AI in the Kitchen

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
late night with chefs.
Yours truly, Doug and TruffleBoy are back at it again on our
weekly podcasts.
We've been super busy travelingfrom moving to states to states,
doing lots of cool events,meeting lots of new people, and
just really solidifyingourselves as.

(00:20):
Chefs in this industry, andwe're super excited to bring on
some old speakers and some newspeakers, as well as some new
topics back to the podcast andkind of regrow this community
and get back on the pulse ofthis industry.
So, without further ado I wouldto welcome Doug back in how

(00:40):
you've been Doug?
Yes, yes.
Amazing.
Amazing.
Thank you for the warm welcome.
Thank you everybody for tuningin and listening to us.
Me truffle boy, we are excitedto be back.
As he said, it's been awhirlwind.
I'm in New York City now.
He has been all over the placecooking for some of the coolest
people at the coolest events.

(01:01):
And best believe we have made alot of connections with a lot of
chefs that I know that you guysare gonna want to hear from.
So, without further ado, we wantto talk today to you guys about
kitchen automation.
Ai.
The biggest buzzword there isright now.
and what does that look for thefuture of the kitchens?
How is AI gonna play a role inour everyday lives in the

(01:23):
kitchen?
And how many people are gonna beout of a job because of it?
Love that.
Love that.
Yeah.
AI's definitely been the hottesttrendiest thing.
and it's, it's a wider spectrumnow too, on it.
Some people, are very scaredabout it.
And some people, Gary V are ifyou're not gonna learn how to
use it, you're just gonna getstuck in the past.
So it's, it's been crazy.

(01:45):
And I'm following a couplereally cool guys that, are
showcasing all what the AI andautomation can do within the
kitchens.
So I'm super excited to talkabout this subject with you,
Doug.
Yeah.
What, what do you got?
What do you got ready for us?
So let's get into it.
So the biggest companies I seeright now is Spice which is

(02:08):
backed with Danielle Balu andSweetgreen.
And then we also have MisoRobotics both on very different
ends of the spectrum, I think,when it comes to AI integration
and robotics into kitchens.
we have all these companiesdoing a lot of different things
that are shaping the future ofthe food service, and this is a

(02:29):
list of the eight companiesshaping the future of restaurant
robotics from back of thehouse.com.
And we talked about misorobotics, but we have Chow
robotics, kitchen robotics, truebird Bear, robotics, X R O
robotics, XI robotics, hyperFood robotics.
and all of these roboticcompanies please look into as

(02:53):
you but a lot of them are doingthe quick service, route of
fixing Denny's, Chili's Domino'sPizza Buffalo Wild Wings, all of
those fast food, fast service,high turnover rates low interest
jobs.
Love that.
And I think that the, thecompany that I think is really

(03:14):
focused on technology and kindof recognizes themselves as a
technology company more than afood company, which was really
eyeopening to me, is Domino's.
they're all about automation,speed, efficiency, and how to
automate every single part.
from orderings, the app,they're, they're always the

(03:36):
transcender of Delivery serviceapp things even more so than
Uber, and Uber's just a gianttech company, that Domino's has
been able to stay in businessbecause of that, because of
their automations, because oftheir technology, cuz of their
softwares in place.
So that's really cool.
And obviously McDonald's they'rethe leader in all of this tech.

(03:58):
It's, it's hard to stayorganized with that many
locations.
So props to them,, I mean, theyhave a, a big market cap.
I know as far as ease of use ofinterface for their app as well
as they've even been able toprogram, the pizza emoji will
automatically put a order in foryou.
Yeah.
How easy is that?

(04:19):
The fact that.
All you have to do is send asingle emoji.
Right?
And so that ease of use is whatthey've really tried to
capitalize, how to make it aseasy as possible, as fast as
possible, as consistent aspossible for the guest.
And Domino's has done a greatjob of that a hundred percent.
Miso Robotics is coming to usout of California.

(04:42):
They're doing a lot actuallywith Levy, which I know you're
familiar with.
As well as Jack in the Box,white Castle, a couple other QSR
restaurants out there now.
Miso Robotics, I think is gonnabe the future a hundred percent.
They have been able to basicallycomplete an entire robotic line.

