize patterns in the restaurant — how an order is put together, when the kitchen is busy — and can make real-time recommendations for the fastest, most efficient way to do something. It’s not unlike your car’s GPS, which tells you the fastest route from point A to B and can adjust that route in real time in the event of heavy traffic or an accident.

That idea of kitchen systems learning over time and using that information to improve operations is one we will see  more of in 2021 — and, likely, one that will command a lot of investment dollars. Statis.ai is another notable example here, with its “full stack AI operating system for the kitchen” that uses live camera feeds and an electric nose to leverage smell and vision in a restaurant kitchen.

Along with a whole lot of AI will come automation. In this context, though, automation doesn’t necessarily mean a robot flipping burgers or a rotating arm mixing salad ingredients (although there will be some of that). A more widespread version of automation will take the form of systems, like those of Galley or SousZen, that can collect data and use it over time to build new behaviors and processes in the kitchen, make real-time recommendations to workers, and even guide the steps when cooking and putting together a meal. 

A growing interest in back of house tech is already apparent. Besides the above players, other restaurant tech companies that have historically only catered to the front of house are now releasing tools to improve the kitchen. Among them are Square, xtraChef, and many others. Expect funding in these solutions to follow as we head into the next year.

Report: Prep, Cook, Automate – Where Tech Is Leading the Restaurant Back of House

Back-of-house processes in the restaurant tend to involve a lot more legacy hardware and closed-loop systems, which present significantly different challenges than those at the front of house. That in turn has created a slower innovation pipeline and less interest from investors. 

This report will examine current back of house processes and technologies as well as the drivers for innovation changing those things. 

 Back-of-house operations present a huge opportunity for tech companies and other startups willing to tackle the many problems that have yet to be solved in the space. Additionally, technological innovations in robotics, AI and machine learning will change the physical restaurant kitchen along with its labor needs and cooking and delivery systems.

This report is available to Spoon Plus members. To learn more about Spoon Plus, go here.

KFC Partners with Hyundai in Korea for Chicken Frying Robots

Hyundai Robotics announced today that it has partnered with KFC Korea are to develop robots that can cook chicken, reports The Korea Herald.

There weren’t many details in the story other than that “KFC Korea will provide its stores and cooking know-how under the deal,” according to The Herald.

However, the KFC Korea/Hyundai partnership reinforces two trends we’ve been seeing over the past couple of years. First is the continued partnership between massive automation companies and various food-related entities to develop food-related robots. The second is that — wow — who’d a thunk that KFC companies would be leading the charge into the future of food tech?

We’ve known for a while that food presents an interesting challenge for roboticists. Because it is often oddly-shaped and susceptible to bruising and damage, food is a good test case for robot manipulation. If a robot is sensitive enough carefully handle an egg, it can definitely apply that skill to other fragile materials in more industrial settings.

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has added another reason for big companies to get into food robots, as restaurants and eaters seek out more contactless experiences. As a result, restaurant interest in food automation is surging. The reasons are pretty straightforward, robot cooks don’t get sick, can work around the clock, and can create more social distance in the kitchen.

Hyundai and KFC is the latest food company + industrial conglomerate partnership we’ve seen form over the past couple of years. Previously Panasonic teamed up with China’s Haidilao hot pot restaurant chain to open a robot-run kitchen, and LG is working with Korea’s Woowa Brothers to develop server robots.

But just as, if not more interesting are the moves international KFC companies are making when it comes to restaurant tech innovation. In addition to KFC Korea’s forthcoming chicken frying robots, KFC Russia has a Moscow location using a network of devices and conveyor belts to automate meal service, and the company announced in July that it was launching an initiative to use 3D bioprinters to create chicken meat.

KFC may not be able to say it’s finger-lickin’ good any longer (thank you, pandemic), but the company’s finger is definitely on the pulse of food automation.

Albertsons Expanding Use of Micro-Fulfillment with Takeoff

Albertsons is adding more micro-fulfillment centers (MFC) from Takeoff Technologies in an effort to keep up with grocery e-commerce, according to a story in Supermarket News.

Takeoff Technologies’ MFCs use a series of conveyors, rails and totes to help automate the process of fulfilling online grocery orders. When an order comes in, the system retrieves and assembles the various items, which are then packed into bags by a human before being sent out for delivery or curbside pickup.

Albertsons launched the first two of its MFCs with Takeoff in San Jose and San Francisco towards the end of last year. The grocer is now looking to build out a number of new MFCs with Takeoff over the rest of this year and into next. Chris Rupp, chief customer and digital officer at Albertsons Cos., told Supermarket News, “We have a series of new locations we’ll launch over 2020 and 2021 that will help us deliver more groceries, faster, to customers in some of our highly concentrated areas of business.”

Those new MFCs will include both back-of-house facilities — that is, fulfillment centers built into the backs of existing stores — as well as standalone MFCs that are basically dark grocery stores. Last year ShopRite announced it was building out a standalone MFC with Takeoff.

That Albertsons is expanding its use of MFCs is not that surprising. The pandemic has pushed people into record amounts of online grocery shopping. Back in April, at the height of the lockdowns, I spoke with Curt Avallone, the Chief Business Officer of Takeoff Technologies who said that the company had seen demand for online grocery up 80 to 100 percent at its facilities, and that basket sizes had gone up from $150 to $200.

Those levels may have plateaued or even dipped since April, but Albertsons’ committing to building out more automated MFCs is an indication that grocery e-commerce is now a more permanent part of the country’s shopping habits.

Albertsons isn’t alone in adopting more automation to fulfill online orders. During my call with Avallone, he said that Takeoff had six operational units with other partners including Sedano’s and Loblaw’s, with another 20 MFCs being built. Kroger is also hard at work building out its own Ocado-powered smart warehouse fulfillment centers across the country.