Chipotle is moving its business into the future with a robot that processes avocados.
People reports that the fast-casual restaurant is trying out a machine named the Autocado, a collaborative project with Vebu. The Autocado cuts, cores, and peels avocados so that it's easier for Chipotle employees to create the eatery’s trademark guacamole by hand.
"We are committed to exploring collaborative robotics to drive efficiencies and ease pain points for our employees," Curt Garner, Chief Customer and Technology Officer at Chipotle said in a statement. "The intensive labor of cutting, coring, and scooping avocados could be relieved with Autocado, but we still maintain the essential culinary experience of hand mashing and hand preparing the guacamole to our exacting standards."
Chipotle will reportedly use a whopping 4.5 million cases of avocados this year across its 2,000 locations. The hope is that the Autocado machine will boost the restaurant’s avocado fruit yield, which will help cut the cost of food.
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This isn’t the first robot that Chipotle has introduced in its workplace. Last March, the chain started using the robot Chippy, which makes tortilla chips using artificial intelligence. The machine cooks the chip with corn masa flour, water, and sunflower oil, and then seasons it with salt and fresh lime juice. The restaurant stated at the time that it was, "imperative that the technique remained the same so customers receive delicious, craveable chips every time.”
