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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

restaurant automation

Survey: Two-thirds of Restaurant Operators Are Banking on More Automation for the Future

Roughly 65 percent of restaurant franchisees believe increased automation and a more widespread use of mobile apps for ordering will greatly impact the restaurant industry in the future, according to TD Bank’s recent Restaurant Franchise Finance Group survey data emailed to The Spoon.

The survey polled a select group of restaurant owners, operators, and executives from multi-unit restaurant companies, both independent and franchised, at the 2019 Restaurant Finance & Development Conference that took place in Las Vegas this past November. 

Among the survey’s findings, nearly two-thirds of respondents believe more automation and mobile loyalty apps will “alter the restaurant landscape.” The survey specifically mentions self-service kiosks and mobile apps as technologies driving this change. In a statement, Mark Wasilefsky, Head of the Restaurant Franchise Finance Group at TD Bank, deemed technologies like self-order kiosks “necessary to compete” for restaurants.

One doesn’t have to look far to see such technologies already been widely implemented in restaurants, particularly QSRs and fast-casual chains. Shake Shack, Dunkin’, Sweetgreen, and many others already include kiosks as an option for customers when ordering. Many more in addition to those chains offer loyalty programs through their own mobile apps.

Wasilefsky noted that “Industry leaders expect these technologies to grow in popularity, driving a ‘trickle-down’ effect, where smaller local and regional chains consider adopting these offerings to meet diners’ preferences.”

Mobile apps are, of course, a key part of any delivery strategy these days — and there are plenty of delivery strategies now. In TD’s survey, 85 percent of respondents said they had a delivery strategy, up 10 percent from 2019. Fifty-two percent said delivery comprises “up to” 10 percent of their overall sales, while 20 percent said delivery accounts for more than 20 percent of their sales.

That number will keep rising, thanks in no small part to third-party providers like Uber Eats and DoorDash, who by some accounts will make up 70 percent of restaurant deliveries by 2022. Wasilefsky noted that the cost of delivery is decreasing as “third-party providers become more efficient and larger operators are able to negotiate more favorable deals, there is tremendous potential for operators to use delivery to account for a larger percentage of their businesses,” Wasilefsky said.

Not talked about in the survey, however, is third-party delivery services’ impact on smaller restaurants and the growing litany of controversies and complaints the businesses have with these services. Multi-unit restaurants like the ones polled for TD’s survey tend to have more leverage (aka money) when it comes to negotiating contracts with the DoorDashes and Grubhub’s of the world. As for the rest of the industry, including the mom-and-pop shops with shallower pockets and less negotiating power, the impact of automation and mobile ordering seems a little more up for question at the moment.

Podcast: Robot (and Big Data) Pizza: A Conversation With Zume Pizza’s Julia Collins

In today’s podcast, I talk with Zume Pizza cofounder Julia Collins.

If you’ve read an article about Zume Pizza, chances are it focused on the how the company is using robotics to make pizza more efficiently.

But here’s the thing: while robot-assisted pizza production IS interesting, it is NOT what’s the most intriguing part about Zume Pizza’s business. No, what makes Zume Pizza revolutionary is it’s the application of data analysis combined with what the company calls an “elastic” pizza delivery network that pushes final cook and delivery to where the most demand.

In a sense, the company is applying cloud computing concepts to pizza creation, bringing the ability to scale fast to meet demand with highly efficient resources.

This makes sense for a whole bunch of reasons. Traditional retail fast food involves hundreds of thousands – even sometimes millions of dollars – in fixed cost associated with each (to use a telecom term) “point of presence”, but once the store is built you’re stuck in one place. Why not move to meet demand where it’s at, when it’s at?

That is exactly what Zume is doing with a network of mobile pizza trucks that do final-cook in smart ovens and through a fleet of scooters that bring the pizza to the consumer’s home.

Enjoy the podcast.

I Ate At Eatsa. Now I’m Convinced It’s The Future of Fast Casual Dining

Like most everyone, one of the reasons I love going to New York City is the food.

