
A Robot Makes a Mean Caesar Salad, but Will It Cost Jobs? - johnwheeler
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/06/business/robot-food-cost-jobs.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=wide-thumb&module=mini-moth&region=top-stories-below&WT.nav=top-stories-below
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vortico
Why is the UI on these things so atrocious? It took him a number of key
presses just to select from a list of 6 and many more to finalize the
purchase. Why not have a bunch of large tactile buttons at the bottom of the
screen like all normal vending machines do? I don't want to wait in line for 3
minutes while some technophobe tries to figure out how to nagivate a pressure
touchscreen with 12 menus deep. It's not his fault, it's the fault of the UI
designers who think all they have to work with is a bunch of pixels and X/Y
coordinates of presses. There's more to UI than that.

~~~
merraksh
_I don 't want to wait in line for 3 minutes while some old guy tries to
figure out_

Please rewrite, this is borderline discriminatory and quite offensive. Some
"old guys" can be as capable to handle such UI as some "young guys".

Disclaimer: half-old guy.

[EDIT] thanks for replacing "old guy" with "technophobe".

~~~
Ensorceled
Not sure why you are being downvoted. Perhaps because ageism is still a
borderline ok form of discrimination?

~~~
brink
I believe he's being downvoted because some believe that there should be a
balance between political correctness and skin thickness rather than just full
on PC. (This includes me.)

~~~
annabellish
It's a lot easier to have a thick skin when you're in a demographic nobody
discriminates against.

~~~
brink
I'm sure it is. I'm not trying to minimize discrimination.

~~~
Ensorceled
Well, you did talk about "balance" so you are to some extent.

[Edit] Also, you called it "PC" so, yes you are minimizing it.

~~~
brink
How dare I?

~~~
Ensorceled
Well, you do you.

------
amelius
We should stop worrying whether AI will cost jobs, but instead think about who
reaps the benefits of thousands of years of technological progress, and how
those benefits can be distributed more fairly.

~~~
zipwitch
Exactly. Comments about"costing jobs" always miss the point, partially or
wholly. _Jobs are a cost._ They are what it takes to create _wealth_. At issue
is how to best create and distribute wealth.

~~~
MuffinFlavored
I disagree a little bit. We are all typing this from our comfy environments,
able to pay for Internet, etc.

What about when jobs start to disappear and the economy as we know starts to
change for the worse? Either by affecting us directly, or the markets which we
are a part of, I don't think this will be a positive thing.

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greglindahl
My local coffee place has humans who operate an espresso machine, while
Starbucks has baristas who push a button, and there are vending machines that
produces espresso without having an operator. None of this excites a moral
panic. Kitchen labor-saving devices have been being invented for hundreds of
thousands of years. What's new?

Think about wheat. Wheat used to be ground in stone mills operated by oxen or
wind or water, which is much more labor-intensive than today's mills. Before
that, the grinding process was even more labor-intensive.

~~~
christopheml
What's new? Well, if we keep replacing low-skill jobs by high-skills ones, we
may have a little problem: are humans going to keep up with the training? Is
the workforce going to adapt fast enough?

When job replacement happens over several generations, it's a pretty easy
problem to solve. When it gets faster, turns out some human abilities are not
scaling very well.

~~~
jon_richards
Horses used to be used for practically everything. The first commercial steam
engine pumped water from mines and was measured in "horsepower", the the rate
at which a horse could continuously pump water. Then steam engines replaced
freight hauling. Then personal transport. Don't see many working horses now.

~~~
musage
Don't see many horses at all. That is, the offspring of those working horses
certainly doesn't roam about in pastures, to pursue happiness because there
are no jobs that require them.

~~~
pygy_
I've read here that the obsolete horses helped bootstrap the pet food
industry...

~~~
tbirrell
That was not something I needed to know.

------
sho
I'm bullish on food robots in general, but I have to say that as a fan of
caesar salad, the output of that robot fails to impress. It looks exactly like
what it is - a bunch of ingredients randomly dropped in a bowl. The lettuce
hasn't even been tossed with the dressing!

I wouldn't pay for that, and IMO this robot has a long way to go before I'd
agree it can make a "mean" salad.

~~~
wiz21c
I would add that if a bad cook can make an average salad, it doesn't make any
easier to accept the fact that we make robots which can barely do better.

In other words, instead of replacing the cook by a machine, we should train
him to cook better. And we should train people to make the difference between
a soulless dish and a good one.

