Fast Food Chains have revealed their near- and medium-term plans for the future. And they involve more pass-through and less sit-down. Not to mention fewer human staff, and minimal staff-customer contact. But should they already be making plans for what comes after that?
Official portrait: A RoboBurger, untouched by human hands from start to finish…
The Fast Food chains have been quick to apply what they learned during the COVID Era about customer preferences – and what customers will put up with – when ordering thier food. One of the main things they learned was, customers don’t really miss the human contact at the ordering counter. Diners are alright with automated ordering and payment kioska – a natural evolution, you might say, of the remote ordering system used at all drive-thrus, but without a person on the other end of a speaker.
Diners are also okay with contactless delivery or pick-up. Another vector on which restos can save money while enhancing ‘customer safety and convenience’. Not to mention employee safety.
What they’re doing
As we’ve reported in this space before, virtually all the first-tier Burger purveyors have revealed the next generation of their restaurants will be much smaller than the current stores, with less or no inside seating and more room on the lot dedicated to car and pedestrian traffic flow. From ordering and paying to placing your order in your hands, the systems will be highly automated. Besides eliminating human staff who need wages, benefits, days off and so on, automation ensures high product quality and consistency – issues that have plagued high-volume resto operators since the beginning.
Enter, the robots
I guess it’s only natural that some independent startups are jumping the cue and going straight to fully-automated Fast Food preparation systems. Remember when we first told you about the launch of not one but two (competing) Pizza Robot vending machines? The rollout of a Chinese Noodle-making robot? (See photo, top of page.)And then there was the back kitchen Burger Robot. And more recently, the announcement by White Castle that it intends to install Fry-making robots at a thousand of its locations this year.
The latest
… Is a stand-alone vending machine that makes and serves a piping hot burger in minutes at a price competitive with conventional fast food joints.
RoboBurger is a sealed unit that contains a fridge, an automated griddle, a wrapping module and a cleaning unit, plus the now-familiar screen-based ordering and payment systems.
It’s large for a vending machine – occupying a 12 sq. ft. footprint. But it’s been accepted for pilot trials at a mall in New Jersey, a military base, a NYC college and a Seattle tech company. They obviously know who their initial customers are likely to be.
My take
I have to note that I’ve heard nothing more about the Basil Street pizza machine since they splashed out to the media about their launch, but Piestro has touted it’s choice as a top-ten selection at Smart Kitchen Summit 2020. You’d think they would have reached out again if they had big successes to report. Neither pizza kiosk entrepreneur had responded to our inquiries by press time.
So…
Are the robots going to overtake and inundate the traditional Fast Food restaurants? Even as the trads evolve their business models at light speed?
Muse on that…
~ Maggie J.