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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Levy

Flippy Fires up a new Job at Dodger Stadium, Will it be a Home Run?

Flippy, Miso Robotics‘ fast food robot assistant, has a new job and some new skills: frying up tater tots and chicken tenders at LA’s Dodger Stadium.

The pilot is a collaboration between Miso, data analytics company E15 Group, and hospitality company Levy, who participated in Miso’s Series B funding round earlier this year. Miso and Levy had announced a plan to put Flippy in sports venues back in March.

The first Flippy works at the Pasadena Caliburger location, flipping burgers. When the ‘bot first came online in March, it ran into a few technical snafus as well as some issues with human counterparts keeping up. After a brief hiatus, Flippy returned to CaliBurger in May; it now cooks up thousands of burgers a day.

This stadium gig will be an intriguing test for Flippy. First, Miso is adding a new skill to the robot, moving it from the grill to the fryer, pushing Flippy’s artificial intelligence, HD cameras, thermal sensors and grippers all into a new food type and cooking technique. Second, it’s working at Dodger Stadium, which seats 56,000 people, so there will be high volume of work over a shorter period of time.

Having said that, baseball seems like the perfect sport for Flippy to start with. The slow and leisurely place means customers coming throughout the game, rather than high bursts of activity between quarters or halves.

As Mike Wolf pointed out earlier this week, robot restaurants are all the rage, and Flippy’s move to the majors is a perfect example of why. Robots can do dangerous, repetitive work more precisely, and leave us humans to do higher level work. By one 2017 estimate, foodservice accounted for 12,000 burns to employees per year. If Flippy can run the fryer properly, fewer employees could get hurt (saving people from pain and restaurants money).

If you’re in the LA area, take yourself out to the ball game, buy yourself some peanuts and robot-cooked chicken tenders and tell us how they are.

Flippy Clocks in at CaliBurger, Miso Robotics Makes Expansion Moves

Miso Robotics announced yesterday that Flippy, the burger cooking robot, is officially going to work at CaliBurger’s Pasadena location. Additionally, Miso announced that its robot kitchen assistants will soon be coming to sports and entertainment venues, thanks to the company’s partnership with sports and entertainment hospitality company Levy.

According to the press announcement, Flippy will start out working the lunch shift at CaliBurger. Using a combination of thermal imaging, visual recognition and artificial intelligence, Flippy can tell when a raw burger is ready to be flipped, when it’s cooked to the proper temperature, and when to take it off the grill.

Flippy uses two different spatulas — one for raw and one for cooked meat — and can also scrape the grill. Humans aren’t completely cut out of the cooking process (for now), as they are still needed to apply cheese and other toppings. Though, as Flippy gets smarter, its capabilities will expand.

According to TechCrunch, a Flippy robot will set a restaurant back $60,000 plus an annual 20 percent recurring fee for learning and maintenance. That’s pretty pricey for an employee that only works the lunch shift, but Miso says companies can earn that back through decreased wait times and less food waste. Plus, robots can create a more consistent product, won’t call in sick, need a break, or walk off mid-shift in a huff.

Flippy and its robotic brethren will also be expanding beyond CaliBurger. Through its partnership with Levy, Miso’s robotic kitchen assistants will be headed to convention centers and sporting events, with the first appearance coming later this year to an unnamed Levy venue. This expansion follows Levy’s participation in Miso’s $10 million fundraise last month.

Flippy officially going to work means we’re one step beyond “the robots are coming” and more towards “the robots are here!” In fact, the restaurant industry believes robots will become mainstream by 2025.

It addition to Flippy, CaliBurger has also rolled out self-ordering kiosks that let you pay with your face, reducing the need for staff in the front of the house. Elsewhere, companies like Eatsa and Chowbotics are helping automate even more dining experiences.