(I cook for myself and I can assure you that a machine can't cook; it can
assemble ingredients, that's for sure but there's no creativity (and believe
me, the simplest dish, if infused with creativity, can taste so much better))

~~~
jo909
The creativity has to happen at the "design" stage. The best restaurants
strive for perfect _repeatable_ dishes, and no cook has to improvise with
spices or ingredients on a normal shift.

~~~
wavefunction
A good cook/chef can take a look at an ingredient or set of ingredients and
vary their techniques to produce that 'repeatable' dish.

I think you're completely discounting what cooking involves when it's someone
with skill and experience, and that's unfortunate.

~~~
jo909
I'm just saying that the creativity usually is separated from the actual act
of preparing a dish in a professional kitchen, robots or not. It lies in the
receipt, good techniques, ingredient selection and sourcing. The creative part
will always stay in the domain of skilled and experienced humans, no doubt
about it.

Mastering a technique might mean constant adoption to changing ingredients and
parameters, temperatures, timing etc. That is not fundamentally impossible to
teach to a robot.

Massive knowledge, excellent sensory inputs of all kinds, precision motor
skills etc are not creativity. Certainly there is a long way for robots to
improve before they can handle what a human is able to. But I have no doubt
that they will get there sooner or later.

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snappyTertle
Robots making food will lower the cost of food, giving more people access to
better nutrition. This will also free up labor and capital to do other things.

Machines helped make farming more productive so humans no longer have to live
on farms, and dedicate their lives to the next meal on their table. If we were
worried about jobs back then, we would've outlawed tractors and other
machines. If we really want to create jobs, we would go back to manual labor
to make produce our food.

~~~
busterarm
I'm skeptical. This is painfully slow and handles 1 person at a time.

Any midtown/downtown NY salad bar can turnover 10 peoples' salads in the time
this machine took to make 1. There's no way this machine's operating cost is
better than that. Sure, you could scale up these machines, but then the human-
staffed salad bars are winning on floor space (and rent). It looks like you
could only fit 2-3 of these machines in the footprint of the average NY salad
spot.

The only place this might win is where salad consumption is infrequent, in
which case for food safety reasons, you probably don't want to be eating the
salad there anyway.

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_Codemonkeyism
This does create the illusion of just in time salads, but how is it different
from prepackaged salads? I assume such a machine in large sits in every salad
factory.

~~~
sleepychu
Configurability? I want that sald with this topping

Freshness? If the buisiness is preparing the vegetables in the kitchen before
providing them to the machine then the salads might taste fresher than factory
packaged salads >1 day old.

~~~
mmcconnell1618
I'd want to know the "refresh" schedule for the ingredients. If the machine
gets new veg every Tuesday then that's the best day for a really fresh salad.
I would hope the location is high enough traffic to justify daily ingredient
changes.

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true_tuna
Yes. All the jobs. Drivers, luggage handlers. The salad cook is just another
in the long line of manual jobs that can be done quicker, better, cheaper by a
robot. So now what? What job do we guide our children into? What jobs are left
as the fall through for kids who decline formal training? I don't know, but we
need to answer that question quickly.

~~~
dvdhnt
> The salad cook is just another in the long line of manual jobs that can be
> done quicker, better, cheaper by a robot.

Allow me to be sentimental for a moment. I agree that some jobs, perhaps even
most, can be done "better" by a robot. At least, if we're defining better as
more cheaply or "to spec". However, when I go to a nice restaurant, I go
because I enjoy the Chef's style, their ability to express their art through
cooking. Sure, a robot could do something like that, especially at chains like
Burger King, but for my personal incentive to dine at a restaurant, it's
unlikely a robot could do a "better" job than a human chef.

That said, you're right, we need to avoid the foolishness of passing the buck
when asking "what will our children do?" We can't agree on social issues now,
how the hell will we agree when even more people are unable to contribute
meaningfully?

~~~
cookingrobot
People will prefer meals cooked by robots for the same reason they listen to
recorded music. Everyone will have access to the best creations of the best
chefs, instead of today where the closest you can get is watching them cook on
tv. It will be a new media where artists can directly share their work with
the world.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
Most people enjoy recorded music, but most people also like to see their
favorite artists live, when they can. I think it's the same thing.

~~~
Mediterraneo10
> but most people also like to see their favorite artists live, when they can

Citation needed. Live music is a healthy economy, but I am not sure a majority
of listeners of a given artist are particularly driven to go to that artist's
concerts. I suspect only a passionate minority is interested.

