Not _fully_ automated. They may not be "chefs" according to the video, but there are clearly people assembling food.

True - its definitely got a manual component to it. It's interesting to see the sushi rice machine in use in the first half of the video.

What's interesting about restaurant automation is that it could go either way in terms of making existing franchises more of a monopoly or enabling the little guy compete against them.

I tend to actually lean toward the later because the biggest issue with restaurants is managing/coordinating a team of people (interviewing, payroll, scheduling, healthcare, HR, diversity). But if automation can enable the independent restaurant owner to work with a skeleton crew and focus on delivering value and a differentiated product the consumer will win in the long run.

I feel that we as entrepreneurial engineers need to make robots that will help make the independent proprietor capable of competing with the larger franchisors like McDonald. Something like an artisanal grass fed beef hamburger restaurant robot to help the food truck compete against McDonalds.

Here in Austin we have a local chain serving grass-fed beef hamburger that's cheaper than McDonald's by $1.19. The 'combo meal' is $0.50 cheaper at McDonald's, however P. Terry's also makes their fries and everything else from scratch, without any robots. I think they try to take good care of their employees as well.

http://pterrys.com/menu/

P. Terry's serves "all-natural" beef, but it is not grass-fed. If you want a grass-fed burger in Austin, try Wholly Cow (which is quite a bit more expensive than McDonald's, as you would expect).

Same thing as Gordon Ramsey serving prepared meals at his restaurants:

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2009/apr/18/gordon-...

Okay, it's "pre"-prepared. Does it taste good? The fact that it's re-heated in plastic bags is more off-putting than it simply being prepared ahead of time...

from what I recall customers where unaware of any difference in taste, so I'd say: success.

And yes, customers were angry when informed it was pre-prepared food (specially being upscale restaurants).

Heck, sounds like the bag could be tossed into a microwave for all I know.

So, those people care more about showing off that they are spending a lot of money, than whether or not the food is better.

> What's interesting about restaurant automation is that it could go either way in terms of making existing franchises more of a monopoly or enabling the little guy compete against them.

Whoever can make his restaurants 0.05% more efficient than the next guy will take over the entire market as scaling up will be so easy.

True. Then maybe it becomes how you define the market. After a while people will crave something beyond burgers and sushi. The wants of mankind are infinite.

The thought/hope is that if individual chef's are freed from having to managing teams of people to handle backend restaurant activities like dish washing, food forecasting, etc. they can start bringing quality differentiated products (Sengalese food, Peruvian food, etc.) to market or existing products to new geographical markets (sushi to rural Midwest).

Sort of how personal computers and now cloud computing enable tech entrepreneurs compete against yesterday's incumbents.

Do you believe that Burger King, McDonalds, and Wendy's are all within 5bpp of productivity of each other? Because none of them have taken over all of the market, not by a wide margin.

I seriously doubt their productivity numbers are anywhere near that tight a spread and yet we've seen no clear monopoly emerge.

I think automation will change the game though. Because the variance that comes from the human factor will be gone. If one chain is a tiny bit better, then every single restaurant will be a tiny bit better. The 0.05% advantage will not drown in the random noise of good and bad employees. And policy updates can happen immediately, the lag from having to retrain will not be there.

One source of variance that will remain is location. The local branch of Very-Slightly-Better-Chain may be poorly situated, which could put them at a disadvantage.

I'm skeptical. This "tiny bit better" might not be noticeable by customers, so it could easily be swamped by better marketing or by having a more convenient location (which will never be consistent).

Also, there is a centralized facility somewhere with people chopping up the fish. It improves efficiency as you need less staff, but it's not exactly automated.

And waitstaff.

I've been to one of those. Setting aside my inner geek, as a foreigner, I really liked that the tablets for ordering were able to switch to English. Also that I was able to eat myself full for about $10 was a nice bonus.

I recently witnessed the latest upgrade to conveyor belt sushi. In this video, you can see the conveyor belts going past the customers, but they still must monitor the sushi going past to pick up their orders.

In a newer restaurant I recently went to, each table has a secondary conveyor belt going right up to the table. After you've placed the order, your plate of sushi rolls to your table like usual, but in addition it then pushes that plate so that it rolls right in front of you on the table.

You didn't watch the video carefully enough. At 0:55, a direct order system is shown, using a secondary conveyor.

The automated restaurant is a chain called Kula Sushi. They have several branches in the US, there's about a half-dozen in southern california.

And Silicon Valley! https://www.yelp.com/biz/kula-revolving-sushi-bar-cupertino Thanks will try this weekend.