How Robots Are Revolutionizing Fast-Food Kitchens

• Restaurants are increasingly using robots to handle mundane human tasks amid rising labor costs.
• Chipotle, White Castle, and Sweetgreen are using robots to prepare salads, fries, and chips.
•  A fully automated burger restaurant debuts this month in Southern California.

Restaurant automation is moving to the back of the house, where robots can be found flipping burgers, cooking fries, and assembling mega-size salads and bowls.

The biggest changes are happening in the fast-food industry, with chains like Chipotle, Sweetgreen, and White Castle tapping robots to automate mundane and highly-repetitive tasks such as peeling avocados and frying potatoes. The move comes as chains face rising labor costs due to inflation and state minimum wage mandates.

Some are going all-in with automation powering everything from ordering to preparing food.

On December 12, Sweetgreen opened its second restaurant with an automated kitchen. The Huntington Beach, California, store uses kiosks to process orders and a robot-powered assembly line that can crank out up to 500 salads per hour. That’s roughly 50% more output than a team of staffers preparing dine-in and digital orders.

“It’s quiet. It’s fast. It’s efficient,” Sweetgreen’s new head of culinary, Chad Brauze, told Business Insider during a preview tour of the automated restaurant in early December. The staff size of the restaurant is 14-16 people.

Investors are taking note. Venture capitalists invested $364.5 million in kitchen robotics in 2022, according to PitchBook. VCs spent $153.7 million as of September 30, 2023.

Here’s a closer look at the kitchen robots changing how fast-food chains prepare your meal.