(The Center Square) - Chipotle Mexican Grill announced it is piloting an automatic avocado peeler and pit remover at one California location, and an automatic bowl and salad machine at
Automation has evolved a huge amount since the 90s
This is true, and we have smaller, lighter and more accurate motors, and fancy tools like machine vision with object identification, and substantially better electronics.
I don’t think it matters. Nothing has changed in food ingredients - they’re squishy, slippery, soft and irregular. If you put just a little too much pressure on a cooked grain of rice it will turn into a two-inch-long smear of starch that other things will stick to, and then you’ve got a little pile of gunk inside your machine. The more complex these machines are the more impossible it will be to keep them clean on the inside.
Gone from this version of Creator’s robot, however, are the automated toppings like lettuce, tomato and cheese, which humans will now apply to the burger themselves.
This is true, and we have smaller, lighter and more accurate motors, and fancy tools like machine vision with object identification, and substantially better electronics.
I don’t think it matters. Nothing has changed in food ingredients - they’re squishy, slippery, soft and irregular. If you put just a little too much pressure on a cooked grain of rice it will turn into a two-inch-long smear of starch that other things will stick to, and then you’ve got a little pile of gunk inside your machine. The more complex these machines are the more impossible it will be to keep them clean on the inside.
I remember when this burger making robot was getting a lot of attention (apparently they were “the definition of disruption”). Their restaurant location in Daly City (Creator Burger) closed during the pandemic but then reopened with a simpler version:
Give you one guess why.
The company is now dead, their domain is abandoned and the restaurant location is permanently closed, although apparently they managed to sell one to a Sam’s Club in Arkansas last year. Wonder how that’s going for them now.