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Photos
by
Maggie
Shannon
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The
robots
are
here.
And they
are
making
you
fries..
Laura
Reiley,
Lee
Powell
washingtonpost.com
Meet
Flippy,
Sippy
and
Chippy,
the
newest
technology
stepping
in to
address
a
protracted
labor
crunch
in food
service
PASADENA,
Calif -
At the
end of
July, a
Jack in
the Box
in Chula
Vista,
Calif.,
got a
new
employee.
He stood
there
for a
couple
of weeks
while
other
workers
swirled
around
him,
jockeying
between
flat top
and
fryer,
filling
up paper
sleeves
with the
tacos
that the
fast-food
brand
sells
every
year by
the
hundred
million.
And
then,
having
learned
the
ropes,
he began
to work,
focusing
exclusively
on the
fry
station,
dropping
baskets
of
seasoned
curly
fries
and
stuffed
jalapeños
into
vats of
oil,
eagle-eyeing
when
they
were
perfectly
golden.
He
doesn’t
take
breaks,
never
shirks
when the
boss
isn’t
looking,
won’t
call out
sick or
lean
heavy on
the
company
health
insurance.
But that
doesn’t
mean he
comes
cheap.
Flippy
the
Robot
cost $50
million
to
develop,
and cost
Jack in
the Box
about
$5,000
for
installation
and
$3,500
per
month
for
rental.
Restaurants
have
toyed
with
robotics
for
years,
cropping
up as
early as
1983
when Two
Panda
Deli in
Pasadena,
Calif.,
used
robots
to
schlep
Chinese
food
from the
kitchen
to
customers.
There
have
been
sushi-rolling
robots
and
coffee-brewing
robots
and tiny
drone “iTray”
waiters:
Often
they are
consumer-facing,
a form
of
customer
entertainment
and
“value
added”
to set a
brand
apart.
But now
— with
restaurants
facing a
protracted
labor
shortage
and
robotic
technology
becoming
both
better
and
cheaper
—
restaurant
brands
are
doing
new
math.
How long
before
an
initial
technology
investment
pays
off? How
long
will it
take to
train
human
employees
to work
alongside
robot
co-workers?
And,
ultimately,
how many
restaurant
jobs
will be
permanently
commandeered
by
robots?
The way
Miso
Robotics
chief
executive
Mike
Bell
tells
it,
Flippy
was
initially
a
solution
in
search
of a
problem.
The
company
has been
around
six
years,
five
entirely
in
research
and
development,
trying
to bring
a
product
to
market.
The
robotics
lab’s
sprawling
warehouse
in
Pasadena
is
packed
with
whizzing
robot
pieces
and 3D
printers
hustling
to keep
up with
the
demands
of 120
engineers
and
programmers.
Their
initial
question:
In a
nation
that
consumes
nearly
50
billion
burgers
each
year,
why not
develop
a robot
that can
flip
them
with
precision
at every
fast-food
restaurant?
They
took the
idea to
White
Castle.
The
burger
brand’s
executives
said the
idea
sounded
nice,
but they
had a
more
pressing
need:
Got
anything
for the
fryer?
The
fryer
station
is hot
and it’s
dangerous.
It’s
frequently
where
workplace
accidents
occur.
It’s
also
where
the
drive-through
gets
jammed
up at
night
with
people
waiting
on their
loaded
fries
and
chicken
rings.
So Miso
let
Flippy
kept his
jaunty
name but
re-engineered
him to
start
dipping
fries.
White
Castle
bought
in,
installing
Flippy
in a
Merrillville,
Ind.,
location
and then
several
others
around
the
country,
with the
aim of
having
100 over
the next
few
years.
Jack in
the Box
execs
zipped
up to
Pasadena
for a
demo.
Meet the
robots:
Miso
Robotics
kept
going,
developing
a coffee
forecaster-maker-pourer
for
Panera.
It began
work on
Sippy, a
drink
fulfillment
robot
that
pours,
seals
and
labels
beverage
orders —
which
will
also be
employed
later
this
year at
Jack in
the Box
— as
well as
Chippy,
which
will
soon be
frying
and
seasoning
fresh
tortilla
chips at
Chipotle.
The
robots,
with
their
articulated
arms,
multiple
cameras
and
machine
learning,
excel at
those
mind-numbing
tasks
restaurant
workers
have to
repeat
again
and
again.
And they
aren’t
sniffy
about
working
the
graveyard
shift.
“We
realized
for a
robotic
solution
to be a
real
solution
for our
customers,
it had
to have
a really
high
customer
return
on
investment.
Which
meant it
had to
take a
meaningful
amount
of labor
off the
table,”
Bell
said.
For now,
they’ve
shelved
guacamole
robots
and
ice-cream-scooping
robots.