~~~
PhasmaFelis
It's still enough to support an extremely healthy global live-music industry.
I don't see handmade food being different.

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Suncho
By definition, all labor-saving technology costs jobs. That is, unless you do
something to compensate for it, like produce more total stuff than you used
to. And, of course, more total stuff will only get made if people are willing
to spend more money to buy the additional stuff.

There's only a problem if we're expecting people to get that money from...
wait for it... jobs. So let's lower interest rates and make it easier for
everyone to _borrow_ money. That will boost spending and create jobs! What
could possibly go wrong?

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AndrewOMartin
I predict that once a machine is invented that can automatically make a
coffee, anyone employed making coffee will lose their jobs too.

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FussyZeus
Maybe this particular robot won't cost jobs (though I have doubts about that,
but we'll grant it) but other robots will. I don't understand how there's even
a sort-of discussion between the author and their audience about "Do robots
cost jobs" of course they bloody do, that's the point, those robots are _sold_
to the businesses that buy them on the idea that they're going to reduce labor
costs, _that 's the point._ Restaurants have been serving us filthy salads out
of bars for decades, do you think they suddenly had an attack of conscience
about it? Of course not, having that machine means a whole host of things the
employees don't have to do, that's why they bought it. It may not cost anyone
a job _right now_ , but it will be contributing to that down the line.

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0xbear
Of course all of these robots will cost jobs. I’m reading “The Grapes of
Wrath” right now, and it all happened before, except back then it was not
robots, but tractors. Lots of people were flung into direst poverty
imaginable, some died, some saw their kids die of malnutrition, which, IMO, is
worse. It’ll be the exact same shit this time around except a lot more people
will be affected, but fewer will die.

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Ensorceled
Ummmmm, that's not a "mean" caesar salad. It's competitive with a supermarket
premade but doesn't compare to a restaurant or homemade caesar salad.

This isn't any different than a vending machine or those coke dispensers with
a touch screen flavour picker.

The real job loss will be when this is a real robot that is fresh tearing the
romaine and whisking the dressing after you press the buttons and delivering
an actual caesar salad.

~~~
shostack
Not disagreeing on the perceived quality of this salad...but does that really
change the issue at hand?

I would think that while it may be challenging, I don't see it as unthinkable
that we could have a robot tear leaves of romaine and spinning a whisk.

~~~
Ensorceled
Right. But this machine is functionally equivalent to a coffee vending
machine: punch espresso drink, medium, cappuccino and put your cup under the
nozzle. Those machines haven't replaced anybody at Starbucks -- they simply
made the lives of the receptionist at my Toyota Dealership easier.

These examples need to be game changers to convince people, a fancy vending
machine isn't going to scare anybody.

A replacement fry cook, sous chef or truck driver will.

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justinucd
Automation replaces manual labor. As labor becomes more expensive and
automated processes become more affordable, you'll see a shift in the food
industry from basic labor to skilled labor (those who will develop and
maintain the automated processes).

~~~
danblick
Okay but that might be a little simplistic, because automation can also
complement manual labor and create more demand for it.

The example that comes to mind is about ATMs and bank teller jobs: when ATMs
were introduced it actually _increased_ the number of teller jobs because
branch offices became cheaper and banks opened more of them.

Discussed in:

[http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.htm...](http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2016/05/james_bessen_on.html)

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Judgmentality
I feel like they took the salad bar and made it more complicated - the only
real advantage I see is it might be more sanitary. It's certainly slower if
there's a line of people waiting for their food.

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astrodust
How about instead of a robot to serve salads we make a robot that can probe
for contamination?

E-coli, listeria, and other nasty bacteria and viruses like hepatitis are no
joke, yet most places have zero tools to test for those things.

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hathym
Instead of the 1000s words, I wished there was a picture of the f* salad

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daveguy
Until self check-out becomes faster and less obnoxious than having a skilled
cashier do the job faster I don't think we need to worry at a large scale. We
aren't going to be talking to robot waiters any time soon. If Carl's Jr. puts
a glorified soda machine as my fast food interface I'll go to McDonald's where
I can give my order in 10 seconds instead of fumbling with a machine for 2
minutes.

~~~
Lazare
All the local McDonald's here have installed self-ordering kiosks. They're
fast and seem very popular. I personally find it significantly easier and
faster than waiting in line and talking to an actual human. (And this is
coming from someone who hates self-checkout lines at grocery stores.)

> We aren't going to be talking to robot waiters any time soon.

