Future Trends of the Fast Food Industry
Science still can’t give us flying cars and robotic maids. But one institution that may soon resemble popular sci-fi imaginings is the fast-food restaurant, thanks to innovations in green and automated technologies.
Greener food alternatives
Global fried chicken giant KFC is ushering in "the restaurant of the future" with an environmentally friendly twist on an old favorite: the world's first lab-produced chicken nuggets.
KFC recently partnered with Russia's largest private medical company, the Moscow-based 3D Printing Solutions, to create chicken nuggets that don't harm the chicken. Unlike other alternative bio-meats, made solely from soy and other vegetable proteins, these nuggets of the future will contain real chicken cells and plant materials.
KFC will supply breading, with its touted 11 herbs and spices, while 3D Printing Solutions will provide the chicken-veggie blend. Hopefully, these will replicate "real" chicken nuggets because they'll be made from the same "microelements."
They're made by a 3D-bioprinter, which deposits alternating layers of chicken cells and plant ingredients onto a scaffold. The chicken cells will "feed" on a "proprietary plant-based medium" and grow into 3-dimensional tissues, or bona fide cruelty-free chicken meat. Overall, the nuggets will be 80% plant materials and 20% chicken cells, making them the first meat-bland-hybrid, cell-derived food sold at any eatery.
Compared to traditional farm-based meat production, KFC's bio-meat requires only half the energy and 100 times less land while producing 25 times fewer greenhouse gas emissions. The new nuggets will be tested in Moscow this fall if all goes to plan.
Fast food automation
Automation in fast food restaurants is becoming more common. It reduces labor costs, saves time, and increases customer satisfaction by providing faster service and perfectly cooked items, reducing food waste in the process.
Flippy, one of the protagonists in the robot revolution, is an automated line-cook developed by Miso Robotics. Flippy has already served over 60,000 pounds of fried food and more than 12,000 burgers during a professional career that has exceeded 100,000 hours.
Over the past few years, Flippy has been plying its trade at the Arizona Diamondbacks' Chase Field, in Phoenix, and at Dodgers Stadium, in Los Angeles. It also stars at two CaliBurger restaurants, in Pasadena, California, and Fort Myers, Florida, which employ twin Flippy units to man the burger and fry stations. And a White Castle in Chicago plans to introduce a Flippy in the fall.
During that time, the AI-powered, cloud-connected Flippy has been educating itself via machine learning, to perfect its cooking technique and organizational skills. In fact, one Flippy unit became too efficient. It was temporarily suspended (and made slower) because it out-paced its human co-workers.
Flippy has also learned to be safe. It scans its surroundings in thermal and 3D vision and utilizes OSHA-compliant safety sensors to avoid harming fellow staff. On the grill, it switches between, and cleans, spatulas when dealing with raw or cooked meat, then sweeps the grilling surface. Flippy also runs the fryer, shaking the basket or draining off excess oil to make the perfectly crispy fry or tater tot.
Earlier this year, Miso Robotics unveiled an updated version of Flippy, called Flippy ROAR (robot on a rail). Unlike the basic Flippy, attached to a cart, ROAR slides back and forth on a rail, allowing greater mobility and freeing up floor space, always a commodity in a busy restaurant. In addition to being 50% cheaper than the previous-gen Flippy, ROAR can prepare more than a dozen foods, such as wings, popcorn shrimp, and corn dogs.
Miso Robotics estimates that Flippy could cut labor costs by 67% and improve profit margins by 300% at quick-service (fast food) restaurants.
Innovative ways to help the less fortunate
Major restaurant chains are taking steps to futurize their operations. But robotics company Ory recently carried out one of the most innovative and ambitious experiments to date. In a pilot scheme, the Japanese start-up opened two temporary pop-up cafes in Tokyo, staffed by robots, remotely controlled by house-ridden individuals with disabilities.
Ory Labs creates home assistance robots, meant to provide company and perform light labor (like carrying objects) for the less-abled. One of these creations, the 4-foot-tall OriHime-D robotic avatar, staffed a pop-up cafe (named “Dawn ver.β cafe”) in Tokyo, in December 2018, and its successor (“Dawn ver.β 2.0”) in October 2019.
OriHime-D features two-way cameras and a microphone, providing social enrichment for the involuntarily stuck-at-home. It also offers a chance to keep busy and to earn a wage. The robots' operators paid 1,000 yen per hour, about $9, or the standard salary for wait staff in Japan.
Even those confined to a bed and limited to eye movements took part, using Ory Labs' OriHime Eye technology, which tracks one's gaze and allows them to choose options from a tablet by moving their eyes.
Ory Labs CEO Kentaro Yoshifuji dreamed up the project after being inspired by the 2008 anime Dawn of Eve, which focuses on peaceful cohabitation between androids and humans. The two pop-up cafe trial runs, each lasting about a week or two, served hundreds of satisfied customers. Yoshifuji hopes to soon open a permanent robot-run café.
Something to look forward to
Going green and clean doesn't have to be tedious or inconvenient, and exciting technologies like these may soon be coming to an eatery near you.