Equipment Evolution Aims to Leverage Synergies in AI, Automation and Robotics

In his 1998 hit song “Praise You,” pop artist Fatboy Slim sang “We’ve come a long, long way together; through the hard times and the good; I have to celebrate you baby; I have to praise you like I should.” In many respects, operators likely feel that way about how foodservice equipment and supplies have evolved over the past 20 years.

Indeed, advances in tech and the kitchen battery aim to solve the perennial challenges of balancing a foodservice operation’s bottom line against rising costs for food ingredients, supplies, utility, real estate and labor. But this year, the worker crunch is far more urgent than anything else.

“Labor cost and availability are the biggest sore spots,” notes Brian Ward, president of Target Market & Media Services and administrator of the Kitchen Innovations Awards program, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2024. The 25 products that earned recognition in the 2024 KI Awards program will be on display during the National Restaurant Association Show, which takes place May 18-21 in Chicago.

“Minimum wages have been going up, which means wages for more senior workers have to go up too. And the pandemic shutdowns exacerbated labor shortages — foodservice outlets shut down, their workers were left to find work in other sectors, and many didn’t return. Robotics and all kinds of automation address that,” Ward says. “AI and recognition technologies are simplifying training by automating tasks. If an oven recognizes the food, it doesn’t even have to wait for a human to push the correct button.”

Evolution, Then Revolution

Much of the KI Award-winning equipment and technology demonstrates a big step up from the level seen at last year’s KI Pavilion. “Last year was a sea change, but this year, we saw articulated robotics performing significantly more complicated motion and tasks — as well as expansion of the tasks,” Ward says. “Last year, we had a robotic fryer; this year we have a system that also seasoned and packaged the fries for serving or holding. Two or three years ago, we had a straight-line automated pizza system; this year, there’s a new robotic pizza system that can be laid out in straight or cluster configurations, and connects to kitchen-display systems, point-of-sale systems and third-party delivery systems.”

Foster Frable Jr., FCSI, president of Clevenger Frable LaVallee and a long-tenured KI Awards judge, says the KI Awards are evidence that today’s foodservice kitchen is fundamentally different from that of the past. “There’s no such thing as a ‘basic’ kitchen anymore,” he says. “Menus and cuisine now incorporate ingredients, preparation and cooking methods that were unimaginable a decade ago.”

For that reason, there is a striking difference between this year’s winners and those of prior years, according to Richard Eisenbarth, FCSI, president emeritus of Cini-Little and another longtime judge for the KI Awards. “Eight years ago, the latest trends were multideck cooking platforms, peeling machines, frameless glass doors, and touchscreens to control equipment,” he says. “Those were innovative at the time, but technology to really reduce labor was nonexistent. At last year’s KI Awards, we the got the first retail merchandising touchless salad bar and untended robotic coffee kiosk. A kitchen management system that tracked key kitchen tasks was introduced for the first time last year. This year, all that has truly taken off. People are starting to embrace how the use of sensors, movement monitors, kitchen management software and AI will really help operators going forward.”

Practical Innovation

A third veteran KI Awards judge is Jim Thorpe, senior food service designer at Aramark, who sees the latest innovations in foodservice equipment and tech from the operator’s point of view. “At Aramark, when we feed 1,000 college students at a time in a hall with 10 or 12 concepts going at any one time, we’re using more robotics and automation than in the past,” he says. The contract foodservice provider seeks the type of automation that allows “an employee to be able to hit a button to start cooking a preprogrammed recipe, to produce a high-quality product with enhanced speed of service,” he says. “If the worker can cook something in 5 minutes instead of 20, that helps boost the overall efficiency of the kitchen.”

Accordingly, Thorpe’s impressed with KI Awards innovations that blend advancements in automation, robotics, monitoring software and cloud-based artificial intelligence. “An enhanced hamburger robot came out this year, with cloud-based software for quality control of the patties, and that makes for better quality control of the operation,” he says. “There’s a new pizza robot that makes pizza all day, pumps the sauce and adds the cheese and toppings.

The employee only has to take the pizza off the machine, cut it and take it to the customer, and that eliminates a lot of time-consuming work.”

All the judges interviewed for this article, including Thorpe, mentioned new smart, multifunctional ovens that do more and cook faster in a smaller footprint, and thus are well-adapted to today’s shrunken foodservice kitchens.

Thorpe cited an oven with four chambers, each providing a choice of impingement or convection cooking. “A lot of new ovens are hitting the market, and they’re especially useful for a company like Aramark that serves a lot of people,” he says. “We see different versions coming out with more enhancements each year, and I’m sure that next year there will be a new idea as well,” he says. “These types of ovens are game changers.”

Other KI Award winners address essential yet time-consuming maintenance and sanitation tasks. Thorpe calls out a new combi oven that comes with auto-dosing solid cleaner and solid deliming cartridges that are housed inside the unit, along with monitoring software. The combi “self-cleans internally and knows when to clean itself. The staff might do it twice a year, but this combi will clean itself three times a year if it senses that it’s needed,” Thorpe says. “It’s pretty impressive.”

Thorpe also was impressed by “a lot of smaller stuff” that solves relatively minor kitchen problems in inexpensive ways. “One company changed the nozzle in its bar gun. Those are notorious for breaking and requiring service almost monthly, but the new version is made of a different ceramic material that won’t break, and parts are more easily removable for cleaning and maintenance,” he says. “Products like these are simple solutions that make me ask, ‘Why didn’t I think of that?’”