Tag: automated restaurant

OM in the News: Sweetgreen Hires Kale-Shooting Robots to Speed Up Service

“The key to shorter lines and higher profits at one restaurant chain: a salad-making robot,” writes The Wall Street Journal (Oct 17, 2023).  Fast-casual chain Sweetgreen opened its first restaurant staffed by a proprietary robot that shoots kale, cheese and other ingredients down tubes into bowls traveling on a conveyor belt. A handful of employees add finishing touches, such as spiced cashews.

Sweetgreen’s proprietary robotics system

The system can slash the number of workers and time it takes Sweetgreen to make a bowl by more than half. Eventually, the company intends for salad-making robots to staff all of its new restaurants, working alongside human employees. Sweetgreen is preparing to center future restaurants around the system, which can take up 10% of the location’s floor space, with workers preparing ingredients for its tubes and others dispensing the meals it makes.

“A lot of other companies are trying to figure out how to add automation to their experience and are not willing to start over,” said the CEO. “I’m willing to blow the whole thing up.” (Sweetgreen’s robotics bet is bigger than others, and so is its need. The pandemic crippled the chain’s mainly urban operations, driving same-store sales down 26% in 2020).

Restaurant chains are striving to become more efficient as food, labor and other costs remain high, and staffing tight. The chains for years have experimented with automation, though robotics haven’t taken off as they have in manufacturing and retail. Chopping lettuce and flipping burgers involves working with soft, squishy ingredients and a variety of tasks that are hard for a machine to duplicate. It took Sweetgreen engineers two years to design a robot that could squirt dressing to order, apportion eggs and handle soft ingredients, some of which initially got stuck in the machine’s tubes.

Chili’s is scrutinizing operations down to the way workers prepare shrimp, while Wendy’s studies workers’ footsteps to design more efficient kitchens. White Castle is expanding its test of a “Flippy” robot that fries potatoes, onions and other food to more restaurants. Casual dining chain Kura Sushi uses robots to apportion rice for rolls, helping to reduce its need for sushi chefs. McDonald’s tested a robotic fryer in 2019 but eventually shelved it.

Classroom discussion questions:

1.What are the strengths and weaknesses of this robotic approach?

2. Why do robots not work as well at McDonald’s?

Video Tip: The Automated Sushi Restaurant

Workers are frequently told robots are coming for their jobs, while fast food employees are already starting to see automation creep into their places of employment.  Along with kiosks popping up at McDonald’s, diners in Japan have been treated to a sushi-making robot, while in California a robot flips burgers. Chains are thinking more seriously about replacing human staff with technology as a way to combat increased minimum wages and food costs.

Genki Sushi, a Japanese sushi chain expanding throughout Asia, is known for its conveyer belt style of food service, where customers can grab a roll passing by their table. That’s nothing entirely new.

Lately it’s rolled out restaurants in which customers order customized dishes on a tablet. The food is delivered by an automated train which comes straight to the diner’s seat or booth. Upon being seated, everything from sushi to noodle dishes and even cheesecake is delivered by the train. There’s no human involvement at all, even someone to explain the process. Twenty-four sets of tracks crisscross the restaurant, and the train system has the capacity to serve up to 158 patrons at once. When customers are ready to leave, they simply pay for their meal on a self-service machine. They also clear their own tables by simply dropping the plates into a slot that leads to a hidden water-driven conveyor belt.

As we write in Chapter 7 (p.288): “Ultimately, selection of a particular process strategy requires decisions about equipment and technology.” This interesting 3 minute video makes that point to your students.