Robots make a smash in Chipotle kitchens

Robots aren’t trying to take over the world; they just want to make guacamole.

Adding robots to the guacamole-making process makes sense because preparing the irresistible side is a labor-intensive task for employees of quick-service restaurant (QSR) Chipotle that involves peeling, coring, and cutting up those pesky avocados, amounting to tens of thousands of hours a year. Chipotle’s guacamole is made fresh in each restaurant every morning, too, and it takes an average of 50 minutes to make, resulting in some crew members arriving as early as 6am to prep for the coming day.

So for about two years, a cross-functional team has been exploring ways to use automation to increase efficiency across all Chipotle restaurants, and early on, it targeted the guacamole prep process as being ripe for innovation.

And about a year ago, Chipotle announced a collaboration with Vebu Labs, an automation and robotics company focused on the food industry. Since then, the two companies have worked together to build the Chipotle Autocado, an avocado processing collaborative robot prototype that peels, cuts, and cores avocados. Employees then add ingredients, seasonings, and finally mash it all up by hand.

“Hand-mashed guac is such a big part of what we are as a brand,” says Logan Hull, senior director of digital restaurant experience at Chipotle. “We approached this from the lens of, ‘How do we make part of that task easier for our crew members?’”

Huge time savings

While Chipotle and Vebu Labs are still tinkering with Autocado’s design, they estimate the collaborative robot, or cobotic, prototype could cut guacamole prep time in half. Chipotle’s goal isn’t to cut jobs, though, but to free up employees from mundane tasks so they can focus on more complex work, Hull says.

“We’re aiming to create those efficiencies for specific tasks that are the most labor-intensive so our team members have the ability to focus their time and energy on other tasks that require more critical-thinking skills, more nuanced culinary skills, or more interaction with our customers,” she adds.

Of many shapes and sizes

One of the big challenges that Autocado addresses is the size differences in avocados, with a 25-pound case potentially containing as few as 24 large fruits, or 80-plus if they’re small. The smaller the avocado, the more work to prep a case of them, and some Chipotle restaurants use seven to 10 cases each day, Hull says.

“When you get a case of 84-count avocados, the time it takes to process those avocados can scale up to an incredibly labor-intensive activity,” she says. “Offloading that core-cut-scoop task was a really big unlocking opportunity.”

Once a Chipotle team member loads Autocado with a full case of ripe avocados and selects the size setting, it uses proprietary processes developed by Vebu Labs to orient all the avocados vertically and transfer them to the next stage, where the machine slices them in half, with cores and skins automatically removed and discarded. The fruit is then collected in a stainless-steel bowl at the bottom of the device, then an employee removes it, adds additional ingredients, and hand mashes it all together.

Despite the time-savings afforded by the avocado-prepping functionality, a big consideration was the actual size of Autocado itself. With limited space to add more machinery in Chipotle kitchens, designers worked hard to make the robot as compact as possible and made the top of it an additional food prep surface.

Autocado is currently in the proof-of-concept phase for Chipotle, but the company plans to test the robot in a restaurant later this year. The company is moving the adoption process along deliberately to ensure safety, quality, and useability standards are met, Hull says.

“We don’t want to launch into deploying something before we’ve truly evaluated its useability in the restaurant setting,” she adds. “While we’ve been in close collaboration with our crew members throughout the development of this device, nothing beats the ability to test it in an actual restaurant to understand where other opportunities exist or whether it’s ready for prime time.”

The project has earned Chipotle, with more than 3,300 restaurants across the US, Canada, and Western Europe, a 2024 CIO Award for IT leadership and innovation.

Robots here to help, not be in charge

The effort to automate repetitive tasks makes sense for Chipotle, particularly in the current tight labor market, says Sandeep Unni, a retail industry analyst at Gartner. Restaurants are struggling to find and retain skilled workers, he says, and devices like Autocado can help alleviate that pressure — but that’s the extent of it, since restaurants shouldn’t view robots as replacements for workers, but how automations can improve operations.

“Chances are the use of robots will deliver precision, consistency, and speed that humans can’t match, which, in turn, can help restaurants increase throughput and improve worker safety,” he adds.

Establishments interested in robots and automation also face several challenges, including high deployment costs, technical complexity, and, potentially, negative perceptions from customers and workers, he adds, so implementing cobotic colleagues will take time.

“Don’t expect to see robots taking over restaurant kitchens any time soon,” Unni says.