The Robots Are Coming!

by Andres Oppenheimer

  Our friend Masami, a scientist who had worked with the University of Miami, did a quick Google search on his phone and learned that the Hamazushi chain has 454 restaurants with a full-time staff of 466 workers, plus another 21,600 who work part-time. Since most Japanese companies don’t pay part-timers medical insurance or a pension, we concluded that Araki, the manager, was probably the only full-time employee there at the restaurant. The rest were most likely students or housewives who were working part-time to make ends meet.

  “It’s a great business model,” Masami said. The company was most likely turning a massive profit, thanks to its savings on labor costs. And customers were happy to pay less for the food, benefiting from that same savings. Whatever way you slice it, the four of us enjoyed a delicious meal, had a few beers, and paid a grand total of fifty-five dollars, which was pretty cheap by Japanese standards.

  MANY JAPANESE CHEFS HAVE ALREADY BEEN REPLACED BY ROBOTS

  Hamazushi is just one of several restaurant chains in Japan that is using conveyor belts instead of servers. One of them, Kura, with more than 350 locations, has already started automating the quality control of its sushi dishes. It uses sensors to track how long each plate has been on the conveyor belt and removes the ones that have been out for too long. Many of these restaurants refuse to say whether the chefs who prepare the sushi are humans or robots, but—after having seen them firsthand—I’m convinced that if they aren’t already fully automated, they will be soon. Over the past few years, a growing number of restaurants are saying sayonara to their chefs.

  But it’s not only in Japan: the automated sushi chefs have already landed on American shores. Sushi Station, which opened in the United States in 2016, employs two robots to fill and slice their rolls. Each robot, designed by the Autec company, costs $19,000 and “it does wonders,” according to Aki Noda, president of Sushi Station, which is based in Elgin, Illinois. In 2018, four recent MIT graduates opened a restaurant in downtown Boston called Spyce, the entire kitchen of which is staffed by robots. It offers half a dozen bowls of Asian, Latin, and Mediterranean dishes for as little as $7.50 a bowl, thanks to its savings in human labor costs. In the future, there will still be chefs who invent new dishes and constantly renew their restaurants’ menus, but the task of preparing the food—especially in fast-food restaurants—will be increasingly handled by robots.

  THE ROBOT THAT MAKES 400 HAMBURGERS AN HOUR

  Several U.S. companies are already producing robots that can grill hamburgers. Flippy, which looks more like an assembly line box on wheels than a robot, made its debut at the CaliBurger chain of restaurants in California in 2017. Its creator, Miso Robotics, which describes Flippy as a “kitchen assistant,” takes the raw hamburgers from a rack, slaps them on the grill, monitors the cooking time and temperature of each patty, and then places the finished burger on a tray. Then a human assistant places the burger on a bun, adds lettuce and tomato, and voilà, the dish is ready to serve. While reading about this, I found myself wondering about how much longer the human assistant will have a job before the robotic arm takes over his duties as well.

  Since 2009, another company, Momentum Machines, has been developing a robot that not only grills the hamburgers but also lays them on buns and adds all the toppings. Not only can this robot turn out 400 burgers an hour, but—according to the company—it can also produce higher-quality food because restaurants can use what they save on labor costs to buy better ingredients, resulting in gourmet quality at more affordable prices. According to the Momentum Machines website, “Our first device makes gourmet burgers from scratch with no human interaction. These burgers are fresh-ground and grilled to order and accented by an infinitely personalizable variety of produce, seasonings, and sauces. Serving a burger this great at such affordable prices would be impossible without culinary automation.”

  “Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” says Momentum Machines’ cofounder, Alexandros Vardakostas. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.” He isn’t worried in the least about overtly contradicting the public relations line of most, if not all, robotics companies: that machines won’t replace workers. On the contrary, Vardakostas has given technological unemployment a positive twist, turning it into a promotional tool. I wouldn’t be surprised if other entrepreneurs soon copy his line, arguing that their products can use better materials thanks to their savings in labor costs.

  Momentum Machines openly admits that its robots will eliminate some of the 3.6 million fast-food jobs across the United States. But the company also says that “we want to help the people who may transition to a new job as a result of our technology the best way we know how: education.” And to do so, Momentum Machines says it will be “partnering with vocational schools to offer discounted technical training for anyone displaced by [our] robot.”

  ROBOT-MADE PIZZAS

  In California, the Zume Pizza chain is replacing its cooks with robots and thereby cutting its labor expenses in half. “What we are doing is leveraging the power of this evolution of automation, these intelligent robots, to put better food on people’s tables,” says company cofounder Julia Collins. She adds that “there are humans and robots collaborating to make better food, to make more fulfilling jobs and to make a more stable working environment for the folks that are working with us.” The most tedious and repetitive tasks, like having to slide a pizza into a 400-degree oven hundreds of times a day, no longer have to be done by humans, she says.

