Robots intervene to make french fries in a labor shortage

At White Castle, just southeast of Chicago, a 100-year-old fast food provider has hosted an unusual and hard-working employee, Robot Fly Cook, for the past year.

Jamie Richardson, vice president of White Castle, says that flippy is not a gimmick, as robots are known. It operates 23 hours a day (1 hour reserved for cleaning), has been operating almost continuously for the past year, and has staff (or robots) at the FlyStation at Whitecastle 42, Merrillville, Indiana. It has turned into. An oil-resistant white cloth sleeve that slides along ceiling-mounted rails and raises and lowers each basket when ready to prevent spills and spills. White Castle is so pleased with Flippy’s performance that the chain will work with manufacturer Miso Robotics to roll out an improved version of Flippy 2.0 to 10 restaurants nationwide.

According to the Ministry of Labor, as of the end of May, restaurants and hotels had more than 1.3 million jobs, double the previous year. For many restaurants, surviving the current workforce tightness and consequent wage inflation uses self-service ordering kiosks and other technical tools to automate customer-facing tasks, order online, and more. It means to rationalize. But entrepreneurs and industry executives are also tackling the bigger and more annoying problem of automating the production of the food itself.

Commercial kitchens, especially those of fast food restaurants, have long used some form of automation, both on-site and in cooking before arriving at a restaurant. The industry has benefited for decades from innovations ranging from microwave ovens to drive-throughs.

But what’s happening now is different, says Michael Schaefer, chief analyst for food and beverage development at Euromonitor, a consumer trends analysis firm. In the era of pandemics, restaurant owners are considering technologies that they may have previously avoided due to the combination of labor shortages, unprecedented increases in demand for takeout and delivery, and the minimum margins that deliveries allow. I came to do it.