Chipotle robots might soon construct your salads and bowls

Your Chipotle burrito will be rolled by a human, but its guts may soon be assembled by a robot.

The fast-casual chain announced Tuesday a new automated digital “makeline” that uses machines to build bowls and salads to customer specifications. Human employees are then expected to incorporate the robot-assembled ingredients into burritos, tacos and quesadillas.

For now, the new system-developed in collaboration with Hyphen, a kitchen technology company-is being tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, Calif. But the company expects the technology will be live in restaurants in upcoming months, rolled out slowly starting with locations in Southern California.

Black beans or pinto; carnitas or chicken al pastor? The customer keys in a digital order, a bowl shoots down, and the ingredients are dispensed from above.

Curt Garner, Chipotle’s chief customer and technology officer, said the goal is not to replace workers but to meet the rising demands of serving customers who order online in addition to those who come into the store. Digital sales in 2022 were $3 billion, Garner said, about 38 percent of sales overall. “We’re operating like two restaurants out of one,” he said.

As recently as 2016, he said, orders placed outside the building were done by fax. Customers would show up in the physical queue at the restaurant to pick up – a process that often disrupted the flow of in-person ordering. The chain started assembling remotely placed orders in the back of the restaurant. In this new system, robots will be part of that separate, backroom assembly line.

In-person customers want different things than digital customers, he said. They want to chat, ask for a bit less of this, a titch more of that, while “digital kitchen customers wants to make sure an order is ready quickly and is accurate,” Garner said.

The shift is part of Chipotle’s foray into “cobotics”-collaborative robots that work with rather than replace humans. The quick-serve chain has dabbled in robotics before, debuting a robotic “Autocado” this year that cuts, cores and peels avocados to be turned into guacamole, and prototyping a robot called Chippy last year that fries and seasons fresh tortilla chips.

Garner insists the innovations are meant to help human employees with onerous tasks. The company consulted with workers to determine the things best outsourced to robots and artificial intelligence, he said.

But the shift comes as concern is rising over the effect of automation on job security, and as fast-food workers nationally demand higher wages and better working conditions. Workers seldom get a say in what jobs are being automated or a cut of the profits from work becoming more efficient, said Ben Reynolds, secretary-treasurer of Restaurant Workers United, a national union.

“If we’re not organized, it’s easy for owners to use automation to undercut our work and lay people off. It doesn’t have to be like this,” he said. “When ports were introducing new technologies in the 1970s, union longshoremen negotiated to make sure they also benefited from those changes. That’s why ILWU dockworkers are making six figures today.”

Bethany Khan, communications director of Unite Here’s Culinary Union in Las Vegas, which is currently on strike, said that since 2018 the union’s contracts have contained clear goals regarding technology and automation, including giving employees advance notice before implementing new technology, employees right to privacy from tracking technology and severance packages if workers are laid off due to the introduction of technology.

“We know that every day technology is evolving, and we want to make sure workers have a future in whatever technology brings,” Khan said. “We’re committed to workers not being left behind.”

For now, at least, Chipotle’s Chippy, Autocado and other “cobotic” efforts will work alongside their human co-workers to get orders filled.