Latest Developments in Food and Automation Technology

Automated kitchens can cook to each customer's location, delivering perfectly cooked food and steaming hot instead of soggy and cold. 

FREMONT, CA : Over the past year, labor shortages and inflation have slowed GDP and undone the post-COVID bounce. Difficult times foster creativity, invention, and constructive change. Technology solves significant challenges. With the adoption of technology, it is easier to produce meat in a lab, have robots pick apples, and have meals delivered to the door, thanks to food technology. These changes are permanent. Restaurants can use the commissary kitchen, where humans handle and prep food, to let robots cook using algorithms in autonomous kitchens. They must be able to sell more than one dish to avoid a significant investment that is only possible to pay off with market flexibility. 

Enhanced shipping: The expanding market for food services is expected to use virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens extensively. More individuals will dine at home due to the psychological effect of inflation on eating habits, and this will stimulate the most innovation in technologically advanced fields. Automated kitchens can tailor their cooking time to each customer's location, ensuring their food arrives at their door perfectly cooked and steaming hot rather than the more common soggy and cold. 

Automation: In recent years, modest robotic applications have automated restaurant chores, including flipping burgers, frying potatoes, manufacturing pizzas, and vending machine poke bowls. These are incredible robots and food service achievements. It demands a new way of thinking about robotics: not emulating humans with anthropomorphic robotic chefs, but using robots for what they do best—precision, speed, repetition—to offer full dinners with food from diverse cuisines, dish types, and recipes. Instead of boxing robots, partner with them. 

Better food service jobs: The industry needs better working conditions, hours, and employee retention, as shown by the labor shortage. To treat employees better, utilize more robots. In food service, employment will disappear, at least in its current form. New technology can make vehicle manufacturing less physically demanding and can do the same for food service occupations. Nobody likes to work unsociable hours, hectic peak times, and monotonous activities, so it is better to let robots do this. 

More profit: Food service profits are low. Lower staff costs—less turnover and fewer people to hire in the labor scarcity crisis—can radically transform the profitability conversation. Robots reduce labor, waste, and quality in eateries. Hardware-based technologies like pizza-in-a-box and salad-mixing machines are essential. Operators lack versatility with these constrained solutions. Software-based, adaptable robotics that can cook multiple foods without hardware changes are profitable and scalable. Delivery solutions will increase in 2023.