Chipotle has hired a robot named Autocado to test in their Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, California, that will assist with the guacamole-making process, and reduce the amount of time it takes for employee’s to dedicate their concentration to making the luscious side-dish.
With Autocado, the automated machine will cut, core, and peel the avocados before the ingredients are handed off to an employee to hand mash.
It takes around 50 minutes to produce guacamole, so if the orders are coming in, that translates to less employees available to keep the chain a-movin’.
“The intensive labor of cutting, coring, and scooping avocados could be relieved with Autocado, but we still maintain the essential culinary experience of hand mashing and hand preparing the guacamole to our exacting standards,” said Curt Garner, Chief Customer and Technology Officer at Chipotle, in the news release.
The company that created the automated Autocado, Vebu, spent time with training managers to analyze the process, and see where they can utilize such robots in the kitchen to streamline certain tasks.
“Our purpose as a robotic company is to leverage automation technology to give workers more flexibility in their day-to-day work,” said Buck Jordan, CEO of Vebu, in the release.
Having an automated chef like Autocado, working in the kitchen alongside staff, would hopefully create a symbiotic relationship between man, and metal that would reduce time spent preparing, and cooking – to better serve the customer with a more accessible staff.
