Posted on 01/14/2020 4:41:48 PM PST by ProtectOurFreedom
It’s San Francisco, so naturally there’s some controversy. Burgers are the number one segment of restaurant food, ripe for disruption by robotics, and the VCs are pouncing. Robots might take away fast-food jobs, or create better ones, so the labor activists are activating.
But today I just want to understand how they made it. How two young engineers could invent a complicated culinary robot that makes cheeseburgers from scratch. Really good ones.
I’m on my second visit to Creator, the world’s only robotic hamburger restaurant. Since opening doors in September 2018, it has built a rep for quality and innovation, thanks in part to its fun-to-watch robot and its tourist-trod location next to San Francisco’s Moscone Convention Center.
But the real secret sauce is the small team of makers who overcame technical setbacks and ridicule to create a single, integrated robot that makes the freshest burger ever served. And for just 6 bucks! Which even a tourist knows is unheard of in San Francisco.
Everything in a Creator burger is prepared to order in a way that’s never been done — beef freshly ground 20 seconds before it is precision grilled by artificial intelligence; whole buns automatically split, buttered, and toasted; veggies precision sliced and cheese shredded the instant before they meet the robo-toasted bun. And yes, it’s delicious, thanks to quality ingredients and gourmet techniques and seasonings.
Today the burger bot team includes alums from Tesla and Google, Berkeley, Stanford, and Caltech, Chez Panisse and Fat Duck. But it started with two California kids barely out of college: a self-taught roboticist with a vision for the future of fast food, and a trained mechanical engineer who came to trust in that vision. I want to hear how they created the culinary equivalent of landing a moon rocket on a robot barge.
“Oh no, it’s stuck on slider!”
https://www.businessinsider.com/san-francisco-robot-restaurants-failing-eatsa-cafex-2020-1
Won’t work when the electricity goes off (night, no wind).
bttt
Yeah...every other burger in San Francisco probably starts at $14.00 these days. $6 is one heck of a bargain!
LOL...”Learn to code” — AND this is Nancy Pelosi’s district. I’d LOVE to hear her say that to all the laid off food workers in town.
Ha! Every other business in the world has taken almost all of the human interaction out of their customer transactions. Talking to a customer support person in India or (worse) trying to get a chat bot to do something useful is a major frustration.
If you want human interaction when dining, then bring a co-worker or a date because talking to the wait person hardly counts as "human interaction."
Now, up the road at the Blue Plate Cafe, that's a different story. Kim, the owner, is friends with everybody in town and always has time to chat and catch up with every customer. THAT is "human interaction."
#4 Another democrat party success story.
Putting thousands, 10’s or 100’s of thousands of people out of work due to the $15/hr minimum wage and the gig limit.
Which is why I frequent my local version of your Blue Plate Cafe.
If a Robo-burger opened up locally, I would probably try it once or twice, then revert to my old habits.
Kept their pants zipped....
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