(05:05):
That does everything besides,ordering the food, which I'm
sure is the next step.
But flippy, which, what a name.
but flippy is a completelyautonomous line that not only
will do your french fries toperfection fry them, but
actually cook's, burgers chickentenders, what have you.

(05:28):
it's basically a line that has alever in the middle, and this
robotic arm just swings from oneside to the other.
And so obviously there's a lotof interest in that when you
talk about, fast foodoperations, right?
Your labor overhead down to nil.
The robot doesn't call out, therobot doesn't get sick.

(05:49):
and as someone me, I see a lotof, scared in that, right?
I mean, you have dozens ofpeople who hopefully will be one
day chefs who want to becomechefs, but everybody has to
start somewhere.
And so, I see this automation inthe kitchen almost Blocking the
entrance to that chef role.

(06:10):
And beyond, obviously you stillhave your chefy restaurants and
everything else, but noteverybody has access to start
their careers in Michelinenvironments, A hundred percent.
I've worked in McDonald'sbefore, while I was doing it.
Was it the best experience of mylife?
No.
But now I've also worked atthree Michelin Star restaurant.
But everybody has to startsomewhere, and now you have all

(06:32):
these robots.
So it's that breach, that gapis, a little bit more limited as
far as if these automationshappen in the kitchen.
How does someone become that frycook that fuels this passion to
make them wanna do somethingcrazy move to New York City and
work in a Michelin restaurant?

(06:52):
Yeah, I definitely agree andespecially I think with
McDonald's you spoke, I recentlyread an article where they have
their first fully automatedstorefront, so that's really
cool, but also that eliminatesevery employee in the building.
But yeah, I think a lot ofpeople did get their starts in

(07:12):
franchises and it was an easyway in to see.
Whether you it or not is thatgonna make it harder for people
to enter the industry?
Yes, but it's also gonna be, Ithink it's just gonna change,
right?
Maybe, culinary schools willhave, internships that are
partially subsidized by theschool or by the restaurants can

(07:35):
take these people in.
I think the biggest issue rightnow that we have is that your
starting pay isn't worth theculinary school that you're
going into.
So that's a really hard thing toswallow is you're gonna go spend
30,000 a year for a culinaryschool at bare minimum, and then

(07:57):
you're gonna start as a 45,000 ayear employee.
You're setting yourself up for10 years of really hard work.
So maybe.
With the automation, we go adifferent route.
That enables one morecreativity.
Since you don't have to do theday-to-day struggle, now you're
all focusing is on the recipeand kind of perfecting that,

(08:19):
which is, I think really coolbecause a robot can't add or
can't taste, right?
So the product has to be fullyfinished.
By the set recipe or by theautomation that it's getting.
And then I think a lot of peoplewith the young in incomers who
are really good with tech aregonna be able to be the ones

(08:40):
that are programming these ormaintaining these.
So it's really interesting tosee which way it goes.
And I hope that, we as chefs areready to pivot into a, a
smarter, safer way to onboardand bring new.
Employees into this field and,and start a lot new careers with
this automation.

(09:01):
Definitely.
And we as chefs have already hadto play so many hats in the
kitchen, right?
We've had to be the plumber,we've had to be the mechanic,
we've had to be the electrician,you name it.
We've tried to fix it ourselvesbefore calling somebody out.
So now here's another hat.
software engineer chefs aregonna have to start learning how

(09:22):
to code, right?
If the robot goes down, maybethere's an error in the code.
How do we integrate these, highwork ethic, high quality, high
value career professionals?
Into these technical systemsthat have only started to pop
up, I would say in the last fiveyears.

(09:46):
Now I upload all my invoices onmy phone, that's insane.
I remember having to spend hoursand hours every night logging
everything in an Excel sheetthat gets emailed out to the
accountant.
And now it's just.
Photo on my phone, make sureit's not blurry so that the
computer can read every singleline of information.

(10:07):
But then you're good.
Your budget, your food costs,exactly where you stand, how
much you have to spend for therest of the month.
And it's insane.
I mean, shout out to companiesMargin Edge that are doing this
and just kind of making our jobseasier in the sense of Time
allotment.
Obviously it's alreadyincredibly long hours.

