automation Meet Creator: a San Francisco startup that features first fully automated burger cooking and assembly robot. Burgers only cost $6 (at the moment)

[captain_to_fire]

Also to vegan connoisseurs, stop trying to make vegan burgers happen. It's not going to happen. 

*I know there's already a vegan burger named "impossible burger" and several other meat replacement burgers like soy or mushroom burgers. It's just a parody of a mean girls meme. Get over it. 

 

Sources: SF Eater, Forbes, Tech Crunch (YouTube Video), Creator

 

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Secretly nested behind construction in San Francisco's SoMa district, Creator (formerly known as Momentum Machines) has been quietly setting up the long awaited debut of its seemingly mythical burger-making robot. As part of its burger restaurant concept of the same name, Creator will open its doors later this month after nearly nine years of secretive development and speculative headlines.

 

"Rather than talking to people about what we want to do, we'd rather just wait to show them," said founder and CEO Alex Vardakostas while explaining the company's historical avoidance of publicity. Vardakostas' company first made waves in 2012 when the internet caught wind of its fully-automated burger robot prototype, which was rumored of being capable of cooking and bagging upwards of 400 burgers per hour. The company's air of mystery further intensified as it raised $18 million in venture capital last year from heavy hitters including GV, Khosla Ventures and K5 Ventures.

 

At the moment, they are selling $6 per burger which is fine for the price and from the looks of it, it looks delicious. I like mine with grilled or caramelized onions.

Creator says that they use robots to perfect techniques of cooking like how done it is or is the heat enough to create grill marks. Afterwards, the machine is there to catch the cooked patty and place the seasonings and dressings the person wants like mustard, mayo, etc. As per SF Eater, Creator claims that they have use ingenious minds like engineers and roboticists to perfect their robot.

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It’s also an incredibly advanced engineering achievement. The team behind it includes an impressive lineup of engineers and roboticists from the pantheons of technology and user interaction like Apple, NASA, and Tesla. But, despite the firepower behind the machine, its reason for being is entirely focused on improving food. Food tech companies in the recent past have focused too much energy on creating a cool and complicated device, allowing its actual usefulness to take a back burner...However, this eight-year project began with founder Alex Vardakostas’s desire to improve how food is made.

So take that Wendy's baconator and all of your savage tweets . 

 

So you might ask, do they still employ people? And the answer is yes they still do.

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There are no kiosks — Vardakostas says they feel dystopian — so orders are taken by humans with iPhones on the floor. Eventually an app will allow customers to place orders themselves, with specifications down to the milliliter of sauce they’d like on their burger.

 

When there’s an issue with the machine — something needs to be refilled, or a burger has lost its way in the process — the humans in the room receive an alert sent straight to their Apple Watch, letting them know exactly where the problem is occurring.

From the iPhones and Apple Watches the staff uses to take orders, I wonder if they can get their ROI in a few months. I'm guessing they're using older iPhones like the iPhone 7+ and older Apple Watches. I'm fine with iPhones but Apple Watches? Seriously? They have to bring it up to their face just to get notified.

 

The actual process:

Spoiler

 

 

 

Oh boy I feel hungry while making this thread. And there's the issue of technology making people unemployed. While it's true that as technology improves, employment decreases but only to an extent. When old jobs disappear, new jobs appear. I don't think this robot that took lots of money will be replacing human cooks and waiters anytime soon even though the idea is not far fetched.  Maybe Creator wants more exposure and wants Linus to cover it. 

[AskTJ]

No.

[Nineshadow]

It's a pretty cool proof of concept, but I don't think it's going to be a really big thing, like seeing only automated restaurants. The founder presents an interesting opinion on the matter. He says that machines like this allow the staff of the restaurant to focus on more creative, more fulfilling tasks.

[captain_to_fire]

3 minutes ago, Nineshadow said:

He says that machines like this allow the staff of the restaurant to focus on more creative, more fulfilling tasks.

If the restaurant has other things in the menu that can't be automated just yet like garnishing food and desserts then yes it can help the staff be more creative

[laminutederire]

@captain_to_fire, i don't want to be that guy but... I'm pretty sure it should be spelled "meat creator" in your title

 

[captain_to_fire]

2 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

but automated impossible burgers! O_O when will the machine be on tour?!

Inb4 vegan extremists start complaining that machines are stealing jobs 

[suicidalfranco]

Much better than the flipping hand, at least this doesn't need human assistance to complete an entire burger

[captain_to_fire]

10 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

*four years later...*

 

*door breach*

*people staring*

"VEGAN BURGERS ARE VEGANS! VEGAN BURGERS ARE VEGAAAAAANS!!!"

When a vegan friend says that vegan burgers are the best... ?

[Bcat00]

Oh man this is going to be a giant hit in Japan because they love this kind of stuff.

 

vendibg machines everywhere you go, even in the country side for the craziest food stuff

[mr moose]

Cue in all the people who think this will result in major societal collapse because automation is an evil thing that has done that in the past...