Robot waiters? Probably not. But using our phones to order delivery, self-
ordering kiosks, ipads on tables? The future is already here, and it's
increasingly automated. (Perhaps not coincidentally, the latest employment
numbers show a sharp dip in the employment among food service employees.)

~~~
amyjess
> All the local McDonald's here have installed self-ordering kiosks. They're
> fast and seem very popular. I personally find it significantly easier and
> faster than waiting in line and talking to an actual human. (And this is
> coming from someone who hates self-checkout lines at grocery stores.)

I have had fast-food workers mess up my order so many times that I'd rather
just give it to a machine.

There are few things more annoying than taking my food to the table, seeing
something on it that shouldn't be, walking back to the counter, saying "Excuse
me, I asked for no lettuce or tomato", and waiting for them to re-make it.

~~~
songshu
I agree. It can also go the other way though. I sometimes order almond milk
from Starbucks. If I give the order to a human I can make some judgement as to
whether they have misunderstood and correct them, or outright ask them to
confirm their understanding. If I give the order to the app then the app
understands perfectly but I will have to sort out any subsequent human
misunderstanding after it's been made. My local branch have got it wrong twice
in 5 attempts via the app (they tend to assume I want coffee with almond milk
because what crazy person just wants almond milk)

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wheresmyusern
i love automation. there is something to be said for automated food. not only
can money and time be saved, but there are other benefits as well. for
example, storing the raw ingredients in your home can allow you to stockpile
food for much longer than you could if you only bought the finished product. i
have several food grade buckets filled with whole wheat flour and i enjoy
freshly baked bread almost every day. with a few gamma lids (screw-top lid
accessory for standard 5 gallon food grade buckets), and about 10% of my
(normal sized) freezer space, i am able to eat fresh bread every day for five
months without ever going to the store. with a bread machine, making the bread
only requires a few seconds of my time. and the savings are unreal. perhaps im
a little odd, but i would very much like to have some kind of system in my
home where i could buy non-perishable food stuffs and store them in mass
quantity, and simply press a button to turn them into a meal ready to eat.

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cm2187
A domestic robot is probably as big of a market as self driving cars. Not that
this is close. But a robot that would clean, wash, iron, prepare food, do some
basic plumbing and painting, replace bulbs, receive parcels, yell at the dog
if it misbehaves, etc... I start to think that I will own one in my lifetime.

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King-Aaron
This isn't so much a robot, as a motorised hopper that just dispenses the
thing the operator asks for.

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astrodust
Oh, great. Juicero but for salads.

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knappa
General robot job replacement related issues aside, this robot only holds
enough for 50 salads and, based on the video, seems painfully slow. It doesn't
seem ready for a lunchtime rush.

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philipodonnell
Sometimes automation is about taking the difficult, time-consuming, manual
parts of a process and making them faster and easier, which saves time and
less time=less jobs=article in NYT.

And sometimes automation is about taking the easiest, lowest skill part of a
process and making it slower and more difficult, which somehow still results
in an NYT article.

I mean all it does is assemble the freaking salads from pre-chopped
ingredients. That's it. That's the _easiest_ part of preparing a salad.

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Rainymood
Does anyone else think it's utterly annoying I can not pause the video (or
gif) or whatever it is? I can't even skip forward. What is this, NYT?

~~~
npgatech
That was painful. It is one of those things that you can't just stop watching
(I was expecting Sally to spin the salad) and I waited..and waited...waited.

Horrible user experience.

    
    
      - Can't tell how long the clip/gif is
      - Can't skip ahead
      - Can't go fullscreen
      - No sound
    

WTF.

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Adamantcheese
Is it just me or does reading what basically boils down to "Don't go outside,
eat this premade salad and 'boost your productivity'" sound somewhat
depressing? I don't think that being inside all day eating low quality food
under fluorescent lights is going to boost my productivity at all. I would
honestly want to go to a restaurant and get an actual salad at lunch.

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jeremyjh
I don't think there is any easy fix for this. The capital is only interested
in building robots if they save human labor costs. If they save human labor
only to pay those same costs in taxes for basic income then they should have
invested in something else.

For the most part, the deployment of capital into robots can only happen if it
is going to displace people.

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mjevans
If there is a tax (I believe there should be) on automation then my opinion is
that it should be based on the profit and reduced by the percentage of
'traditional' (role specific) job hours that remain; counting service
personnel the same as bus-boys/janitorial services.

If the profit is under a given percentage then there shouldn't be any tax
assessed.