(10:27):
And so having these systems thatreduce that is amazing.
But it's definitely going to be,I think a big shift in technical
skill.
And we talked about seeing thoseyounger chefs who are coming
from the schools.
Hopefully the schools start tointegrate a little bit of that.
New knowledge that they're gonnaneed in 10 years.

(10:48):
Still being in kitchens, right?
Cuz when we were back in middleschool, we were the, one of the
first classes or one of thefirst years to use the iPads to
take orders and things that.
That was almost 10 plus yearsago, so, Just goes to show that
I think the, the food andbeverage industry and chefs are

(11:11):
very adaptable and therefore,hundred percent, we take on that
new technology quick.
we don't want to use aconvection oven anymore.
We want the rationales, Yeah.
They make, things moreconsistent.
Yeah.
Yeah.
We, There's no need.
There's, there's smarter ways todo it.
And I think that the work lifebalance has changed.

(11:31):
I think chefs are, stepping andspending less hours in the
kitchen.
And for that reason we'refinding easier ways to get to
the same result.
Right.
And that's ultimately, Wherewe're either gonna, accept it or
not accept it as if thequality's there, right?
If these robots are producingfood that the quality is not
there, then the customer's notgonna come back.

(11:54):
That's a great point.
I've thought about this a lotand I think that there's a big
pros and cons and you couldprobably spend hours on every
single one of them.
But, in our industry, The guestis always right and we've all
seen those laundry list ofmodifications.
And so how is something thisgoing to react when it's not

(12:16):
just, one plus one equals two?
there's a thousand steps inbetween that it's gonna have to
figure out.
And again, if it keeps puttingmayo on that sandwich, that's no
Mayo.
Time and time again, that's alot of lost money.
And you're right, people aren'tgonna come back.
And that is software.
And then, that, that is finicky.

(12:36):
we, especially at, going aroundbig properties, internet goes
down server goes down, those arethings where.
That's where a human can, switchand adapt or do something,
whether it's take manual cardsor, or, switch to cash or
figure, figure another way toget payment.

(12:58):
And I think that's a huge thing,right?
imagine you have a flippy burgerchain spot that's fully
automated and you're.
Internet gets cut down right?
Happens, yes, there's insurance,but also it's we're not gonna
know till we start going.
That's always gonna happen.
I mean, there's fires that weput out day and night, so
there's just gonna be the newstandard or new norm of fires

(13:20):
that we'd be putting out.
oh yeah, I gotta fix my arm.
Or on the flip beer, I gotta doan oil change on this machine.
No, and I think at the core ofit, the adaptability of
humankind will hopefully prevailthe wave of robotic, just
interest and, and structure ingeneral in the kitchen.

(13:42):
But it's, I would say, the needfor adaptability.
In the kitchen is higher thanother careers,.
Yeah.
Cuz you're not doing the samething day in, day out.
you got four seasons, almostnever.
It's almost never the same daytwice.
No.
And and that's what, that's whatI think.

(14:04):
the diehards, that's what wecrave for, the problems that we
get to come in and solve everyday.
I used to be scared of oh,what's gonna happen?
And now I know that, I'm wellequipped to whatever does come
my way, I'm able to adapt andswitch it out.
And I think that comes withexperience and that's something
that.
As a young culinarian, I didn'tlisten to my mentors as much

(14:28):
when they would they're takeyour time.
get your experience just cuz youcan replicate one thing or the
other.
It's do it so much till youcan't do it wrong.
that's, that's the experiencethat, comes with years of
dealing with problems and comingup with creative solutions.
And especially with the covidyear, how, how creative our

(14:49):
industry has gotten and howadvanced it's gotten, right?
They fought for outdoor patio.
Now outdoor patio's a thingevery year, right?
They fought for to go alcoholbeverages.
Now that's a thing, giant Caprisons for adults.
And that's enabling, people to,to enjoy.
That's what we're here for inthis industry, is to create

(15:09):
enjoyment, create memory, createnourishment, and as well show
our personality within that.
So I think with the automationsthere, there's gonna be really
cool uses for it and I thinkthat, there's gonna be some that
we'll potentially regret downthe line and end up 86.

