Highlights
- Creator in San Francisco is finally open for walk-ins 3 days a week
- The restaurant has 2 robots which take 5 minutes to make one burger
- The robot has 600 unique parts, 50 computers and 350 sensors
Do you remember the future imagined in the wildly popular 90s cartoon 'The Jetsons'? Remember those flying cars and robotic house help? Well, it would seem like we're well on our way to reaching the point in the future imagined by the creators of the show. What could possibly be the world's first restaurant serving burgers made by robots, just opened for walk-ins in San Francisco! The restaurant named Creator had revealed its 14-foot long burger making machine in June this year and has been organising ticketed entries for those wanting to watch it in action ever since. But now patrons can finally enter without a ticket, order their choice of burger and the 'burger maker' does the rest! The restaurant announced recently that they will be serving walk-ins every Wednesday, Thursday and Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., starting September 26, 2018. The restaurant had launched the robot to eager crowds who bought tickets as soon as they went on sale.
The USP of Creator is what the restaurant is calling 'One of the most precise culinary tools on earth'. The machine looks much like an assembly line at any factory, but in this case the machine or robot serves highly customised burgers. The meat is ground, seasoned and cooked to order by the robot, which promises to determine the precise and ideal grill time for each patty and grind the meat in a way that humans can't possibly manage to. The machine, which has been built in-house by Creator, currently has some 600 unique parts. These include 20 computers and 50 actuator mechanisms and 350 sensors. The restaurant currently has two of these fully operational robots. But, how does the machine work?
Here's a look at Creator's robot live in action:
Everything from the slicing of the brioche buns to the measuring and adding of sauces and seasoning is done by the robot. Once an order has been placed (which is currently done manually), air pressure is used to nudge a locally baked brioche roll through a tube, where it's sliced toasted and buttered according to the order. Freshly sliced tomatoes, onions and pickles are added to the burger, as are freshly shredded lettuce leaves and grated cheese. The robot also grinds the meat, using a vertical grinding method, which is responsible for making the burger patty tenderer and juicier. The robot has thermal sensors that work on an algorithm that is used to time the grilling of each patty. The whole process of creation of one burger from scratch takes just about five minutes! The robot prepares up to 120 burgers per hour, a figure which the restaurant aims to raise to 400 in the coming future.
The company is looking at digitising the process of getting the burger right, through an iPhone application. If this is futuristic enough for the geek in you and you find yourself in San Francisco in the coming weeks, make sure you check the robotic burger maker out, for an opportunity to live out your childhood fantasies.