Robotics and labor-saving automation are coming to restaurants particularly in the back-of-the house. Would you believe a robot that cuts, cores and peels avocados before prep cooks then mash them into guacamole? Chef Andrew gives you his informed perspective for what’s on the horizon from a chef’s and restaurateur’s POV.
SoCal Restaurant Show
Co-Host Chef Andrew Gruel of Calico Fish House with “Ask the Chef”
Hi, I'm Chef Rudy Storman, places cruises ahead of culinary arts. In the menu maker, when a catch by Rudy, that's me, come serve it as when I want the Alaskan king crab of food news. I listen to "Salk Hall Restaurant Show" on AM/A30 KLA radio. And welcome back. Sadly, it is the concluding segment of the SoCal restaurant show, but the better news is, as we're going to be right back here with you next Saturday morning from 10 a.m. until 12 noon, right here on AM/A30 KLAA, the home of Angel's Baseball 2024. And you can also catch us on the AM/A30 KLAA app. And remember, the halos are on the road up in Oakland, matinee game today, and Angel pre game will follow us at 1230. I'm Andy Harris, the executive producer and co-host of the show, and I'm pleased to welcome back my co-host, Chef Andrew Gruel of the Calico Fish House in the Sunset Beach area of Huntington Beach. Chef Andrew, it's that time. Good morning, and welcome back. It's great to be back. Thank you. And we should mention we're enthusiastically presented each and every week by Melissa's World Variety produce and West Coast Prime Meats, Chef Andrew, we're always talking about the evolution of the restaurant business and what's happening and current trends. And we know that every chef and restaurateur is trying to get by with fewer employees, lower labor costs, and so forth, while still maintaining their standards, which can be a little bit of a tricky thing. But we keep hearing and we have over the years about automation particularly coming into the back of the house. And I remember a couple of years ago, there was this firm that must have had Wall Street money. And what they came up with was this sort of bizarre burger flipping device. And supposedly that was going to revolutionize the industry. I think it's still out there, but I still think it's in the process of being perfected. And at the same time, Chipotle, Mexican Grill, which is an operation we all respect, they do a good job and serve a quality product. They've been testing a lot in the back of the house, they tested a robotic tortilla chip maker, which I think they've decided that maybe they ought to put that one on the back burner. But they also have a gadget that can peel in core avocados and then it goes over to a real person to create guacamole. Chef, what is your sense of where this is going and what's the trade off between the cost of some of these devices and the fact, overall, are they really saving money? Yeah, I think that there's kind of like two pushes right now. So a lot has been automated and automated successfully, but it's not the positions or the roles that you would expect in more of a sci-fi type world. I think when we hear automation in the kitchen, we imagine like a line full of robots, flipping fish and sauhing plates and cutting avocados as you just described. But really, the automation right now has taken place more on the back office side of technology, taking over man hours in regards to inventory, placing orders, those elements of the back of the kitchen, the back of the office management, and that's actually been very successful. When it comes to the hands-on cooking, it's just not there yet. Seeing that robot flipping machine, interestingly, you and I have talked in the past about that project up in Santa Monica that we were going to be a part of that ultimately never came to fruition. The front of that was going to be showcasing the flipping burger at the flipping machine. It was the former owner of, oh my gosh, I'm drawing a blank, Cali Burger, which was in and out kind of copycat that grew fairly large out of California through the Middle East and China. I mean, it was an exact replica of in and out and then they ended up pivoting and transitioning back into tech, the original CEO I think was in tech to begin with and invested heavily in that flipping burger and it was supposed to be sheltered. But from what I've heard is you're still not there in regards to being able to do what a human can do when it comes to cooking. I think that's generally the pace around the board. There's a lot of R&D, but at this point, the story kind of remains to be told. You got to think about it in terms of small changes that have a bigger impact on the bottom line. So for example, if I'm a cook or I'm a chef and I'm doing inventory once every two weeks and at the end of my shift of taking an hour to do inventory and then the chef has to double check it, let's call that like five hours, right? Now I can get a back office system where it automates inventory and it kind of predicts through that AI genius, what my inventory is and should be based on purchases and receipts and all of that. Now I've cut that five hours a week out, that's 25 hours right there. Let's say that you seem back off this AI program can predict my orders. Now I don't need a cook who's doing orders throughout the day, every day, because it's actually when it comes to seafood and produce and that could be 30 minutes or an hour a day. So that's another say, call it six hours a week, four weeks a month, that's 24 hours. So if I've effectively just cut like 40 or 50 hours out of my labor at 20 plus dollars an hour plus payroll taxes, that's a significant savings. So I think that's where we're seeing the savings right now is on that back office element of AI and kind of predictive technology. But when it comes to the hands-on mechanics of cooking, it's just not there yet. I have seen so many machines that have been presented to me over the past five to 10 years and it's just the quality is so low that you're going to end up losing business by switching over to try and save a couple dollars on labor. Now that's not to say it's not going to be there, but it's just not there yet. Well, and also, Chef Andrew, in terms of that equipment that you're talking about, it's all very pricey, right? I mean, there's nothing inexpensive there. Exactly. It's very pricey. And I'll use the fryer as an example, because I think that this was way ahead of the time, that especially in a lot of fat food, they were injecting a ton of money into fryer machines that would automatically know when to pull the food up, whether it was like top-eye fries, chicken, five-guys fries, any of these concepts that have a significant amount of fried food. And what those fryers were doing is that they were creating a consistent product and they were making sure that there was a lot less human error in cooking the food. And there was a significant sum of money that goes into that, but those products were, you know, we couldn't afford them when we opened our first store. They're like $25,000, $30,000 product. Now they also filter the oil, and then that gives the oil a little bit more shelf life, which means that you can save money on the oil, which is a very expensive product to buy. So that's an example of how you can kind of master the technology, but in terms of full automation, you know, I think that there's going to be some products that are there, but it's just the art. It's so hard to replicate because it's individual, right? That's the thing. It's the chef, the line cook, et cetera. It's very, very individual, and it takes a lot of nuance. I don't know how you can program that, at least at this stage of the game. Chef Andrew, in our final minute, with technology and AI, the component that they should be able to get fairly easily that just hasn't happened yet is for the quick service and fast casual restaurants in terms of the order taking at the order window or at the speaker. Why haven't they been able to come up with technology there that works? Well, because the thing is, when you come up with technology, you need to write a program that can predict the way human behavior, and that is the most unpredictable element of our universe. So modifications, which seem to be the blind share of orders, have some sort of a modification, especially with food allergies and preferences now, that people are, that these machines are not able to compute a lot of these on the spot modifications. Got it. Chef Andrew, I think that's where we will leave this today. We look forward to picking up the conversation next Saturday, and always, we appreciate your informed insight. Thanks for having me. Food fans, that's our show. A tip of the talk to my co-host, Chef Andrew Grulle, my thanks to Tony here at Angel Stadium and Technical Excellence. Kudos also to Adam Bell on social media. Next week, we're back with a fresh show. We're going to be previewing the LA loves Alex's lemonade stand benefit, which is always one of our more important food events of the year that's coming up in October. We're proudly presented to you each and every week by Melissa's World Variety Proters and West Coast Prime Eats. Stay with the station because at 1230, Angel's pregame with Terry Smith comes up. The halos are on the road up in Oakland. Be safe and good eating. [MUSIC]