[asus killer]

man discovered the wheel, electricity, went to the moon... now robot made hamburgers. There's no stopping mankind.

[Ryujin2003]

I guess I'm fine with this as long as there are gonna making sure the robots aren't dropping their hydraulic fluid on the burgers...

 

The price is ok I guess, but it still looks like a cheap, steroid/disease ridden prefrozen and processed fast-food burger. I'd be much moar interested if it were real legitimate burger. But I guess robots probably have a hard time forming burgers from packages of ground meat.

[Master Disaster]

6 minutes ago, Ryujin2003 said:

I guess I'm fine with this as long as there are gonna making sure the robots aren't dropping their hydraulic fluid on the burgers...

 

The price is ok I guess, but it still looks like a cheap, steroid/disease ridden prefrozen and processed fast-food burger. I'd be much moar interested if it were real legitimate burger. But I guess robots probably have a hard time forming burgers from packages of ground meat.

They literally use robots to form burgers from ground meat in any frozen food factory right now. If anything the robot will be more efficient as it can weigh ingredients down to a gram and every burger would be identical in size & thickness. I guess the problem is being able to miniaturise that process so it's small enough to fit in a shop while still being able to keep up with demand.

 

I think in any fast food restaurants burgers are always going to be pre made, making fresh burgers to order is always going to results in extensive waiting times during busy periods.

[maartendc]

2 hours ago, suicidalfranco said:

Much better than the flipping hand, at least this doesn't need human assistance to complete an entire burger

those were my thoughts as well. Flippy the burger flipping robot tried to mimic a human hand making the burger. The best machines do not mimic humans, but do it the best way it can be automated. (Most assembly lines dont look like 100 human hands doing something, rather just a series of rollers, presses, ovens, pressure chambers, welders, etc).

[maartendc]

9 minutes ago, VegetableStu said:

while saying FO to manual jobs ._.

Sure, but flipping burgers is one of the most mind numbing repetitive jobs.

 

Although surely not all restaurant owners would be as nice as this guy, employing people to have a nice restaurant experience. If the likes of Mcdonnalds get their hands on this, it would surely mean a lot less employees.

 

[Drak3]

2 hours ago, Bcat00 said:

Oh man this is going to be a giant hit in Japan because they love this kind of stuff.

 

vendibg machines everywhere you go, even in the country side for the craziest food stuff

Like panties!

[avg123]

can it swat away flies?

[Urishima]

17 minutes ago, maartendc said:

those were my thoughts as well. Flippy the burger flipping robot tried to mimic a human hand making the burger. The best machines do not mimic humans, but do it the best way it can be automated. (Most assembly lines dont look like 100 human hands doing something, rather just a series of rollers, presses, ovens, pressure chambers, welders, etc.

Thank fuck for that. I worked in car manufacturing for a while, on the assembly line. Imagine the fucking nightmare fuel of 100 robot hands on the automated lines.

[mynameisjuan]

Mondo burger is becoming real

[captain_to_fire]

2 hours ago, mr moose said:

Cue in all the people who think this will result in major societal collapse because automation is an evil thing that has done that in the past...

Well Creator still hires people. Waiters and cashiers are still people and the ones that refresh the contents of bread, meat, and condiments are still people. It's possible that the bun bakers are still people. So the only ones displaced are the people that turn on the grill and flip the burgers.

[MyName13]

So this "worker" will be more useless than now?Why not fully automate the process?

[maartendc]

3 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

So this "worker" will be more useless than now?Why not fully automate the process?

I mean, it is only a matter of time before they use these things in a vending machine / kiosk kind of setting, where you just have a giant touchscreen, configure your burger, and collect it at the end. The only employee you still need is to refill the ingredients into the machine. 

 

Usually a burger "food truck" has at least 3 or 4 employees: one guy taking orders/money and 2 or 3 guys behind the grill. Now you can do the same amount of orders (or more / faster) with just 1 person refilling the machine.

[captain_to_fire]

5 minutes ago, MyName13 said:

So this "worker" will be more useless than now?Why not fully automate the process?

The only automated one is the cooking and assembly of the burger. They still employ waiters and cashiers but instead of pen and paper, they use iPhones and Apple Watches.

[Techicolors]

wasn't there a burger-flipping robot that failed to get pushed to more locations? 

 

anyway i think it's a cool concept. tho you might have to retrain the workers to maintain the machine and use the app. and i don't think this will be adopted by more local restaurants

[captain_to_fire]

1 minute ago, Technicolors said:

wasn't there a burger-flipping robot that failed to get pushed to more locations? 

 

anyway i think it's a cool concept. tho you might have to retrain the workers to maintain the machine and use the app. and i don't think this will be adopted by more local restaurants

That was Flippy and it failed because it tried so hard to act like a human flipping a burger. The people behind the Creator start-up didn't tried to act like a human cook.