  Zume Pizza, whose factory is barely two minutes from the Google headquarters in Mountain View, is basically a pizza distribution service whose delivery trucks are more like kitchens on wheels. Each truck is operated by a single employee and includes fifty-six ovens that switch on automatically roughly ten minutes before the pizza is delivered to each home. Back at headquarters, two robots prepare the pizzas and—for now—several human employees load them onto the trucks. Each mechanical pizza maker costs between $25,000 and $30,000, but the company gets a return on its investment almost immediately with the savings in wages and social benefits.

  Looking ahead, if the cost of pizza-making robots keeps falling, what will happen when these automated cooks cost a mere $2,000 or $3,000, work 24/7, and don’t ever take vacations? How could a restaurant with human chefs earning $40,000 annually ever compete with that? Chances are that we’re going to be seeing lots more restaurants like Zume Pizza. Gourmet restaurants with human chefs will always exist as an option for those of us who are willing to pay a little bit more, but the trend toward robot cooks will be hard to stop.

  TABLETS ARE ALREADY REPLACING SERVERS

  But the great revolution in restaurants will not be the automation of chefs, but the automation of waiters and cashiers. Just as I saw at Panera in Miami, every major fast-food chain in the United States is rapidly automating its service personnel. Most of them, like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, Pizza Hut, Hardee’s, Chili’s, and Olive Garden, are now using tablets with which guests can place their orders and pay their checks. The trend started back in 2013 when Applebee’s announced it would be putting 100,000 tablets in its 1,900 locations across the country, and it has been growing ever since.

  “Whether people like it or not, automation is coming,” says Andy Puzder, the former CEO of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s. The major reason is consumer preference, Puzder says. “Research shows that many appreciate the speed, order accuracy, and convenience of touch screens. This is particularly so among millennials, who already do so much on smartphones and tablets. I’ve watched people—young and old—waiting in line to use the touch screens while employees stand idle at the counter. The other reason is costs. While the technology is becoming much cheaper, government mandates have been making labor much more expensive,” he says.

  HOT-FOOD VENDING MACHINES

  Hot-food vending machines, like the one that sold me the ready-to-eat noodles at the Henn na Hotel in Tokyo, are also spreading like
wildfire. They already are a $7.5 billion industry in the United States, according to the IBISWorld industry market research firm. One of the pioneering brands is Burritobox, which sells a variety of Tex-Mex foods, and which first appeared at a West Hollywood gas station in 2014. For $4.95, they deliver a hot plate in ninety seconds and entertain the customer with a music video while the food is cooking.

  “This is not a vending machine, it’s an automated restaurant,” says Denis Koci, the thirtysomething cofounder of the company. “There are real humans making the burritos. Everything is handmade.” The food is prepared in restaurant supply kitchens, frozen, and delivered to the machines, where it is defrosted upon order. An inspector visits each location daily to make sure the food is fresh, Koci says.

  Many people, including me, after my experience with reheated noodles in Tokyo, don’t look forward to a dish spat out of a vending machine and find the whole idea quite unappealing. But many others are always in a hurry and find it more convenient. “Millennials, accustomed to apps and online services such as Uber, Amazon.com, and GrubHub, increasingly don’t want to interact with other humans when ordering dinner,” says a Bloomberg.com article on the automation of restaurants.

  And if Japan is a preview of what’s to come, it will be increasingly difficult to stop hot-food vending machines from spreading. In Japan, you can find them on nearly every corner. Japan has the highest vending machine density on earth—5 million of these machines, or one for every twenty-three humans. Altogether, they generate annual sales of over $60 billion, according to the Japan Vending Machine Manufacturers Association. If they’ve already reached Japan’s affluent suburbs, will anyone stop them from spreading across the globe?

  MY VISIT TO AN AUTOMATED RESTAURANT IN SAN FRANCISCO

  Shortly after my trip to Japan, I visited Eatsa, one of the first automated restaurants in the United States. It’s in downtown San Francisco, and its motto—splashed across a giant screen—is “Better, faster food.” It’s part of a vegan and organic chain catering to those who want to eat on the go, but healthily at the same time. Inside, the restaurant has a futuristic feel not unlike an Apple store, with white walls and minimalist furniture. Near the entrance, there are several kiosks topped with tablets for customers to place their orders. I walked up to one, and after swiping my credit card, I was greeted by my name. Then the screen lit up with several culinary options, including vegan, gluten free, or dishes with “no restrictions.”

  When I tapped the vegan option, I was presented with images of a number of different quinoa dishes, along with their respective prices. When I finished placing my order, the tablet told me to wait until my first name and initial appeared on a large video screen on the wall. Indeed, my name was flashed across the screen shortly thereafter, indicating that I could pick up my meal in box number 19. It was one of many illuminated glass boxes that resembled microwaves on one of the walls, where my dish was waiting for me. A projection on the box’s door—I have no idea where it came from—told me to tap twice to open, which I did, and there was my dish, ready to be taken to one of the tables.

