- White Castle plans to add 100 Flippy robots to its kitchens nationwide, which can cook various food items.
- Reports suggest that up to 82% of restaurant positions could be replaced by robots, potentially saving the industry over $12 billion in annual wages.
- The restaurant industry is struggling to find workers, with a significant decrease in jobs since the pandemic.
- Miso Robotics, the maker of Flippy, uses computer vision technology and AI to automate the cooking process.
- Flippy 2, the latest version, works around the clock and costs $3,500 per month to lease.
- The fast food industry is facing challenges such as low wages, high turnover, and safety hazards, which robots like Flippy can help address.
- The adoption of automation in the restaurant industry has been slow due to cost, but the declining prices of robots may change that.
- Miso Robotics is a leading player in the field, but competition is expected to increase in the future.
- Robot adoption in the industry could happen quickly, similar to the way delivery apps revolutionized the restaurant space.

- Robot adoption in the restaurant industry could happen quickly, similar to how delivery apps revolutionized the space.
- The global food delivery app business is now over $150 billion, triple the amount in 2017.
- Fast food restaurants, facing pressures like rising food costs and staff turnover, would welcome this development.
- Americans spent $2.1 trillion on food in 2021, with over half of that going to food-away-from-home purchases.
- Robotics in the industry is no longer a question but a certainty, with the focus now on the pace and form of implementation.
- Automation solutions like Flippy 2 will be increasingly deployed in everyday restaurants, including well-known brands.

This robot named Flippy runs the fry station at a White Castle outside of Chicago. With a mechanical arm and using computer vision technology Flippy can cook everything from french fries and onion rings to cheese sticks. White Castle said it plans to add 100 Flippy’s to its kitchens’ nationwide. Up to 82% of restaurant positions could, to some extent, be replaced by robots. Automation could save U.S. fast food restaurants over $12 billion in annual wages. And restaurants are also struggling to find workers. American restaurants are down more than 560,000 jobs or about 4.6% of its workforce from their pre-pandemic levels. So what impact will robots have on the fast food industry and the livelihood of its workers? CNBC got a behind the scenes look at restaurant robot maker Miso Robotics to find out.

Chapters: 
0:00-2:23 - Intro 
2:24-5:17 - Chapter 1 Miso Robotics
5:18-8:36 - Chapter 2 Workers quitting
8:37-10:59 - Chapter 3 Importance of Seeds

Produced by: Shawn Baldwin
Additional Camera: Andrew Evers
Graphics: Christina Locopo
Supervising Producer: Jeniece Pettitt

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Will Robots Replace Fast Food Workers?

This robot named Flippy runs the fry station at a White Castle outside of Chicago.

With its mechanical arm and using computer vision technology, Flippy can cook everything from french fries and onion rings to cheese sticks.

White Castle said it plans to add 100 Flippies to its kitchens nationwide.

We used to need 2 people to operate that french fry area during peak hours and now we are able to only have 1 person operate in that area.

Would you like to try the mac and cheese bites today?

If the screen is corrected, it's 827, second window please.

Fast food jobs are demanding, quick-moving and sometimes even dangerous.

When you look at the restaurant industry, it's a little bit late to the party in adopting automation and robotics in particular.

So far, the restaurants that are using them are trying them out, say that this automation really only has to do with helping relieve boring tasks from workers' plates, help make their jobs easier, let them engage with the customers more.

But there's a lot of reports out there kind of guesstimating how many jobs could be replaced by these robots, by automation.

Up to 82 percent of restaurant positions could to some extent be replaced by robots.

Fast food restaurants over $12 billion in annual wages.

And restaurants are also struggling to find workers.

American restaurants are down more than 560,000 jobs or about 4.6 percent of its workforce from their pre-pandemic levels.

About a third of Americans work in a restaurant as their first job and half have some restaurant work experience.

Yeah, the economics of this are very, very compelling.

You take minimum wage just around the $20,000 per year mark.

Other companies in the space include Picnic that has a robot that makes pizza and Autek, whose machines make sushi.

So what impact will robots have on the fast food industry and the livelihood of its workers?

CNBC got a behind the scenes look at restaurant robot maker Miso Robotics to find out.

