Why More Restaurants Are Turning to Robots for Help in the Kitchen

Could you cut, core, and peel an avocado in under 30 seconds? Even if you could, would you want to? Probably not, especially if you’re one of the thousands of people who’ve sustained an avocado-related knife injury in the past couple of decades. Still, the guac must go on.

Last year at Chipotle, employees prepped over 5 million cases — nearly 130 million pounds — of avocados. But in September, at one Southern California Chipotle location, a robot stepped in to help. The Autocado has one job, and it does it well. It can process up to 25 pounds of avocados at a time, cutting, coring, and peeling a single avocado in approximately 26 seconds. Once the bot finishes its work, human employees can make the guacamole in half the time it used to take. By automating this tedious, time-consuming — and, at times, dangerous — task, employees spend less time slicing and more time assisting guests.

Efficient robots help restaurants. They’re fast and consistent, making pizzas, mixing salads, and working the deep fryer. Bots act as baristas, quickly crafting espresso drinks, and as servers, ferrying plates to and from tables inside busy dining rooms. Sidewalk-friendly robots will even deliver an Uber Eats order to your front door.

The obvious implication — that robots replace human workers — is marginally true. But often, says Jessica Kramer, a hospitality industry investor and adviser, “It’s replacing people that the restaurant can’t find.” The average restaurant employee works at a job for a little over three months, according to data from restaurant scheduling service 7shifts.

Sweetgreen opened its first automated restaurantdubbed the Infinite Kitchen, outside of Chicago in 2023. It resembles a giant walk-in salad vending machine, equipped with a series of large tubes programmed to dispense perfect portions of prepared ingredients into bowls. It can finish an order in as little as five minutes. Human employees add finishing touches too delicate or tricky for a dispenser, including, funnily enough, avocado, sliced by hand — the old-fashioned way.

By the numbers, the Infinite Kitchen is, frankly, killing it. The robot-assisted restaurants produce up to 500 bowls per hour. They require fewer employees to run, so the company saves on labor costs. Inside, customers tend to spend more money per order, making these stores more profitable than their traditionally staffed counterparts. Early data suggests employees at these stores are happier, quitting less frequently.

“Team members at Infinite Kitchen locations have shared positive feedback about the work environment, noting a strong sense of balance and efficiency,” says Sweetgreen CEO Jonathan Neman. The chain’s restaurant managers are excited to experience it, too, he adds. After the success of the first location, Sweetgreen opened 11 morebuilding new stores in cities including Seattle and Huntington Beach, California, and renovating a few existing locations, including one in the center of Manhattan.

Watching robots toil in public can feel dystopian. But there’s also a certain thrill to watching new technology perform physical tasks that previously only a human could do. “I definitely see people enjoying interacting with a robot,” Kramer says. They want to watch it work or even pose for photos with it.

The roving, wide-eyed delivery robots from Serve Robotics might be the most photogenic of them all. The all-electric bots, resembling large coolers on four wheels, can carry four 16-inch pizzas. They can travel 48 miles on one charge and operate in temperatures up to 113°F. The bots have already delivered tens of thousands of Uber Eats orders in Los Angeles. One even enjoyed a starring role in the John Mulaney Netflix comedy special, Everybody’s in L.A.in 2024. Similar robots are rolling around in cities including Houston and Chicago and on college campuses across the country.

Of course, not every bot makes the cut. Chili’s tested a handful of robot servers in some locations but ditched the program after a couple years. Kernela vegan concept from the Chipotle founder Steve Ells, received a ton of buzz for its star employee: a custom-built bot tasked with moving food around the kitchen and in and out of ovens. And yet, it closed its first and only location in February, just a year after opening.

According to the National Restaurant Associationjust 9% of operators plan to devote resources to restaurant robots in 2025. But for the ones that do, robots that complement a human workforce — not replace it — are the goal. “If an employee can be taught to use a robot, you introduce a level of consistency from the get-go that can really benefit the guest,” Kramer says.