I’ve been musing about the future of Fast Food, the role that automation will play, and where we’re at with that… AI is lagging behind robotics in fitness for deployment. And both tech-front efforts are being skewed by economic and cultural shifts…
An AI-driven, automated fast Food ‘order fulfillment station of the the future’…
We’ve been doing our best to keep you, faithful reader, apprised of what’s going on with Foodsphere automation, and AI in the Fast Food sector in particular. Fast Food has been getting the most atten-tion, because that’s where implementation is most advanced and most visible…
From field to drive-thru…
But both tech-forward efforts are churning away, pushing ahead behind the scenes from field to drive-thru. A the results of advances on both those food ‘fulfillment’ chains are appearing daily.
What got me playing ‘futurist visionary’ was the post we offered last week about how Kraft/Heinz is using AI to ‘Kraft’ the perfect pickle. As I mentioned off the top of that exposé, the source story finally helped me understand how AI works as part of the overall pickle making process, to help the company perfect jobs along the production line that humans have heretofore had to perform, but have always been prone to human error or inconsistency.
Where will it all ultimately lead?
A ‘perfect’ future?
I was first intrigued by the fruits of my mensurations and the possibilities of the what-ifs a universe with infinite diverging timelines might offer… When it struck me: We are headed for what some would call a perfect future….
What could go wrong?
By ‘perfect’, I mean a uniform, totally predictable future in which every Big Mac is EXACTLY like the one before it. In flavour, colours, size (to the millimeter), serving temperature, patty ‘doneness’, and packaging…
Already, automation pioneers are in the final stages of perfecting French Fry production. Resto oper-ators can already buy machines that wait patiently in the corner of every Fast Food kitchen for AI-driven ordering and payment systems to signal them that more fries are needed, and what portion sizes are needed, in what sequence, to assemble customer orders.
At the restaurants, staff cuts are already being planned – and in some places executed – as new auto-mated ‘systems’ come into play to take care of tasks that human’s can’t perform as quickly and con-sistently as machines can. Not just making AND portioning fries, either. We’re on the verge of seeing machines that can take instructions directly from automated, digital ordering front-ends about what mains, sides and beverages are needed, in what sequence, and prepare them as needed.
From order to delivery
But even earlier in the production system, still other machines are learning how to learn how to put together standardized ingredients and components – such as buns, patties, toppings and condiments – to produce ‘perfect’ burgers.
Burger machines, beverage machines, salad machines, and even machines managing the deployment of totally pre-made items such as dessert pies and toys for kids’ meals will someday soon send their outputs to still other machines that will ‘aggregate’ all the components of every customer order, plac-ing them in their individual bags in exactly the right configuration and layering sequence to ensure every part of the meal comes to the customer in optimal condition.
Any people left?
There WILL still be people in the system. Relatively few, mind you. And they will perform very simple but essential roles. Including making sure the machines that actually produce and package the com-ponents of customer orders have the ingredients and other supplies they need to do their jobs. Hu-mans, of course, will also be there to unclog and push the ‘reset’ buttons of the production systems when they suffer the equivalent of printer paper jams. Press the ‘re-boot’ button. And take out the garbage…
My take
Left unresolved and unanswered are just a few key questions only humans can resolve.
Where will all the humans be, who would otherwise be employed, making money to pay for all that ‘perfect’ Fast Food. And what will they be doing, to make the money they’ll need to survive?
Is that the kind of food future we really want? Is it a future that even works, when all is said and done?
I guess we’ll figure out the answers to those questions when they finally arrive to stare us in the face. The same way we’ve waited for the questions we’re current struggling with to come forward and stare us in our denial-driven, procrastination-infused realities…
~ Maggie J.