(15:32):
I love that.
I I agree.
I think that one of the bigthings about dining out, right,
and especially after Covid, yousaid, is that connection with
the chef and who's cooking thefood.
And I mean, I know I have gradedhugely from that influx of

(15:52):
wanting to actually know who'sbehind the food that you're
eating.
But also, is it gonna feel thesame?
Are you gonna have that humanconnection with who's making the
food when that it's a flippyback there?
Or it's just coming from aconveyor belt and there's, a
motherboard, reading a set ofinstructions, putting the food

(16:12):
through a tube, movingmechanical arms and here you go.
There's no soul, there's noheart, there's no intent behind.
What's being put on that platenow the more interesting part
would be that intimate part, arewe gonna miss that?

(16:34):
And if so, I think, thatthere's, the quick service
restaurants can definitely getaway with it.
The, the casuals can definitelyuse a fry station guy.
There's, there's definitely alot of things that I do.
On my day to day that a machinecould easily do and do it
faster, better, and cleaner thanme, and more sanitary than me.

(16:55):
And those things I'm okay with,fries, right?
we know whether it's a machinedoing it or you're doing it, or
a burger on a griddle, gettingflipped.
Those are easy things.
Now when we're talking about achicken roula that's stuffed
with, the seasonal veg of theweek.
Then I don't think you cancreate something as complex as
that, but there's sushi machinesand Japan is just 20 years ahead

(17:20):
of everyone else, and they'reliterally living in that AI
future.
I think right now they're thefirst ones to, to really have
the, the hand on the pulse onthat with robots and stuff that.
Definitely.
I mean I know during my timeliving there was, incredible

(17:40):
just to see kind of theappreciation for the future.
I think a, a lot of times inother countries, especially in
western countries, the future isvery scary.
It's very unknown, right?
But Japan definitely seems tokind of embrace that and we see
that in their food.
But also in the automation inthe kitchen is light years ahead

(18:00):
of what we have over here.
Yeah, they're, it's insane howmuch technology is wrapped
around in their life.
We think, that our TikTok habitsare bad.
you look at Tokyo, they'rethey're getting married to
robots.
There.
They got.
Robot for every little thingthat they, they might have in

(18:22):
addition to those automatedvetting machines that are crazy
that they cook up the food foryou right away.
Those are super popular there.
And I think just overall, it'sthe acceptance of people.
I think there's gonna be a lotof pushback, but at the same
time, in these more Democratstates, you're gonna see a, a
much faster rollout of thesemachines.

(18:45):
New York, there's a huge Push, Iwould say to be, Tokyo, to have
the biggest, the brightest, thefastest, the most efficient, the
newest.
And I can vouch that it'sdefinitely a city that never
sleeps.
It's, always on the move.
Yeah, I love that about New Yorkand I am super excited to see

(19:06):
which ones of the companies willbecome the leaders.
Obviously, you were talkingabout Misa Robotics and that's
huge because to have thatmindset be able to explain to
the programmer what's happeninginside of Chef's Mind is, I
think gonna give them theadvantage.
That they need to kind of get asmuch of that intimacy or soul

(19:29):
into those robots, into thatprogramming, into that software.
And who knows, maybe they'llthey'll be the rise of the food
industry.
Robots by themselves.
there's a lot of, you give arobot a knife, things could
happen.
I love it.
for chefs starting off, or, orchefs kind of having a writer's

(19:51):
block or a creative block, youcan always open up Chad, G B T
or a Luna ai or even Meta, whichis all, all three of the big
ones are competing.
just for fun, I'd go on Chad gBt and be write me a 25 truffle
recipes.
and then you could take that andedit it and, it creates a easier

(20:12):
workflow and gives the user morecreativity and a faster
workflow, right?, what you wannasay, but sometimes you don't
know how to start it.
You don't know how to end it.
This kind of helps you shapethat body of structure, which I
think is really cool.
And I've been using it, forrecipes, for for captions, for
Instagram, anything that I cankind of see where this goes.