They are
trying
to stay
focused.
Jack in
the
Box’s
mascot,
Jack, is
kind of
a
proto-robot,
modeled
on a
historic
toy from
the
1500s, a
mechanical
clown
that
would
pop out
of a box
when you
cranked
a
handle.
They’ve
ditched
the
clown in
marketing
efforts
in
recent
years,
part of
the
company’s
long-standing
strategy
of
throwing
things
out
there to
see what
sticks.
The
company
was
early to
the
two-way
intercom
system
now
ubiquitous
in fast
food, it
introduced
breakfast
sandwiches
and
portable
salads.
And its
menu has
a
more-is-more
exuberance
that
Oscar
Wilde
would
approve
of:
These
days it
has
upward
of 80
menu
items,
about 60
percent
of which
end up
in the
fryer.
Flippy
has his
work cut
out for
him.
But
there
won’t be
the
legions
of
robots
from the
movie
“I,
Robot”
any time
soon.
“Fry,
Robot”
will be
slower:
Of the
2,270
Jack in
the
Boxes,
93
percent
of which
are
franchises,
it’s
just
this one
Chula
Vista
store
where
Flippy
is being
employed
to work
out the
kinks,
with
Sippy
following
at the
end of
this
year.
The goal
is to
have
Flippy
installed
in
another
5 to 10
high-volume
Jack in
the Box
locations
in 2023.
If
robots
are
cheaper
and more
efficient,
experts
wonder,
will the
more
than 3
million
entry-level
fast-food
jobs be
ceded to
robots
entirely
in the
future?
For now,
the
thorny
problem
is there
just
aren’t
enough
humans
who want
to do
the
work.
According
to the
National
Restaurant
Association,
65
percent
of
restaurant
owners
still
say
finding
enough
workers
is a
central
problem.
In the
Great
Resignation,
prospective
hospitality
workers
were
being
lured
back
with the
promise
of fancy
fitness
club
memberships
and
401(k)
plans.
It’s an
industry
that has
faced a
stark
reckoning,
even
before
the
pandemic,
about
pay,
worker
safety
and
career
advancement.
For the
country’s
almost
200,000
fast-food
restaurants,
the
customers
are
there
but the
workers
are not.
Owners
have cut
open
hours,
closed
dine-in
options,
streamlined
menus to
accommodate
the
changes.
Along
with QR
codes,
kiosk
ordering
and
contactless
payment,
maybe
robots
are the
balm to
soothe
the
pain?
Back at
the Miso
Robotics
lab
there’s
a Flippy
in the
corner
repeatedly
dropping
a fryer
basket
into an
empty
oil vat
a
million
times to
test for
armature
failure.
The
noise
drives
the
engineers
nuts.
But
there’s
some
testing
that’s
harder
to do.
How do
you test
for the
best way
to have
humans
and
robots
working
alongside
each
other?
How do
you make
sure the
humans
don’t
resent
the
robots,
don’t
get
paranoid
about
losing
their
jobs?
Meet the
robot’s
co-workers:
“This is
an
enhancement,
not a
replacement,”
said Ali
Nemat,
Jack’s
vice
president
of
operations
services,
sitting
in the
Chula
Vista
dining
room
just
before
the
lunch
rush.
“Our fry
person
is
getting
promoted
and
Flippy
is their
assistant.”
At any
given
time, a
Jack in
the Box
restaurant
has 25
human
employees,
with one
person
on the
fry
shift —
even
with
Flippy
they
still
bag and
box, add
lettuce
and
cheese.
But this
could
change.
You
could
see it
coming.
Flippy
started
acting
weird,
jerking
and
hitching.
The
worker
on the
fry
station
had
witnessed
this
behavior
before.
Even Joe
Garcia,
the Miso
Robotics
“robot
support
specialist”
assigned
to
troubleshoot
at Jack
in the
Box, had
seen it.
Garcia,
a
mechanical
engineering
graduate
from
Loyola
Marymount
University
who one
day
wants to
work for
NASA, is
spending
his days
swooping
in when
Flippy
occasionally
loses
his mind
as he
encounters
tacos.
Back at
Miso,
there’s
a whole
Slack
channel
devoted
to why
Flippy
freaks
out
sometimes
when he
has to
drop a
row of
tacos in
the
special
metal
perforated
taco
tray.
Engineers
watch
the
videotapes
on
replay,
discuss.
The
human
worker
fished
out the
soggy
row of
lost
tacos,
flicking
them in
the
garbage
while
Flippy
stood
by,
inscrutable
and
unconcerned
about a
performance
review.
Editing
by
Sandhya
Somashekhar,
Monique
Woo and
Karly
Domb
Sadof.
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