  There were no servers in sight. The only visible employee was a young man in jeans and a black T-shirt standing by the door with a name tag that simply read Host. Curious, I asked the young man what his job there was, and he replied that he was there to answer any of the customers’ questions and address any potential problems with the machines. Not only were there no servers, he explained, there were no cashiers or managers. But behind the wall of glass boxes, there were actual humans placing the dishes. The food itself was prepared in a kitchen on the other side of the city that supplied all the other Eatsa restaurants in San Francisco, he explained.

  And how is the company doing? I asked. The host assured me that they were doing great. The first Eatsa location opened in San Francisco in 2015, and new branches were opening in New York, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., he said. The restaurant was unpretentious—it was open until five o’clock in the afternoon, mainly serving breakfast and lunch to office workers—but the young clientele seemed to be enjoying the experience. While eating my dessert of chia and strawberries—which, I must admit, wasn’t the tastiest thing I’ve ever eaten—I didn’t see anyone over the age of forty. Most customers appeared to be in their twenties or early thirties.

  THE EATSA MODEL WILL SPREAD QUICKLY

  Some food industry analysts doubt that the Eatsa model will gain much traction because humans are social animals. Since ancient times, we have gone to restaurants and taverns to eat alongside other human beings and connect with them. Even when we eat out by ourselves, don’t we all exchange a joke or a smile with a server and sometimes even know them by name? they argue.*1 But Andrew McAfee, coauthor of the book The Second Machine Age, argues that automated restaurants will become increasingly successful because people want to interact with their friends, not with their waiters.

  Although McAfee acknowledges that we are a deeply social species, he maintains that when we go to eat out at a restaurant with friends, our main priority is not to interact with waiters, but to have a good time with our tablemates. “Listening to a recitation of the specials, getting the paper bill and handing off a credit card…are distractions from my restaurant experience, not additions to it,” he argues.

  THE OTHER FACTOR DRIVING AUTOMATION: WAGES

  Puzder, the former chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants—and who briefly acquired national fame in 2017 when Trump nominated him to be secretary of labor, an offer he was forced to decline after a wave of criticism because of his stance against the minimum wage, among other things—is one of many industry executives predicting that restaurants will become increasingly automated because they won’t be able to meet the growing pressure for higher wages. According to him, it’s no surprise that an automated restaurant such as Eatsa cropped up in San Francisco, a city with one of the highest minimum wages and some of the most restrictive labor regulations in the country.

  Puzder, who launched an industry campaign against a labor union’s demand to raise the minimum wage to $15 per hour nationwide, warned that “the low-labor Eatsa concept may be a harbinger of the future. If consumers prefer it, or if government-mandated labor-cost increases drive prices too high, the traditional full-service restaurant model, like those old gas stations with the employees swarming over your car, could well become a thing of the past.” Puzder obviously had a personal agenda when he wrote that, which was to convince the government not to raise the minimum wage. Nevertheless, it’s very likely that the fast-food industry will become nearly fully automated in the not-too-distant future, and that restaurants that serve the public with human cooks and waiters will be more of a luxury reserved for special occasions.

  RESTAURANTS WILL BE HIRING ENGINEERS AND DATA ANALYSTS

  I asked several industry experts about what will happen to the servers. Some replied that they’ll remain only at fine dining establishments and might otherwise be replaced by “culinary advisers” or nutritionists, who will make the rounds of the dining room, offering guests information on the calories, the nutritional value, and the particular properties of each dish. But most waiters are doomed to disappear, they said.

  Instead, restaurants will be needing engineers, data analysts, and social media experts. Engineers will manage and maintain the robots, while data analysts and social network experts will be in charge of attracting and retaining customers.

  By mining data from Facebook, Twitter, and mobile reservation apps, many restaurants are already creating profiles for each and every one of their clients—their birthdays, their culinary preferences, their favorite drinks, their food allergies, and even their favorite tables—in order to be able to create personalized promotional campaigns. Are your friends wishing you a happy birthday on social media? Well, a local restaurant might be sending you an email to congratulate you, and also to take the opportunity to offer you a discount if you have your b
irthday dinner there with your friends. Haven’t been back to the same restaurant in a couple of months? A computer program will send you a personalized message offering a special promotion of your favorite dish to win you back.

  A growing number of restaurants are hiring data managers to create customer profiles based on information culled from social media postings, Google searches, and dishes that customers have ordered in previous visits. Did you order chicken with a truffle sauce on two of your last three visits to one particular restaurant? The next time you go there, the server might greet you by name and might recommend new dishes featuring that same sauce that you liked the last time. Did you pay for your meal with a credit card linked to an airline’s travel rewards program? Well, your server might strike up a conversation about travel destinations just to make you feel more at home.

  And that congratulatory email you get for your birthday, job promotion, or some other special event? It will also tell you about new menu items with truffle sauce that you shouldn’t miss. Fig & Olive, a restaurant chain in New York, has a database of over 500,000 customers and claims to have significantly increased sales thanks to personalized email campaigns. A recent one of these, aimed at clients who hadn’t been back for a meal within thirty days, began with three simple words: “We miss you!”