Final week, Sweetgreen opened the corporate’s first robotic restaurant in Naperville, Sick, a suburb of Chicago.
The brand new automated restaurant, which the corporate calls Infinite Kitchen, comes nearly two years after the corporate acquired Spyce Kitchen, a startup constructing automated robotic makelines.
The Infinite Kitchen title will not be new; Spyce first used the title when it launched its second-generation robotic kitchen platform in November 2020 and, like the brand new Sweetgreen Infinite Kitchen, the system was visually harking back to the Creator burger makeline. The system’s conveyor belt runs below ingredient dispensers that drop personalized mixes of recent components into bowls. You possibly can see the Sweetgreen model of the Infinite Kitchen in motion under.
Within the video and the press launch, Sweetgreen takes pains to clarify that whereas it sees automation as a means so as to add effectivity to operations and improve the shopper expertise, they don’t seem to be eliminating people as a part of the Sweetgreen expertise.
“Each meal begins with human arms,” says the video’s narrator, “from our native farmers to our workforce members, all there to information you thru the method.”
With the Infinite Kitchen, Sweetgreen has additionally rethought the shopper course of move, integrating digital touchpoints (together with self-service kiosks just like these from Spyce).
From the discharge:
When visiting the Naperville Sweetgreen restaurant, clients are greeted by the brand new “host” place which offers a extra personalised connection between workforce members and friends. To order, clients can make the most of self-service kiosks, place an order by means of the cell app, or order instantly from the restaurant’s host. The brand new restaurant format additionally brings in a brand new Tasting Counter, brand-storytelling digital screens and a revamped merchandising technique for an genuine Sweetgreen expertise at each touchpoint. Prospects visiting the shop will have the ability to store unique merch with designs impressed by the brand new retailer becoming a member of the Naperville group.
In line with the corporate, Sweetgreen will open its second Infinite Kitchen location later this 12 months at an current restaurant, the place the corporate hopes to discover ways to combine and retrofit the brand new know-how into an current kitchen.
Long run, anticipate the corporate to broaden using automation to most of its places. Firm CEO Jonathan Neman has mentioned that about half of Sweetgreen’s labor is meals meeting. “And this Infinite Kitchen takes the vast majority of that,” Neman mentioned in November.