And after all, why not? The variety is endless, and every meal brings a chance to eat somewhere (and something) amazing. In just one three-day trip to the Big Apple this week, I got to eat  dinner at America’s best pasta restaurant, have lunch in the middle of Grand Central Station, and grab breakfast at one of the city’s best cafes with longtime former editor of Food and Wine, Dana Cowin.*

But the meal I got most excited about was a $10 Bento Bowl I had at eatsa. That’s because while I’d written a bunch about the quinoa-centric, tech-heavy restaurant startup, I’d yet to eat there, so I was intrigued to see what it was like to eat with a completely automated the front-of-house experience.

I ate @eatsarestaurant this week. Here’s a quick video recap of the experience.

A post shared by Michael Wolf (@michaelawolf) on

Here’s a quick recap of my experience:

The Walk-In Experience:  When I walked into the Madison Avenue eatsa, it was moderately crowded. At 3:30 in the afternoon it was late for lunch, so I’d expect even bigger crowds during lunch hour.

This location was loud. Of course, everything seems to be bustling in the middle of Manhattan, but this eatsa location was definitely louder than most fast food or fast casual restaurants I’ve been to, in no small part due to the loud music playing over the speakers.

I also noticed an eatsa employee in the lobby. I found this interesting because I wasn’t sure if anyone ever saw an employee when dining at eatsa.

The Order Experience: The order experience is straightforward. Before I could peruse the menu on one of the 8 or kiosks, I was asked to swipe a credit card. I was then given a choice of pre-made bowls or the option to build my own custom bowl.

Ordering food at eatsa

I found the menu simple and easy to understand. Once I chose a Chef’s bowl, I added a beverage and paid. The total price for my bowl was under ten bucks.

Wait and Pick Up: After checkout, my name soon appeared on a big screen above the wall of cubbies.

After ordering, my name appeared on a big screen under ‘Current Orders’

When my food was ready, the screen told me which cubby from which to pick up my meal. The total wait time was less than five minutes. When I picked my meal up, both my bowl and drink were there. However, my dining companion’s drink was missing, so he had to ask the eatsa employee to radio to the back and have them put a drink in the cubby.

How Was The Food?: You should know this: the food at eatsa is really good. I have to admit I wasn’t sure how much I would like a quinoa-centered meal, but the bento bowl I ordered was fresh, crispy and most of all, delicious. My friend Aaron Cohen ordered the hummus and falafel bowl and found it equally tasty.

Closing Thoughts

After eating at eatsa, here are my takeaways:

The whole experience was very low friction: Eating at eatsa is  just really, really easy to do. I walked in, ordered and started eating in about 5 minutes.  I think for lunch customers in busy cities or corporate dense suburbs, eatsa is perfectly optimized for quick pick-up-and-go lunches.

Price-value exceeds most restaurants. The food quality and taste are extremely high for the price. My meal was under ten bucks, lower than average when compared to pretty much any chain restaurant.

It’s not all robots…yet. In a way, I was happy to see a human employee in the lobby of eatsa. It became apparent with my friend’s missing drink why eatsa would need to have someone in the front of the house to answer questions and solve problems.

The mystery is part of the allure. Since we’re early in the robot-restaurant revolution, people are naturally curious about how the restaurant works. When I asked the young woman working up front what went on in the back of house, she said, “some people say it’s robots” with a twinkle in her eye and left it at that.

This is the future of fast food and fast casual. As CEOs from fast casual chains like Buffalo Wild Wings wring their hands about the future, eatsa is busy creating a new template that leverages automation to bring a high-quality, low-friction food experience to the consumer. While I don’t think all restaurants will automate the front-of-house like eatsa – after all, no one can replace a great maître d’ or the ambiance of a cool coffee shop with touch screen kiosk – I have no doubt that what eatsa has created is a glimpse into the future.

*Yes, that’s a humble-brag, as I’m a fan of Dana’s and you should be too (you can check her podcast here). And no, a Dana Cowin is not included with every meal at High Street on Hudson.

