Fast-food chains are adding a new kind of employee to their workforce: robots. The concept first gained traction during the pandemic when restaurant chains faced shortages of employees to run and operate their kitchens.
Big brands like White Castle, Wing Zone in California, and, more recently, Jack in the Box are now embracing alternatives to the traditional living, breathing fast-food worker.
These chains adopted Flippy 2, Miso Robotics’ deep-frying, burger-flipping robot. This new robot can recognize different foods and prepare them quickly and efficiently. According to interested parties, it is an important step forward in automating the fast-food industry, at least where flipping and frying foods is concerned.
The Midwest fast-food chain White Castle was one of the first to try Miso Robotics’ new invention. In 2020, White Castle agreed to install Flippy 2 in over 100 locations nationwide, following a previous experiment using the first Flippy robot for some time.
Miso Robotics CEO Mike Bell said of the partnership, “White Castle was the first large brand to embrace our technology and we are thrilled…that they want to integrate 100 [Flippys].”
White Castle gave feedback to Miso Robotics, stating that the first version of Flippy needed “too much human assistance on either side of its primary cooking tasks.”
Miso Robotics took this feedback and designed Flippy 2 with it in mind. The new version was released in November 2021. It aimed to be more self-sufficient and “more compact” while “requiring significantly less human hand-holding” than the original Flippy.
Flippy 2 requires less space and less cleaning and can “handle about 60 frying baskets per hour,” ranging from french fries and onion rings to wings and burgers.
White Castle COO Jeff Carper stated, “Our partnership with Miso continues to lead the way on what’s next for back of house restaurant operations looking to empower team members with technology to better satisfy customers. Having Flippy 2 be a new hire at 100 of our White Castle locations keeps us on a path to achieve big goals at White Castle.”
California fast-food giant Jack in the Box is also deploying a Flippy 2, adding the robot to a San Diego location.
In addition to the Flippy devices, Miso Robotics is developing other fast-food robots such as Sippy for drinks (adopted by Jack in the Box), automated coffee brewing currently being tested at Panera Bread, and a tortilla-chip robot that Chipotle is piloting.
Flippy 2 starts at $3,000 a month to rent. The impact such innovations in automation will have on fast-food workers is unclear at the moment.