~~~
biot
How much are you personally willing to pay in tax for your
refrigerator/freezer, your dishwashing machine, and your laundry machines?

~~~
lovemenot
This is a good question, but I suspect it's disingenuously framed, so as to
stymie your parent.

If she says "a lot", you reply "good luck to you, and you alone". If she
replies "very little", you say "right, so your tax is going nowhere."

Feels like possibly you are defending a local maximum.

------
Zigurd
I'd bet my lease gets reviewed by an AI before I eat a robot-cooked meal.

Food is variable and dirty and the downside risk of not being clean is pretty
bad, even acknowledging that robots will always wash their hands.

Maintenance, risk, and general exposure to meatspace, in every sense, means
that knowledge workers will probably be the first to be automated out of a
job.

~~~
astrodust
What if the robot runs out of disinfectant and nobody notices or cares?

Robots are only as clean as the company that owns and inspects them permits
them to be.

~~~
staticelf
What if employees at a restaurant run out of disinfectant or doesn't wash
their hands after visiting the restroom? What if no one notices or cares? :)

~~~
astrodust
An employee might be so disgusted by this they blow the whistle on the place
and get it inspected.

A robot can't and won't do this.

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krisives
Automate all the things and free up time for humanity to finish making AI
maybe we can leave this rock in some form or another.

~~~
musage
Humanity isn't unfree because of there's too much work to do, but because too
much wealth is going to those who already have it. Automation, as we employ
it, will seal the deal and remove most people along with the need (from the
perspective of exploitation) for them. It will transform police states into
what will be like solid steel to cotton candy.

Also, leave this rock? It's the lushest place we know so far, by far, in a
universe filled with millions of rocks. If we can't make it here, we can't
make it anywhere else.

Not that AI has anything to do with that, or anything we do with AI. But the
chorus of non-sequiturs will keep on rising, and as the emperor, now dancing
seductive-esque, drops the last item of clothing, the buzzword singularity
will have arrived. A way to murder billions and call it the lesser of two
evils, carefully framed, will be found, too.

------
dogruck
There is a misconception that the list of tasks that we need humans to work on
is roughly equal to the number of humans that we currently have available.
Instead, I think if we eliminated many of the current tasks from our global
priority queue (such as chopping salads) then we will soon discover new tasks.

------
Growlzler
Robots can't taste. Something that no one really wants to take on for a number
of reasons the first being that we haven't a clue how it works. Variables in a
Caesar Salad occupy wide spreads. Blending taste is still an art that most
Chefs have trouble achieving as will the machine intelligence that conquers
taste. Wondering how machine intelligence will handle hunger pangs caused by
the sudden thought of a Caesar Salad, ensconced with Pain au Levain Croutons,
shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano and salted Anchovies on the side. Even the
selection of the right sea salt affects the outcome of this wonderful
concoction not to mention what mustard and Worcestershire Sauce is best used.
The other problem stems from the camaraderie that such a meal requires
(haven't even got to the wine pairing yet) to be wholly satisfying. Some
people have problems with the origin of the language that really counts as in
"companion" \- stems from "one whom with you break bread with"...,

~~~
JoshTriplett
I think you're romanticizing the concept of food preparation a bit much. You
don't need to be able to taste, or feel hunger, to cook a good meal or choose
a wine. I fully expect that a machine could not only do so, but ultimately do
so more consistently than any but the most skilled of humans.

~~~
sethhochberg
I fear such a thing would lead to Starbucksization of food and beverage
production. As mentioned in plenty of other comments here, Starbucks baristas
mostly just push a button to get a shot of espresso from one of their
machines. They optimize for consistency and "good enough" \- and indeed the
machine pulls the same shot, every time, from beans which are over-roasted for
consistency and good enough for mass consumption and a predictable experience
across thousands of stores.

But that isn't what makes food and drink interesting. I enjoy going to a place
because they pull a particularly great espresso shot and use it to prepare a
macchiato in a way that I like according to proportions of milk and espresso
that I think taste best... or a bar which has a particularly great wine
collection according to my tastes... or a restaurant which has a fun twist on
on a french classic which I like more than the original. Of course, each of
these establishments _could_ have a custom version of whatever algorithm
you're envisioning which picks the perfect wines, pulls the perfect espresso
shots, or prepares the perfect meal - but will they? Or will the platform that
enables such extreme automation also enable such extreme commodification, like
Starbucks vs a boutique coffee shop? I think it would.

