Robot chefs: Hype or a sign of industry change?

Robots can’t yet bake a soufflé or fold a burrito, but they can cook up vegetables and grains and spout them into a bowl — and are doing just that at a new fast casual restaurant in Boston.

Seven autonomously swirling cooking pots — what the restaurant calls a “never-before-seen robotic kitchen” — hum behind the counter at Spyce, which opened Thursday in the city’s downtown.

Push a touch-screen menu to purchase a $7.50 meal called “Hearth.” A blend of Brussels sprouts, quinoa, kale and sweet potatoes tumbles from hoppers and into one of the pots. The pot heats the food using magnetic induction, then tips to dunk the cooked meal into a bowl. Water jets up to rinse it off before a new order begins.

Is this a robot chef or just another high-tech novelty machine? Experts differ, but more such automation is likely headed for the fast-food sector in coming years.

A report last year by the McKinsey Global Institute said that food preparation jobs are highly vulnerable to automation because workers spend so much time on predictable physical tasks.

Currently, there’s one big thing holding back the chefbots: “The human labour also tends to be lower-paid,” said McKinsey partner Michael Chui, making it less economical to automate those jobs. But that could change as businesses develop cheaper and more efficient robot chefs.

Spyce has those, and automated order-taking kiosks to boot, although it still employs plenty of humans. Founded by four former MIT classmates who partnered with Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud, the restaurant has hired people to do the trickier prep work — parboiling rice, rinsing and chopping vegetables, cutting meat and reducing sauces in an offsite commissary kitchen. It also employs a handful of people for customer service and to garnish the robot-cooked blends with fresh toppings.

“The openness of the design was something we knew we wanted from the beginning,” said Brady Knight, a co-founder and engineer. “It is kind of a show. It’s fun to see what’s going on behind the scenes. We didn’t want to hide anything because we think what we made is pretty cool.”

Spyce has generated enthusiasm among downtown Boston office workers, though technology experts in a city known for spawning robotics startups aren’t sure what to call it.

“I really wouldn’t consider that a robot,” said Tom Ryden, director of Boston-based startup incubator MassRobotics, who reserves that definition for a device with the ability to react to its environment.

“It can’t make decisions,” Ryden said of Spyce’s auto-pot. “It can’t say something’s cooked too long. There’s no feedback loop. It’s just an automated system.”

But Ryden said he’s still eager to join the crowds in trying it out.