Miso Robotics got its start in 2016 with a handful of engineers in a Pasadena, California garage.

2 years later, the company launched Flippy at a nearby Kali Burger restaurant.

Flippy's first job was turning over a hamburger patty after it was placed on a grill by a human chef.

But the company quickly pivoted to fried foods, rolling out a portable fryer station for baseball games at Dodger Stadium.

This was really the peak throughput test for us.

Can Flippy keep up with in-between innings at a Dodger game and everybody goes to the concession stand?

In 2021, Miso launched Flippy 2 using a mounted rail system, AI and computer vision technology that can identify and track food as it moves through the structure.

Although it has a camera, tablet and robotic arm, engineers say the real tech is in the software.

The hard thing to get right about this product is having the computer vision, the algorithms that plan the cook cycle and the software that manages the robotic motion to all work together so that it's as reliable as a refrigerator and it does the job.

Food is dispensed directly from the freezer into a basket.

The robot's computer vision identifies the type of food and places it in the appropriate fryer.

Once the food is cooked, the basket is taken out of the fryer, shaken and dumped into a holding area where it is bagged by a worker.

For those of us who have been in a restaurant, this is exactly the same process that is done today by a human.

He's constantly playing like a multi-frame game of chess in his mind, understanding where to be next.

So his sequence of movements is precise and he doesn't undercook, overcook food.

Miso charges restaurants about $3,500 a month for a Flippy 2 under its robot as a service model.

The company charges an additional fee of about $10,000 for installation.

By comparison, the median hourly wage of fast food workers in the U.S.

There were roughly 11.7 million restaurant workers in the U.S.

We have many 24-hour locations where Flippy 2 is installed.

Built in Columbus, Ohio, it takes MISO about 6 weeks to manufacture 1 Flippy 2.

The current off-the-rack mechanical arm is the same type designed for car factories.

And Miso says they cost $15,000 each, plus another $5,000 to modify with additional grippers and sensors.

Last year, Miso partnered with robotic arm maker Ally Robotics in hopes to start producing its own arm in 2023.

The company also makes a streamlined version of Flippy 2 called Flippy Light, as well as a drinks dispenser named Sippy.

Flippy Light is currently being tested in restaurants by Chipotle.

And what Flippy Light is designed to do is to take 1 item that requires frying and just cook the heck out of it all day long.

With about 25,000 shareholders, Miso has so far raised more than $70 million in crowdfunding.

The company's also announced it is testing a robot that fries chicken wings for Wing Zone.

The global fast food industry is a $273 billion business, including more than 280,000 fast food restaurants in the U.S.

At this White Castle on the outskirts of Chicago, staff in the busy lunch hour shift face a barrage of orders coming from drive-thru customers as well as the main counter.

Would you like to try any mac and cheese bites today?

We're all in our positions, but we do move around, jump about to help out to

But meager salaries, fewer teenagers in the workforce and fear of COVID have been a drain on fast food restaurants.

Job openings at restaurants and hotels reached 1.3 million in November 2022, the 20th consecutive month with over a million vacancies.

Bars and restaurants make up about 90 percent of those positions.

A typical fast food worker makes about $26,000 a year compared with a concierge at a hotel who can earn more than $37,000.

During a pandemic, we face a lot of staffing challenges.

And things are better, but there are still challenges with staff in many locations.

To assist workers, White Castle added Flippy to take over its fry station.

The robot cooks food more consistently and doesn't require time off.

And I think some restaurants are also looking at this as a way of, well, this robot is expensive, but is it cheaper than however many employees I would need to hire, especially because a lot of workers have not been sticking around as long as they're used to.

This is 1 of the positions that is the hardest to fill and hardest to retain for restaurant operators.

There are dozens of positions back of house.

Robots like Flippy solve other problems for restaurants, too.

For starters, fast food work can be dangerous.

In California, the state with the highest number of people employed in the fast food industry, workers face health hazards ranging from overflowing sewage, smoke inhalation and extreme heat, according to 1 study.

Turnover is another headache for the industry.

