Robots in the kitchen: they\u2019re coming to a fast-casual restaurant near you<\/p>\n
A new generation of robots is set to transform the fast-casual restaurant market by bringing down costs and speeding up the process of ordering lunch.<\/p>\n
Welcome to Plain English, episode number 70 for Monday, July 23, 2018. I\u2019m Jeff, the producer of the program is JR, and you are listening to the podcast that goes at the right speed for English learners. The transcript of today\u2019s program can be found at PlainEnglish.com\/70. As always, the transcript includes instant translations of the hardest words and phrases from English to now six languages! They are Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Chinese and Japanese.<\/p>\n
We love hearing from listeners, so please send JR and I a note on either Facebook or Twitter. Our user name is PlainEnglishPod on both.<\/p>\n
Hey I have some news for those of you who have Android are listening on Spotify. It\u2019s great that you are listening on Spotify and if you like listening there because you are already using that app\u2014that\u2019s fantastic. If, however, you want to try a new way of listening, Google just launched something called Google Podcasts and it\u2019s a way you can download and organize all the podcasts that you might listen to. Now this podcast, Plain English, is obviously your favorite, but there are other good ones out there\u2014in every language\u2014and Google Podcasts is a good app to use to discover new things to listen to and organize your podcast library. If you\u2019re an iPhone user, you already have an app called Apple Podcasts, whether you know it or not. If you\u2019re listening on an iPhone, you can just search your phone for the word \u201cpodcasts\u201d and you\u2019ll probably see the purple icon come up. That\u2019s just a new option for those of you who first discovered the program on Spotify.<\/p>\n
They say robots and computers are out to take all our jobs someday. First in manufacturing, then in customer service with chat bots and touch screens, teaching has been affected by online courses, maybe soon delivery and transportation jobs will be at risk. My day job is in business consulting and a lot of what we do is susceptible to automation in the future. There\u2019s even a web site called willrobotstakemyjob.com which estimates that 47 percent of American jobs could be automated someday.<\/p>\n
But if you thought the act of creating a gourmet, delicious meal is something a robot could never do\u2014then think again. Robots in the kitchen were mostly a joke until recently, but now several companies have prototypes that can create gourmet meals with minimal\u2014or in some cases no human interaction.<\/p>\n
Take burgers\u2014that classic American food, right? It\u2019s one of those things that seems simple to cook until you try to program a robot to do it. The technology has come a long way since \u201cFlippy,\u201d a robotic arm at a California restaurant that would automatically flip a burger. Flipping the meat on the grill, of course, is not the hardest or most labor-intensive part of the act of cooking a good burger, so this was more a publicity stunt than any true innovation in robotics.<\/p>\n
But now\u2014and why does this always happen in California?\u2014now, there\u2019s a restaurant in San Francisco called Creator. And Creator claims to make a gourmet burger from scratch with absolutely no human intervention whatsoever. Here\u2019s what it does: it grinds the meat\u2014okay, that\u2019s pretty cool, you almost never see a restaurant grind its meat when the order is placed. It grinds the meat; forms the burgers; grills them to perfection; chops tomatoes; slices the cheese to go on top; cuts and toasts the bun; puts on all manner of seasonings, sauces and other toppings; and finally it wraps the whole creation up in a bag without crushing it and spilling the toppings all over the place.<\/p>\n
It took the creators eight years to get the process right. It\u2019s a beast\u2014about two square meters\u2014but it can make 120 burgers per hour.<\/p>\n
So now you might be thinking\u2014okay, burgers, come on. That\u2019s just one menu item out of the thousands of things that can be cooked in a kitchen. And making a burger is still a pretty simple thing. So let me introduce you to a restaurant called Spyce in the Downtown Crossing neighborhood of Boston, Massachusetts. Spyce opened at the end of April and is the brainchild of students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a prestigious engineering school near Boston. The students wanted to get good, casual food but couldn\u2019t pay the $10 to $12 that a decent meal costs\u2014and we\u2019re not talking a nice restaurant, but just something with a higher quality than fast food.<\/p>\n
So the students teamed up with French chef Daniel Boulud to develop a menu of interesting, nutritious, and high-quality foods that could be mostly prepared by robots, thereby keeping costs low. Customers order on touch-screens and the robots then select and drop the ingredients of your Moroccan bowl, for example, into the frying pan and serve it up. There are some humans there to help guide you through the process and add some customization to your meals if necessary. But speed is king in the downtown area full of office workers: they say they can create these dishes in three minutes total, at a cost of just $7.50, well below what a meal with equal quality would cost at another restaurant.<\/p>\n
So are some of you still skeptical? First we had burgers\u2014not too hard to make, not a lot of real skill involved. Now Spyce\u2014all they really do is drop the ingredients in the frying pan and stir it up, big deal. If you\u2019re still skeptical of robots in the kitchen, then brace yourself for a company called Moley. Now, it\u2019s not here yet. But this startup company flips the thinking of robotics around 180 degrees. The other innovations started by thinking about a robot or a machine and asking what a typical robotic machine can do. Moley decided to start with what a chef does. So they had real-life chefs work under the supervision of detailed 3D cameras and motion-sensory gloves and then designed a machine that has robotic arms that can mimic all the actions of a master chef at work. According to the company, the Moley Robotic Kitchen will be able to cook 2,000 recipes\u2014as long as the ingredients are all loaded into pre-determined locations.<\/p>\n
As JR would say, that sounds like it\u2019s del futuro \u2026 from the future\u2014indeed it is.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t need a robot in my kitchen that can cook 2,000 recipes\u2014but do you think they could make a cheap one that cooks, say, ten recipes? Oh, and does the food shopping too? That could change everything.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to say hi to a couple of listeners today. Simone from Cologne, Germany, wrote to say she\u2019s practicing English as preparation for a visit to Los Angeles soon. And Andrea from Italy is thrilled with the new Italian translations on our web site. She is an engineering student and lives near Rome. I wonder what the Italians think about automated cooking, since big family meals are such an important part of the culture there. I\u2019m trying to picture what would happen if you told an Italian grandmother that you could prepare stuffed shells or ricotta pie with a robot. I think you\u2019d get smacked with a wooden spoon; that\u2019s what I think. Maybe Andrea can try that out with her relatives and let us know how it goes. Simone, Andrea\u2014thanks for listening and being part of Plain English.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Several companies are developing robots to automatically prepare restaurant meals. One California restaurant has a machine that makes a burger start-to-finish without any human interaction; a startup in London says its robot can mimic a master chef at work and prepare any one of 2,000 recipes. Automation may drive down costs and increase speed at so-called “fast casual” restaurants. Learn the English phrase, “brace yourself.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false},"lesson_category":[31],"lesson_number":[265],"terminology_tag":[],"content_tag":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n