Robots may soon build Chipotle salads, bowls

Chain says goal is not to replace workers but to speed orders.

Your Chipotle burrito will be rolled by a human, but its guts may soon be assembled by a robot. The fast-casual chain announced last week a new automated digital “makeline” using machines to build bowls and salads to customer specifications. Human employees are then expected to incorporate robot-assembled ingredients into burritos, tacos and quesadillas.

For now, the new system — developed in collaboration with Hyphen, a kitchen technology company — is being tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, Californoa. But the company expects the technology will be live in restaurants in coming months, rolled out slowly starting with Southern California locations.

Black beans or pinto; carnitas or chicken al pastor? The customer keys in a digital order, a bowl shoots down, and the ingredients are dispensed from above.

Curt Garner, Chipotle’s chief customer and technology officer, said the goal is not to replace workers but to meet the rising demands of serving customers who order online in addition to those who come into the store. Digital sales in 2022 were $3 billion, Garner said, about 38% of sales overall. “We’re operating like two restaurants out of one,” he said.

As recently as 2016, he said, orders placed outside the building were done by fax. Customers would show up in the physical queue at the restaurant to pick up — a process that often disrupted the flow of in-person ordering. The chain started assembling remotely placed orders in the back of the restaurant. In this new system, robots will be part of that separate, backroom assembly line.

In-person customers want different things than digital customers, he said. They want to chat, ask for a bit less of this, a titch more of that, while “digital kitchen customers wants to make sure an order is ready quickly and is accurate,” Garner said.

The shift is part of Chipotle’s foray into “cobotics” — collaborative robots that work with rather than replace humans. The quick-serve chain has dabbled in robotics before, debuting a robotic “Autocado” this year that cuts, cores and peels avocados to be turned into guacamole, and prototyping a robot called Chippy last year that fries and seasons fresh tortilla chips.