~~~
JoshTriplett
A machine doesn't have to optimize only for "good enough" or "burnt"; it
optimizes for whatever parameters it was given. If there's a trick to "pull a
particularly great espresso shot", then you can build a machine to do that.
It's not even particularly hard, compared to, say, keeping up an intelligent
conversation, doing laundry, or any number of other harder-to-automate tasks.

~~~
sethhochberg
Of course - but people are going to control those machines, and the people who
control the machines probably aren't going to be the people who (in another
version of history where automation didn't take over) would be operating them
with care out of personal passion.

In our Starbucks example - they also own Clover, the boutique automatic
single-serve coffee brewer. It's a brilliant machine and makes a great cup of
coffee. But it's artificially only available in certain markets, with certain
collections of their own branded roasts. The macinery could be programmed to
allow me to get a great cup of coffee at any Starbucks in America, but
business incentives don't allow that (presumably - because Clovers are rare
machines reserved for special store in major markets). Comiditization entails
more than just automating the product and making things consistent and widely
available. It also typically changes the incentives of the game and the people
who are overseeing implementing them.

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misja111
This might cost some jobs but not very many. There have been all kinds of
automated food solutions in existence for many decades. They serve a niche in
the market for people that just want to grab and eat something quickly. But
most people prefer the experience of having humans create and serve their food
when they go to a restaurant.

~~~
dagw
_most people prefer the experience of having humans create and serve their
food when they go to a restaurant._

Serve sure, but how many people care about what goes on beyond the closed
doors of the restaurant kitchen as long as food is up to standard. Would you
really care if your steak was 'hand fried' by a line chef or fired by some
kind of meat frying robot as long as it was of high quality done to your
liking.

The 'problem' however (at least short term) is that line chefs are pretty
cheap and advanced robots are pretty expensive.

------
_jn
Interestingly, this breaks Betteridge's law by giving an indeterminate
response instead of the negative.

~~~
mushinron4
To save others a seaerch: From Wikipedia -- Betteridge's law of headlines is
one name for an adage that states: "Any headline that ends in a question mark
can be answered by the word no." It is named after Ian Betteridge, a British
technology journalist, although the principle is much older. As with similar
"laws" (e.g., Murphy's law), it is intended as a humorous adage rather than
the literal truth.

------
aaron695
> is aimed at reducing the risk of food-borne illness

Given it's sell is solving a problem that doesn't need solving I'm guessing it
was made to be cheaper but it's not hence the pivot.

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bambax
> _Salad bars are magnets for bacteria and viruses. Even if the sprouts and
> ranch dressing aren’t tainted, the serving utensils may be. The Silicon
> Valley start-up Chowbotics has devised what it says is a partial solution._

A solution to what? What exactly is the problem? Just because bacteria (and
"viruses"? really?) may or may not be found in salad bars doesn't make it an
emergency. Exactly how many people get sick, or die, because they ate at a
salad bar?

It seems the problem is invented to justify the product.

~~~
MrFoof
Let's replace "salad" with "burrito" and just look at Chipotle in isolation...

* In March and April 2008, 22 customers were infected with hepatitis A from a Chipotle restaurant in California.

* In April 2008, over 400 people were infected with norovirus from a Chipotle restaurant in Ohio.

* In February 2009, an outbreak of campylobacteriosis was traced to a Chipotle restaurant in Minnesota.

* In July 2015, five people were infected with E. coli traced back to a Chipotle restaurant in Seattle, Washington.

* In August 2015 nearly 100 people were infected with norovirus from a Chipotle restaurant in Califorina.

* In August 2015, 64 people were infected with Salmonella traced back to Chipotle restaurants in the Minneapolis area.

* In October 2015, 52 people were infected with E. coli traced back to Chipotle restaurants, with 20 requiring hospitalization.

* In November 2015, 5 people were infected with E. coli traced back to Chipotle restaurants in Oklahoma and Kansas.

* In December 2015, ultimately 141 people (80 directly) in Massachusetts were infected with norovirus traced back to a Boston, Massachusetts area Chipotle restaurant.

* In July 2017, more than 130 people were infected with norovirus traced back to a Chiptole restaurant in Virginia.

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amyjess
A lot of this can be chalked up to Chipotle's insistence on using organic
food, which is far more prone to disease than non-organic.

(adding to your list, a Chipotle in Downtown Dallas was found to be infested
with rats a few months ago... it was discovered when the rats started falling
through the ceiling)