(20:35):
Is it always perfect or does italways make sense?
No, most of the time it'sgibberish, but we are we're in
the beginning stages of this.
This is the.com boom in ai,which is starting out slowly
right now.
So next three, four years, we'rereally gonna see it scale out,
which is really cool.
Definitely.
I liked how you, allude to, it'snot perfect yet, but it gives

(20:59):
you a place to start.
Right?
a lot of times we have so muchgoing on and to.
Have that hurdle of having to doeverything from scratch can be
really hard to I gotta make thisoutta thin air.
At least AI can often give you aplace to start to kind of make

(21:20):
that launching pad a little biteasier.
Yeah, and I think it does, itdoes great in that, as a
personal assistant, Chefs arestretching themselves more and
more and putting more hattitles.
It's nice to have Margin Edge toput on all your invoices.
It's nice to have chef Tech toput in all your recipes.
it's nice to have all these easyto order apps there's another

(21:43):
app that connects all yourpurveyors into one.
It's is what we use.
Yeah.
Reiki and it's a free, yeah,it's a free service.
It's insane.
But they're also, they're a datacompany, so there's a trade off.
You're giving them your data andhow much you order, and they're
giving you a free service thatmakes it easier to order.
But all these tools enable us tospend less time in the kitchen

(22:06):
and more time in our personallives without sacrificing the
quality.
I feel Definitely they havesaved me hours and hours of
time.
even Margined has the ability toinput invoices or inventory.
And so with being able to havean automated inventory system
where, you're not writingeverything down on a sheet of

(22:28):
paper, you're literallycounting, it'll put it in
categories for you, dairyproduce.
Dry goods, all based off of thatdata that you're taking a photo
of on your invoices.
Incredible.
What an absolute time saver,inventory has to be done every
single month.
There's no way around that.

(22:48):
And this has cut the process inhalf for me.
We're chefs.
We wanna be in the kitchencooking, we wanna be breaking
down fish, we wanna be, tastingthat stock, tasting those
sauces.
So for us, anything that's atool that cuts down a 30 minute
process into five or 10, we'reobviously gonna integrate it

(23:09):
right away.
That's the cool thing about thefood industry and automation and
AI and how that that's all justbrewing in this giant soup of,
the future that we're lookingat.
As we wrap up this conversationI want to just shed light to the

(23:30):
fact that, These companies aredoing a lot in terms of making
our lives easier and reallythinking about the chef at the
end of the day.
And so I can't be mad at themfor that.
But, thinking about the personwho's not the chef yet, the
person who maybe has thispassion that they're trying to

(23:52):
pursue I think.
We have to be very careful withthe integration of these systems
into our, our currentrestaurants.
On that note, I think it's overthe years it's become harder to
train people.
Especially right now when wedon't have that many people
coming out of culinary schoolstraight into a job.

(24:14):
A lot of the newcomers are not.
As equipped to take this stressand that's something that we
should definitely talk about onour next podcast.
Done, done.
Done.
That's segue.
Yeah.
Conversation, work life stress,balance.

(24:37):
Yeah.
Fuck your work life balance.
How many Instagram reels I'veheard?
Yeah, it's insane, but it'strue.
And the more in the future wego, I think the less we're gonna
wanna work.
Yeah, no, we could definitelytalk for hours about just I how
lazy humanity can be if we allowit.

(24:59):
I mean,.
Disney made a whole movie aboutit.
So we'll see.
cuz I guarantee you nobody'sputting in Marco Pierre hours
anymore in the kitchen.
No.
Besides the, the three and twoand one, but even them, they
don't have the, the amount ofhands that they used to have or
be able to get away with.

(25:20):
I think that's a perfect way towrap up our podcast.
I wanna say thank you toeverybody for tuning in, for
listening in.
Make sure to follow us.
We got a website coming out verysoon.
We're putting all the finaltouches on it.
But we are very heavy onInstagram, YouTube, our website

(25:40):
is gonna be a, a big hub forthis platform that we're trying
to create.
Everybody check out our ComingSoon website late night with
chefs.com.
You can find behind the scenecontent of us.
You can contact us if you have aquestion about any of the
episodes.
You can also see all of ourprevious episodes on there or
listen to them on Spotify orApple Podcast.

(26:03):
Ann, hint, hint, we do have amerch shop going up on the
website soon which will be anawesome way to support this
podcast.
Me and Truffle boy do this outof our own pockets, to have you
guys be there to support us tocontinue this mission of
connecting the food and beverageworld together.
One chef at a time.
Hell yeah.

(26:24):
thank you everyone for listeningin, and we'll see you guys next
week.
Late night with Chef is out.
Stay safe.