The Boston restaurant where robots have replaced the chefs
The Boston restaurant where robots have replaced the
chefs
By Peter Holley, The Washington Post Published 11:22 am,
Thursday, May 17, 2018
Boston restaurant, Spyce, relies on seven autonomous
cooking pots and other technology to prepare customer's meals. Photo: Photo
Courtesy Of Spyce. / Photo courtesy of Spyce
The debate about whether cooking is more art or science
is a never-ending one.
But at Spyce, the latest culinary experiment in
automation, that debate feels pretty well settled.
Started by a group of 20-something robotics engineers
from Massachusetts Institute of Technology who partnered with Michelin-starred
chef Daniel Boulud, the new restaurant in downtown Boston is founded on the
idea that a fulfilling meal can be more science than spontaneity.
The restaurant's founders have replaced human chefs with
seven automated cooking pots that simultaneously whip up meals in three minutes
or less. A brief description of meal preparation - courtesy of 26-year-old co-founder,
Michael Farid - can sound more like laboratory instructions than conventional
cooking.
"Once you place your order, we have an ingredient
delivery system that collects them from the fridge," Farid said. "The
ingredients are portioned into the correct sizes and then delivered to a
robotic wok, where they are tumbled at 450 degrees Fahrenheit. The ingredients
are cooked and seared. And once the process is complete, the woks tilt downward
and put food into a bowl. And then they're ready to be garnished and
served."
Spyce bills itself as "the world's first restaurant
featuring a robotic kitchen that cooks complex meals," a distinction that
appears to reference burger-flipping robots like "Flippy," who plied
his trade in a California fast food kitchen before being temporary suspended -
because he wasn't working fast enough.
A prototype of Spyce's robotic chef was first assembled
in the basement of the co-founders' fraternity house at MIT.
The restaurant's dining experience actually begins a few
steps before the robots get involved, when customers create customized,
compostable bowls that cost $7.50 using colorful touch-screens. Heavy on
vegetables and healthy grains, the bowls include a calorie count and have
themes such as Latin, Thai, Mediterranean and Hearth.
While meals are cooked, the customer's name appears on an
electronic display above their wok, showing their order. Once finished, hot
water jets rinse the inside of woks before another collection of ingredients is
dumped inside. Farid said they decided to place the robotic chefs out in the
open to remove any lingering mystery.
"We didn't want to create a black box that produces
a meal," Farid said. "We wanted this experience to be exciting."
The restaurant's motto: "Culinary excellence
elevated by technology."
That motto is one that the restaurant industry is
beginning to adopt as a whole, experts say. Restaurants across the country
already incorporate automated technology, such as "self-service
ordering" and "robotic servers," according to a report last year
by the McKinsey Global Institute.
The report concluded that jobs that involve
"predictable physical activities" - such as cooking or serving food,
cleaning kitchens, collecting dirty dishes and preparing beverages - are the
most susceptible to automation.
"According to our analysis, 73 percent of the
activities workers perform in food service and accommodations have the
potential for automation, based on technical considerations," the report
said.
Because the industry's human labor tends to be lower
paid, robots cooks have yet to be adopted, the report said. As the technology
becomes cheaper and more widespread, however, that could change.
Spyce employs multiple people, a detail that the
restaurant's founders are quick to emphasize when they explain their concept.
There's a friendly "guide" to assist customers with ordering and to
ask about your day, according to Farid. Humans prep the food overnight and the
restaurant also employs a "garde manger" (French for "keeper of
the food") whose job is to add touches like pumpkin seeds, cilantro and
crumbled goat cheese before meals are served.
Farid said the robots add efficiency and lower operating
costs, but he declined to say by how much. He said he sees the robots enhancing
the dining experience, not replacing it, but declined to speculate on whether
Spyce is opening the floodgates of a job-killing robot revolution.
"Our restaurant is really efficient because people
focus on what people are good at, but the robot handles the high volume tasks -
like the cooking and washing - that robots are good at," he said. "At
the end of the day, our product is not a technology product - it's an
experience and a delicious meal."
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