Twitter Can't Stop Talking About The New White Castle Robots

Robots have started making an impression on the food industry. Per the BBC, several tech companies are working hard to design robot chefs that can prepare meals from start to finish in restaurants, as well as homes. It makes sense: Robots can save time and streamline the cooking process, making it easier for restaurants to cater to their customers' needs.

It helps that restaurant owners are willing to experiment. A French pizza company called Pazzi has robot chefs across all its outlets in France and Belgium (via BBC). It is the brainchild of two engineering students who worked on their very own "pizza-making robot" before launching their first restaurant in 2019. There are some obvious advantages here: Pazzi co-founder Philippe Goldman said that the robots ensure that the quality of the dishes is never compromised. He explained, "When the robot presses the dough, if it detects some holes in the dough, it's going to reject it, put it in the trash and make a new one."

Even fast-food companies are hopping onto the robot trend, and well-known brands such as Taco Bell, Domino's, and KFC have started using robots in different ways to appeal to their customers. According to an Engadget report, burger chain White Castle has plans to embrace the trend in a much bigger way this year.

As reported by Engadget, White Castle has officially declared that it is going to use a robot chef called Flippy 2 extensively in 2022 and will introduce the robot chef to 100-plus outlets. Using artificial intelligence, Flippy 2 is similar to a fry cook and can take care of all the basic tasks such as identifying "the type of food such as burgers, chicken fingers, or fries" before cooking it and moving it to a "hot holding area." White Castle first worked with the team behind Flippy 2, Miso Robotics, last year and introduced robots to its Chicagoland outlet. 

While customers won't necessarily spot the robots (because the machines will be working behind the scenes), they will likely receive their orders quickly. The Flippy 2 can prepare 60 baskets of food in 60 minutes and can make as many as 300 burgers in a single day without supervision.

Of course, people have a lot to say about this development. YouTube content creator, Paul Barbato, was pretty excited and wrote on Twitter, "If it comes to Los Angeles, I will literally be the first customer, if possible." Meanwhile, another Twitter user advised others to check out White Castle and "see the future where a machine cooks the burgers and the few employees simply keep the machine full of ingredients." And because it's White Castle, someone had to bring up the "Harold and Kumar" series and wrote, "Not so sure about the Harold and Kumar reboot."