Prior to the pandemic, the restaurant industry faced a workforce turnover of 130 percent, according to Panera Bread CFO Michael Bufano.

At the same time, low wage workers made up 43 percent of the U.S.

As you look at the labor allocation within the restaurant, that's being able to ship 1 human from that station somewhere else.

And that's saving every single month probably somewhere around 7 to 900 dollars in actual profit.

Another incentive for restaurants, hard to fill positions have forced chains to push hourly wages to new highs.

The wages have been very low in these industries.

They've really been very much pegged to the minimum wage so that when the minimum wage has been allowed to decline in real terms, that is, it hasn't kept up with inflation, then those jobs get progressively less and less attractive.

Labor is 1 of the biggest cost restaurants face, averaging about 25 to 30 percent of sales.

McDonald's said it would reach an average of $15 an hour by 2024 at all company-owned restaurants.

Starbucks said it was bringing its pay floor for U.S.

Gen Z consumers made 5 billion restaurant visits in the year ending July 2022, including 4.3 billion trips to fast food eateries.

Restaurants often have thin margins, which is 1 of the reasons why adoption of automation has been slow.

But that could be changing as the cost of robots has declined by 50 percent over the last 3 decades.

Industrial robot usage has tripled over the past decade from about a million in 2010 to 3000000 in 2020.

The auto industry, by far the largest segment in the market, is followed by electronics, food and beverage and metals and machinery.

The industrial robotics market is expected to reach $81 billion by 2028, up from almost $42 billion in 2021.

But will those trends impact MISO's business?

Robots are hard to develop and they're expensive to develop.

It takes a lot of time and money and frankly, a lot of engineers to get all the technology working together smoothly.

MISO makes money by having more and more robots in the field.

In 2021, MISO spent $1.5 million on R&D, $7.8 million on salaries, $6 million on sales and marketing, and a little over $6 million on overhead and administrative expenses.

Revenue was just $36,000 in 2021, mostly from the deployment of 1 flippy.

Right now, it seems like Miso Robotics is probably the biggest and best known player in the space.

Competitors is a pretty small pool at the moment.

We've been on the forefront of this for a long time, but they are coming and we know the ones that aren't here today will be here tomorrow.

Robot adoption could come quickly In a similar fashion to the way delivery apps revolutionized the restaurant space.

The global food delivery app business is over $150 billion, triple the amount it was in 2017.

And that would be welcome news for fast food restaurants who face pressures ranging from rising food costs to staff turnover.

Americans spent $2.1 trillion on food in 2021, with more than half of that money going to food-away-from-home purchases.

There's no longer a question of, are robotics coming to the industry?

The question is, at what pace and in what form?

And what you will see in the months and years ahead for the foreseeable future is more and more automation solutions like Flippy 2 being deployed in everyday restaurants, including some of the best own brands in the world.


Speaker 0: Welcome to White Castle. This is Bernina. How may I help you?

Speaker 1: This robot named Flippy runs the fry station at a White Castle outside of Chicago. With its mechanical arm and using computer vision technology, Flippy can cook everything from french fries and onion rings to cheese sticks. White Castle said it plans to add 100 Flippies to its kitchens nationwide.

Speaker 2: We used to need 2 people to operate that french fry area during peak hours and now we are able to only have 1 person operate in that area.

Speaker 0: Would you like to try the mac and cheese bites today? All right, thank you. If the screen is corrected, it's 827, second window please.

Speaker 1: Fast food jobs are demanding, quick-moving and sometimes even dangerous. But not for robots.

Speaker 3: When you look at the restaurant industry, it's a little bit late to the party in adopting automation and robotics in particular.

Speaker 4: So far, the restaurants that are using them are trying them out, say that this automation really only has to do with helping relieve boring tasks from workers' plates, help make their jobs easier, let them engage with the customers more. But there's a lot of reports out there kind of guesstimating how many jobs could be replaced by these robots, by automation.

Speaker 1: Up to 82 percent of restaurant positions could to some extent be replaced by robots. Automation could save U.S. Fast food restaurants over $12 billion in annual wages. And restaurants are also struggling to find workers. American restaurants are down more than 560,000 jobs or about 4.6 percent of its workforce from their pre-pandemic levels.