The Robots Are Coming, And They’re Bringing Salads

The restaurant salad bar is often a mixed bag – sometimes it’s great, other times the ingredients are sad, with wilted lettuce and less-than-fresh cucumbers side-by-side. And sometimes the salad options at traditionally fast food chains are just downright sad.

That’s where Sally comes in. She’s the robot from Chowbotics Inc., a robotics and AI company that’s creating perfectly portioned salads and positioned as an alternative to the casual dining salad restaurants. Chowbotics, formerly known as Casabots, has  raised $6.3 million in funding from notable venture capital sources as Techstars and Foundry, the company behind Fitbit and 3D printers.

Sally takes up minimal space (about the size of a dorm room refrigerator) and uses 21 popular salad ingredients like romaine, kale, seared chicken breast, Parmesan, California walnuts, cherry tomatoes, and Kalamata olives that will create thousands of salad combinations in a mere 60 seconds.

In many ways, Sally is like a 3D printer for salads, spewing out prepared ingredients to create a ready to eat dish. In case you’re worried about Sally just being another automation nail in the food service coffin, you’ll be glad to know that Sally actually requires human interaction to do her job. Workers as the restaurant, airport or hotel will have to chop and wash the vegetables before putting them into the machine – at least for now.

“Sally is the next generation of salad restaurant,” said Deepak Sekar, founder of Chowbotics. “For one thing, a robot can make salad faster than a human can. Also, you will know precisely how many calories your salad is delivering; there won’t be the problem of consuming one piled high with garnishes that turn out to be more fattening than a burger.”

Sally is making her debut in a fast-casual restaurant in Silicon Valley and at a corporate cafeteria in Texas, with the public launch slated for April 13 at co-working space Galvanize in San Francisco. The robot was designed as a solution for hospitality settings, convention centers, airports and gyms where customers want healthy quick service options, as well as an option to install in fast food chains to bolster their fresh food options.

Automation in front of house restaurant operations is a growing trend, as Michael Wolf wrote in The Spoon back in January, with a focus on how fast food companies are adapting. “Companies like Panera, Wendy’s and McDonalds are rolling out self-order kiosks nationwide, making fast food one of the fastest growing categories in what some predict will be a $73 billion self-serve kiosk market in 2020.”

Sekar, for his part, isn’t concerned about the effect Sally and other food preparation robots like her will have on the restaurant industry. “It’s happening in every industry now. You can either fight it, or be on the team that makes it happen.”

Robot Restaurant Eatsa Makes Move Into Personalized Food

Eatsa has gotten lots of press over the past few years for two things:

One, they serve lots and lots of quinoa. This is not surprising since a) quinoa is tasty and healthy and b) the company’s ownership group also runs NorQuin, Canada’s largest producer of quinoa (talk about vertical integration).

Second and perhaps more interestingly, they’re a robot restaurant. Only, they’re not a robotic restaurant in the way you’d expect it – back of house – but instead have created a fully human-less front of house experience where the consumer orders using a touch screen and the food magically appears in a small cubby.

As if that wasn’t enough to make this startup interesting, now they’re adding a third leg to their stool of differentiation with personalized food. That’s right, with a revamped menu and updated software, the company just announced they will start to tailor meals for users based on past behavior.

Here’s how eatsa’s chairman, Dave Friedberg, explains what they are calling the first attempt to create the “world’s first truly personalized food service experience”:

Imagine having your own personal chef. Every day you tell your chef what you’re in the mood for. What you like and don’t like. Over time, your chef learns about your favorites, things you can’t stand, your preferences for sauces and spices, and even how your mood changes based on the weather or what you’re up to on a given day.

Imagine that your personal chef is downstairs from your office or down the street from your home. And your personal chef can make you an amazing meal in 90 seconds or less and do it at a price lower than any other option out there.

That’s the experience we want eatsa to deliver. Today, we are taking the first step towards that vision.

Since launching the first eatsa in September 2015, we have been asking guests what they like and don’t like, where else they eat and why. We’ve listened and we’ve learned.

