The global food automation market is projected to achieve $28 billion by 2026 and the restaurant business is experiencing a significant shift, more and more counting on know-how to boost productiveness, scale back operational inefficiencies and enhance worker retention. Like all new know-how, what begins out as “on the market” can turn into par for the course in more and more shorter intervals of time.
Listed here are some actionable steps to assist navigate this technological revolution whereas sustaining the human contact that defines the hospitality expertise.
Getting began: Assessing present operations
In line with the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation’s 2024 State of the Restaurant Industry report, 47% of operators anticipate that know-how and automation will turn into extra widespread to deal with labor shortages. Step one in the direction of this entails analyzing your restaurant’s operations to determine the areas that might profit from automation. Good workouts embrace:
- Monitoring time spent on repetitive duties within the kitchen and front-of-house
- Figuring out bottlenecks in your preparation and repair processes
- Surveying workers concerning the duties they discover most tedious or bodily demanding
- Analyzing your present know-how infrastructure to determine what wants refreshing (and on the similar time, figuring out potential integration factors between parts of your tech stack in order that methods work with one another).
Automate your hiring course of
Restaurant operators are leveraging synthetic intelligence and different applied sciences to assist them entice, vet and onboard good worker candidates. Applicant monitoring methods (ATS) are software program instruments that assist automate and handle the recruiting course of, slicing out time-consuming duties—like writing job advertisements, sorting by way of functions, monitoring candidates and scheduling interviews.
The system permits recruiters (usually, managers) to give attention to interviewing, assessing and hiring the most effective candidates. Some methods even use AI assistants to care for screening candidates to make sure they’ve the essential necessities for the job earlier than advancing to the reside interview stage.
“Search for an ATS that’s tailor-made to what people looking for jobs within the foodservice business need,” says Arlene Estrada Petokas, chief folks officer of Kura Revolving Sushi Bar. Candidates want the apps to be simple to make use of, quick-responding, and to have multi-language functionality, for instance.
Know-how on this area is evolving shortly and is extra refined than ever. Examine five more tech solutions to automate the hiring course of.
Streamline kitchen operations with automation
In an surroundings the place velocity and consistency are paramount, automation has confirmed to be a game-changer. By integrating automated methods into kitchen operations, eating places can considerably enhance effectivity.
- In the event you haven’t already, put money into old-school however efficient automated meals preparation instruments (e.g., vegetable choppers, portion management dispensers, digital thermometers that generate temperature logs/ship alerts).
- Implement digital kitchen show methods to streamline order manufacturing and look into kitchen shows that practice/stroll workers by way of duties in actual time.
- Discover precision cooking applied sciences—applied sciences that robotically cook dinner meals to the right inside temperature—to enhance consistency and high quality. Sous-vide is an instance.
- Discover robotic cooking assistants for repetitive duties like frying or grilling, eating room dish supply/bussing.
Sweetgreen’s Infinite Kitchen, which the model plans to roll out in seven new models (and 4 retrofits) within the coming yr, includes a system that robotically portion-dispenses salad elements into bowls, as much as 500 an hour. Staff nonetheless have to prep elements for the dispensers and add the ending touches to the salads. In line with reports, models with the system enhance order accuracy, scale back labor turnover and have skilled 10% greater ticket averages.
Extra just lately, Chipotle Mexican Grill started testing its Autocado (an avocado processing cobotic—individual + machine—prototype) and the Augmented Makeline (a cobotic makeline) in two eating places.
Use automation for worker security and ability enhancement
Give attention to implementing applied sciences that enhance office security and permit workers to give attention to higher-value duties. This method can result in decreased turnover and enhance job satisfaction.
- Determine hazardous, repetitive, or bodily demanding duties that may be automated.
- Present complete video coaching for workers on how you can function and keep new applied sciences that may be repeatedly reviewed/accessed.
- Use automation to free employees to have interaction in additional customer-facing or buyer experience-enhancing roles.
- Develop profession pathways for workers with tech abilities.
Automation may unlock time for menu innovation and culinary experimentation, resulting in extra various menu choices that preserve tempo with culinary tendencies.
- Encourage cooks to make use of precision cooking applied sciences in new recipe creation in order that management and consistency requires much less human oversight or experience.
- Use information from automated methods to tell amount manufacturing by daypart, weekday and season.
- Implement AI-driven analytics to determine rising meals tendencies and buyer preferences.
Cala, Paris, the brainchild of former engineering pupil, a producing professional and a start-up specialist, makes use of superior robotics to autonomously put together low-cost, nutritious and scrumptious pasta dishes in view of shoppers. By automating routine preparation duties, the idea’s cooks can give attention to creativity and innovation within the kitchen.
Balancing automation and human contact
The aim of any tech funding is to not change employees, however to help them. Within the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation’s 2024 State of the Restaurant Business report, 69% of operators consider that know-how will increase reasonably than change human labor, emphasizing the significance of balancing automation with human abilities.