About a third of Americans work in a restaurant as their first job and half have some restaurant work experience.

Speaker 0: Yeah, the economics of this are very, very compelling. You take minimum wage just around the $20,000 per year mark. That's the cost of 1 robot.

Speaker 1: Other companies in the space include Picnic that has a robot that makes pizza and Autek, whose machines make sushi. So what impact will robots have on the fast food industry and the livelihood of its workers? CNBC got a behind the scenes look at restaurant robot maker Miso Robotics to find out. Miso Robotics got its start in 2016 with a handful of engineers in a Pasadena, California garage. 2 years later, the company launched Flippy at a nearby Kali Burger restaurant.

Flippy's first job was turning over a hamburger patty after it was placed on a grill by a human chef. But the company quickly pivoted to fried foods, rolling out a portable fryer station for baseball games at Dodger Stadium.

Speaker 5: This was really the peak throughput test for us. Can Flippy keep up with in-between innings at a Dodger game and everybody goes to the concession stand? Can we meet that demand?

Speaker 1: In 2021, Miso launched Flippy 2 using a mounted rail system, AI and computer vision technology that can identify and track food as it moves through the structure. Although it has a camera, tablet and robotic arm, engineers say the real tech is in the software.

Speaker 3: The hard thing to get right about this product is having the computer vision, the algorithms that plan the cook cycle and the software that manages the robotic motion to all work together so that it's as reliable as a refrigerator and it does the job.

Speaker 1: Food is dispensed directly from the freezer into a basket. The robot's computer vision identifies the type of food and places it in the appropriate fryer. Once the food is cooked, the basket is taken out of the fryer, shaken and dumped into a holding area where it is bagged by a worker.

Speaker 6: For those of us who have been in a restaurant, this is exactly the same process that is done today by a human.

Speaker 3: He's constantly playing like a multi-frame game of chess in his mind, understanding where to be next. So his sequence of movements is precise and he doesn't undercook, overcook food.

Speaker 1: But what about the cost? Miso charges restaurants about $3,500 a month for a Flippy 2 under its robot as a service model. The company charges an additional fee of about $10,000 for installation. By comparison, the median hourly wage of fast food workers in the U.S. Is just $12.07 an hour.

There were roughly 11.7 million restaurant workers in the U.S. In 2022.

Speaker 3: But Flippy 2 is different. Flippy 2 works around the clock. We have many 24-hour locations where Flippy 2 is installed. Flippy doesn't call in sick.

Speaker 1: Built in Columbus, Ohio, it takes MISO about 6 weeks to manufacture 1 Flippy 2. The current off-the-rack mechanical arm is the same type designed for car factories. And Miso says they cost $15,000 each, plus another $5,000 to modify with additional grippers and sensors. Last year, Miso partnered with robotic arm maker Ally Robotics in hopes to start producing its own arm in 2023. The company also makes a streamlined version of Flippy 2 called Flippy Light, as well as a drinks dispenser named Sippy.

Flippy Light is currently being tested in restaurants by Chipotle.

Speaker 3: And what Flippy Light is designed to do is to take 1 item that requires frying and just cook the heck out of it all day long.

Speaker 1: With about 25,000 shareholders, Miso has so far raised more than $70 million in crowdfunding. The company's also announced it is testing a robot that fries chicken wings for Wing Zone. The global fast food industry is a $273 billion business, including more than 280,000 fast food restaurants in the U.S. Alone. At this White Castle on the outskirts of Chicago, staff in the busy lunch hour shift face a barrage of orders coming from drive-thru customers as well as the main counter.

Speaker 0: Would you like to try any mac and cheese bites today? Thank you. The screen's corrected. It's 1042. Second window, please.

It's very fast-paced. We're all in our positions, but we do move around, jump about to help out to

Speaker 1: get the orders out. But meager salaries, fewer teenagers in the workforce and fear of COVID have been a drain on fast food restaurants. Job openings at restaurants and hotels reached 1.3 million in November 2022, the 20th consecutive month with over a million vacancies. Bars and restaurants make up about 90 percent of those positions. A typical fast food worker makes about $26,000 a year compared with a concierge at a hotel who can earn more than $37,000.