Turns out, most folks love what we offer (Thank you!). But if eatsa is going to be able to give everyone something that they’ll love every day, truly deliver a personalized experience, guests have let us know that we need to expand beyond quinoa bowls.

So, based on past user behavior and responses to questions eatsa has asked their guests, eatsa will now start to offer personalized plate options. While fast-food restaurants have been touting make-it-your-way for a very long time, those methods were really just the “put in your order” way of ordering food that’s been around since, well, the beginning of restaurants. Instead, eatsa will use data from guest behavior to anticipate and pre-emptively offer up specialized meals that are tailored for the consumer.

In a way, eatsa is tapping into a broader trend towards greater personalization of food and nutrition powered by the explosion in better and bigger data over the past few years. Companies like Habit are creating personalized mealkits based on the personal biological and health profiles of consumers, while others like Innit are pushing heavily towards personalized food with their data platforms.

So while eatsa – a completely automated front-of-house restaurant – can feel somewhat impersonal in terms of user experience, they’re actually looking to become intensely personal when it comes to understanding their guest’s behavior.

I guess robots aren’t so impersonal after all.

Want to meet the leaders defining the future of food, cooking and the kitchen? Get your tickets for the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

Can Tech Completely Automate The Restaurant Front Of House?

While we’ve seen a bunch of news lately about how food robots and automation are gaining momentum in the restaurant world, much of the action has been around ‘back of house’ operations and delivery, where robots and automation can specialize in completing repetitive tasks like making burgers at a lower cost than humans.

But the reality is, front of house is just as susceptible to automation. One of the most obvious places for tech is at the dining table itself, where companies like Ziosk are working to make servers more efficient and, in many cases, help restaurants reduce overall server headcount. Ziosk’s touch screens, which allow consumers to order, ask for refills and pay, are on tables everywhere from Red Robin to Chili’s to Olive Garden. In fact, the company indicated that their kiosks touch 50 million consumers in 3,000 restaurants in the US.

Fast food is even more susceptible to automation. Companies like Panera, Wendy’s and McDonalds are rolling out self-order kiosks nationwide, making fast food one of the fastest growing categories in what some predict will be a $73 billion self-serve kiosk market in 2020.

And then there are those restaurants creating entirely new restaurant concepts which take the front-of-house beyond just the kiosk and make them entirely human-less.

One of these is Eatsa, a San Fransisco based chain that has created a restaurant concept where the entire order and serve flow are done with automation. And if you think Eatsa’s quinoa meals are prepackaged boxes made somewhere off-site, you’re wrong: humans work to fulfill orders, only consumers never get to see them behind the wall of futuristic cubbies where the custom-ordered meals magically appear.

You can see how it all works in the video from Techcrunch below:

Eatsa's High Tech Quinoa To-Go

But do consumers want humans eliminated entirely in the front of house? Are restaurants going to eventually all become Eatsa-like order and pickup joints with nary a worker in sight?

My guess is human-less front of house operations will eat up a small but growing percentage of the overall restaurant mix, particularly in fast-food and casual dining markets where consumers often want to eat fast and affordably. But the biggest impact will be on specific functions. Much like Amazon has re-thought the grocery store in a modern context to use technology to automate a task (checkout), we’ll see restaurant chains starting to focus on those front of house tasks that can be reduced or eliminated with tech (like ordering).

I expect automation to have a much smaller impact in fine dining’s front of house operations. That’s because consumers are willing – and often times expect – to pay more for the experience, and that experience is usually highly dependent on the service of humans.

The ultimate question is how far will automation go and what does it mean for both restaurants and consumers? On the restaurant side, it’s clear a balance must be struck between increased efficiency and creating a compelling user experience.  If consumers see added benefit through expedited ordering and payment through tech like Ziosk, then why not?

But if going to restaurants becomes the equivalent of going to food ATMs, there’s a chance eating out will lose some of its appeal. Unless of course you frequent one of these many robot-restaurants popping up in China.

Then you may want your meal served by a robot waiter.