Fast food should be fast, right?  But we all know how the lines get so long during the lunch or dinner rush, and even if you opt for drive-thru, you could still wait quite a while to get your food.  So what’s faster than fast food? Robots.  That’s right. The automation trend has made its way to the crux of American culture, all but solidifying the rise of the machines.

FoodBots are robots that make fast food such as burgers, pizza, burritos and even sushi.  The main goal of a FoodBot is to provide an easier way for people to get quality food fast, and with no humans handling it so no worrying out stray hair or even spit in your grub.  These robots are meant to be placed in gas stations, malls, corner stores, or just about anywhere that has a high foot traffic.

Here’s a few real-world FoodBots to feed your hunger for gadgets.

FoodBots out and about

.

Burrito Box

Box Brands just installed Burrito Box in Mobile and 76 gas stations on Santa Monica Boulevard in California.  The Burrito Box delivers “hand-rolled” burritos in six variants, with your choice of sauce.

It is quite simple to operate with its touchscreen menu. Consumers just select the type of burrito they want, swipe their credit card to pay for their selection, and wait a minute to get their hot and freshly rolled burrito.  And while you wait, the touchscreen menu turns into an ad so you’ll have something to look and pass the time.

.

Alpha

image source: Momentum Machines

Momentum Machines’ Alpha machine cooks up to 360 burgers in an hour, and they hope to differentiate with looks.  Your burger should not look like the sloppy ones you get from fast food chains.  These burgers are supposed look like the ones on the ads – juicy patty, fresh greens, fluffy buns, perfectly sliced tomatoes and pickles, and just the right amount of onions.  Like something you’d get from a gourmet restaurant, but with a fast food price.

Though it’s just a machine, Alpha uses fresh ingredients.  The meat if freshly ground, shaped and grilled to the customer’s preference.  The tomato and pickles are only sliced when the meat is cooked, then everything is placed on the burger before it gets neatly wrapped for the customer.

For its next revision of the Alpha, Momentum Machines will be adding custom meat grinds as well as gourmet cooking techniques to give the patties the perfect char without drying them up.

.

Let’s Pizza

Some people stay away from pizza as much as possible because they are horrified with what could possibly be going on behind closed doors.  With kneaders not washing their hands or servers putting unidentifiable liquids in the sauce, there’s countless vomit-inducing scenarios you could drum up thinking about any given fast-food chain.

If you’re one of those people, you might reconsider if you’re faced with Let’s Pizza –  a machine that churns out freshly made Italian-style pizza.  This machine uses fresh ingredients to make the dough, kneads it, adds the sauce, cheese, and other toppings such as pepperoni, ham, smoked bacon, and fresh veggies, then bakes it under an infrared oven.

An 11-inch pizza takes only 2.5 minutes to make, about a minute to make, and costs only $6.  Each machine stores ingredients enough to make 90 pizzas, and it is connected to the web so inventory can be replenished as needed.  Plus, the whole process can be seen through a window so you’ll know that the pizza is clean and untouched by human hands.

.

Chinese noodle-slicing robot

There’s nothing like eating freshly made Chinese noodles, but if you’re in this business, you’ll know how tedious the task of cutting these noodles by hand.  Cui Runguan, a Chinese restaurateur, created a robot that does exactly that so people won’t have to deal with the tiring task of noodle cutting.

The robot is quite imposing and looks a lot like Ultraman, the Japanese humanoid creature that battles monsters to save the Earth.  Though it may seem like the back and forth motion of the robot’s hand doesn’t do much, it’s pretty quick at slicing noodles.  Each machine sells for about $2,000 and over 3,000 units have already been sold.

.

SushiBot

Of course Japan pioneered these FoodBots with its SushiBot.  At the 2012 World Food and Beverage Expo in Tokyo, Suzumo unveiled two machines for sushi lovers.  The first machine churns out 3,600 mounds of rice per hour, while the other machine makes nori sushi, the type of sushi that is wrapped in dried seaweed.  The downside is, these SushiBots aren’t as autonomous as other FoodBots, since most ingredients still needs to be added by hand, so the bots only takes care of the rice molding part.  Which sushi chefs don’t have to worry about losing their jobs just yet.

Having these machines take care of fast food is great.  It will be a great way to get people to eat healthier food when they are at a gas station, at a concert, in the mall, without spending too much, even with the use of fresh ingredients.

.

Remaining concerns for robot restaurants

 . 

Despite the novelty of FoodBots, there are still issues to be addressed such as sanitation and the quality of ingredients.  If these FoodBots use fresh ingredients, how often are these fresh ingredients replaced?  How will consumers know that the tomato on the burger isn’t rotten?  Or the meat spoiled?  And because these machine uses sauces, won’t the tubes need cleaning?  How often will these machines be cleaned and serviced?

Makers of these FoodBots claim that business owners who buy them could actually save money even if the machine itself is a bit on the pricey side.  Instead of paying people to do sloppy work, they can use that money to buy fresh ingredients to maintain high quality products.  But that still leaves the question of maintenance, and customer demand.  If there aren’t enough people buying FoodBot grub, there’s a chance for rotten food and a spoiled investment.

photo credit: broken.ombrello via photopin cc

photo credit: zen via photopin cc