Speaker 2: During a pandemic, we face a lot of staffing challenges. And things are better, but there are still challenges with staff in many locations.

Speaker 1: To assist workers, White Castle added Flippy to take over its fry station. The robot cooks food more consistently and doesn't require time off.

Speaker 4: And I think some restaurants are also looking at this as a way of, well, this robot is expensive, but is it cheaper than however many employees I would need to hire, especially because a lot of workers have not been sticking around as long as they're used to.

Speaker 3: This is 1 of the positions that is the hardest to fill and hardest to retain for restaurant operators. There are dozens of positions back of house. This 1 is a really demanding 1. It's hot and it's very, very fast paced.

Speaker 1: Robots like Flippy solve other problems for restaurants, too. For starters, fast food work can be dangerous. In California, the state with the highest number of people employed in the fast food industry, workers face health hazards ranging from overflowing sewage, smoke inhalation and extreme heat, according to 1 study. Turnover is another headache for the industry. Prior to the pandemic, the restaurant industry faced a workforce turnover of 130 percent, according to Panera Bread CFO Michael Bufano.

At the same time, low wage workers made up 43 percent of the U.S. Workforce.

Speaker 6: As you look at the labor allocation within the restaurant, that's being able to ship 1 human from that station somewhere else. And that's saving every single month probably somewhere around 7 to 900 dollars in actual profit.

Speaker 1: Another incentive for restaurants, hard to fill positions have forced chains to push hourly wages to new highs.

Speaker 7: The wages have been very low in these industries. They've really been very much pegged to the minimum wage so that when the minimum wage has been allowed to decline in real terms, that is, it hasn't kept up with inflation, then those jobs get progressively less and less attractive.

Speaker 1: Labor is 1 of the biggest cost restaurants face, averaging about 25 to 30 percent of sales. McDonald's said it would reach an average of $15 an hour by 2024 at all company-owned restaurants. Starbucks said it was bringing its pay floor for U.S. Baristas to $15 an hour. Gen Z consumers made 5 billion restaurant visits in the year ending July 2022, including 4.3 billion trips to fast food eateries.

Restaurants often have thin margins, which is 1 of the reasons why adoption of automation has been slow. But that could be changing as the cost of robots has declined by 50 percent over the last 3 decades. Industrial robot usage has tripled over the past decade from about a million in 2010 to 3000000 in 2020. The auto industry, by far the largest segment in the market, is followed by electronics, food and beverage and metals and machinery. The industrial robotics market is expected to reach $81 billion by 2028, up from almost $42 billion in 2021.

But will those trends impact MISO's business?

Speaker 3: Robots are hard to develop and they're expensive to develop. It takes a lot of time and money and frankly, a lot of engineers to get all the technology working together smoothly. MISO makes money by having more and more robots in the field.

Speaker 1: In 2021, MISO spent $1.5 million on R&D, $7.8 million on salaries, $6 million on sales and marketing, and a little over $6 million on overhead and administrative expenses. Revenue was just $36,000 in 2021, mostly from the deployment of 1 flippy.

Speaker 4: Right now, it seems like Miso Robotics is probably the biggest and best known player in the space.

Speaker 6: Competitors is a pretty small pool at the moment. We've been on the forefront of this for a long time, but they are coming and we know the ones that aren't here today will be here tomorrow.

Speaker 1: Robot adoption could come quickly In a similar fashion to the way delivery apps revolutionized the restaurant space. The global food delivery app business is over $150 billion, triple the amount it was in 2017. And that would be welcome news for fast food restaurants who face pressures ranging from rising food costs to staff turnover. Americans spent $2.1 trillion on food in 2021, with more than half of that money going to food-away-from-home purchases.

Speaker 6: The tide has turned. There's no longer a question of, are robotics coming to the industry? It's a foregone conclusion. The question is, at what pace and in what form?

Speaker 3: And what you will see in the months and years ahead for the foreseeable future is more and more automation solutions like Flippy 2 being deployed in everyday restaurants, including some of the best own brands in the world.

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Will Robots Replace Fast Food Workers?