- What really, I think, clicked for me with them
was when they said,
And I was like, “the food part for me
is the easy part, like, the robot's the hard part.
Like, you guys are crazy.”
And I was like, “I think this is gonna work.”
- This is Eric Minnich.
He's a chef working for a company
that's creating a fully autonomous restaurant.
He's like a regular chef,
but instead of preparing food
that's given to a server who brings it to your table,
Eric's food gets loaded into
what is essentially a robot vending machine.
- As foreign as it is for me to
try and comprehend the robot,
it's as equally as foreign
for them to try and understand,
like what goes into like a menu development
and like cost structure
and like sourcing ingredients
and all this other kind of stuff,
which for me, you know, being a chef,
is just like an average day, right?
And then for them,
the average day is making robots.
That's just what they would be doing anyway.
- Automation has long been embraced by sectors
like the automotive industry.
While the food services industry has traditionally
been slow to adapt to new technology,
rising costs, labor shortages, and a global pandemic
have brought a need for new solutions—
like QR code menus, automated kiosks,
and now, robotics.
Once again,
technology is changing work as we know it.
Are you ready?
These are the blue, white,
and no collar jobs of today and the future.
- Hey, Todd.
Hey, Eddy.
- You see that robot, dude?
- Dude, robot's here,
robot is here.
When I started at Mezli,
we had no way of accounting,
we had no way of inventory tracking,
we had no recipes,
we had no recipe books.
Like we had nothing,
like literally starting from nothing.
And when you're making a robot,
there isn't really anybody else
with the same experience, right?
And so I can't just, like,
reach out and call my old chef and be like,
‘Hey, how would you properly extrude,
you know, rice out of this thing?’ You know?
But we got pretty much everything in place now.
- Eric and his team design and prepare food
in a traditional kitchen that is
then loaded into a robotic system
inside a shipping container.
When a customer places an order,
a bowl moves down a conveyor belt
where different ingredients are added
until the meal pops out of a delivery window.
Eric and Eddy's job of designing meals
that are then served in an automated system
presents unique challenges.
- We have to think about how
the robot is gonna,
you know, assemble this food, grab this food,
cook it for us.
So we have to keep that in consideration.
- Some of the things we purposely undercook,
some of the things we purposely like
take a little too far.
- It really makes you think about different
ways of creating food and
executing that type of food.
- The balance between making good food
and making sure it works for the robot—
you know, I would say that balance is skewed
on the food side for sure.
So if we need to, you know,
make something thinner,
okay,
well, does that—
how does that affect the flavor
of the sauce, for instance,
if it's a little thinner?
Does it make it worse?
If it makes it worse then we're not doing it.
But can we make it thinner and make it better?
Okay, well, we can do that.
Let's do that. Or let's make a new sauce, right?
So there's a balance,
but it's always flavor-focused first.
- Because less labor is required,
restaurants that utilize robotic systems
could offer lower prices in the long run.
But the benefits are not just for consumers.
Robotics and automation are seen as a potential
solution to some of the growing problems
in the food industry.
- There's a lot of problems
that have just naturally evolved
in restaurants over just time.
You know, cost of living is a big thing,
inflation is a big thing.
Wages for a lot of cooks have always been,
you know, minimum wage,
maybe a little bit more if you're lucky.
And all those things combined create
for a pretty nasty staffing shortage.
That takes a toll, you know?
You can't really get a solid footing
as a restaurant if you're constantly hiring,
constantly turning over staff.
It's draining. It's really exhausting.
- This kind of robot is built to do
the types of jobs
that have become increasingly difficult
to hire for:
like dishwashers, servers, and prep cooks.
In Eric and Eddy's case,
it's allowed them to be paid more
while working more traditional 9 to 5 hours.
- Mezli's not going to solve all the problems,
but there's a couple of things that
Mezli, as a model, could help solve for.
You know, better quality of life for the staff,
more approachable hours or manageable hours,
and just not that hectic
hustle and bustle and grind.
With the robot,
the only thing is, is it full or is it not?
And what does it need?
And, you know, as long as we're always prepared,
we can always meet that.
So believe it or not, in my free time,
I actually like to cook for myself and my wife
because when I was working in restaurants,
I never had time to.
You know, there's the creative aspect
where you're working with your hands
and you're creating,
you know, new things that not only
can you look at and they're pretty,
but you can eat them
and they're also equally delicious.
- Robots are beginning to enter our restaurants.
This technology is relatively new,
but already showcasing the types of
repetitive tasks that can be reduced
by automation.
Despite these developments,
there are some things that,
for the foreseeable future,
will still require a human touch.
- There's a few things robots can't do that people,
even myself included, will still want, right?
We still want to have those those date nights
and those birthday dinners
and get together with the friends at the bar
and talk to the bartender, right?
So robots won't
ever really have that human touch, in the sense—
they won't have that true hospitality,
in, like, the true sense of the word.
- The impact robots will have on jobs
and food services,
especially in the near-term, is unknown.
But Eric's is an example
of the many types of new jobs
being created by the latest breakthroughs
in technology.