Miso Robotics has unveiled its newest model of Flippy, the robotic burger flipper, based on learnings and feedback from its partner White Castle, who piloted the technology in the Chicagoland area last year. It plans to expand to additional locations.
The latest iteration, Flippy 2, takes over the work for an entire fry station and performs more than twice as many food preparation tasks compared to the previous version including basket filling, emptying, and returning.
Back-of-house positions at quick-service restaurants have historically been labor-intensive, physically demanding, and can be hazardous given the proximity to hot oil and grills in compact kitchens, according to Miso Robotics. Flippy 2 looks to alleviate these pain points and create a better working environment for its human coworkers, while also maximizing the efficiency of the kitchen.
Over the course of Flippy's deployment at White Castle, the chain has been impressed with the productivity gains Flippy has brought to daily operations. While Flippy helped team members stay in their designated locations, employees noted during that there was a need for human assistance on both sides of the robot – from the initial point of contact with the uncooked product to when the cooked food gets placed in the holding area – requiring one or two employees at several steps. Basket management wasn't automated so the cooking process wasn't as seamless as it could be, until now, according to Miso Robotics.
"We learned so much from Flippy and our partnership with Miso Robotics. It's amazing to see the future of how we provide even better service and even more hot and tasty food to our craving customers happening right before us in real time," said Jamie Richardson, vice president at White Castle, in a statement.
Flippy 2 features the new AutoBin system for lower volume and foods like onion rings or chicken tenders, providing restaurants a more complete frying solution. Each bin can hold as much as a full fry basket, be customized for a kitchen's specific needs, and be delineated for individual products like vegetables and fish to prevent cross-contamination.
Once the product is placed in the bin, AI vision automatically identifies the food, picks it up, cooks it in the correct fry basket and places it into a hot-holding area. Eliminating the transfer task lessens overall human-to-food contact, decreases potential oil dripping and burns caused by lifting and moving baskets, and ensures an entirely closed-loop system where Flippy 2 can operate on its own without human intervention in the middle of the process, according to Miso Robotics. This makes the system faster, increasing throughput by 30 percent – or around 60 baskets per hour – which is more than what is needed in high-volume QSRs. Flippy 2 also features a sleeker design that takes up less space within the kitchen – including a 56 precent reduced aisle intrusion, 13 percent height reduction and less overall cleanable surfaces.
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