ISSUES IN FOOD SERVICE
Demographics are powerful drivers of change that impact health care with both opportunities and challenges. The first driver, the one everyone talks about, is the aging of the baby boomer cohort, which is driving dramatic growth in the senior population (75 plus will be growing 2.1 times over the next 20 years). This is increasing demand for services in acute care, long-term care, retirement living, and senior living in all its forms. That’s the opportunity. The second driver, the departure of baby boomers from the work force, is shrinking the labour pool and making it difficult to hire and retain workers as fewer young workers are replacing the retiring boomers. The labour participation rate (the size of the work force as a percentage of the total population) shrank from 67 per cent to 64 per cent over the past 20 years in Canada. This is a particularly acute issue in health care and senior care where the ratio of the caregiver labour pool (aged 45 to 64) to the pool of people to be cared for (aged 75 plus) will slip from a four-to-one ratio to a two-to-one ratio over the years from 2010 to 2040. In just 30 years, the labour pool will be cut in half compared to the client base it serves. That’s the challenge for all health care operators.
So, what can be done? Some turn to international hiring as a solution, with mixed results. However, this approach has its own challenges, as the global workforce is shrinking as well. Globally, the labour participation rate shrank from 60 per cent to 56 per cent over the past 20 years. The better solution to the labour shortage is to think about new ways of getting the work done. The better solution is automation.
ROLE OF AUTOMATION
Brittanica defines a robot as “any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort, though it may not resemble human beings in appearance or perform functions in a humanlike manner.” Robots have been with us for quite a while. We’ve had the automatic dishwasher since 1850, automated lawn mowers since 1992 and the Roomba automatic floor sweeper since 2002. Robots do the jobs people no longer want to do.
We used to think robots were job killers, but they really are job creators. They just create other types of jobs, often more challenging and better paying. When Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) were introduced in the 1980s and 1990s, they actually led to a more than doubling of teller positions (from under 300,000 to over 600,000 in the U.S.). Why? As the process of dispensing cash was automated, retail banking locations became more efficient, and banks opened more branches, creating more jobs for tellers. Additionally, the role of the teller became more sophisticated and challenging, while customer service improved with cash access available 24-7 from any location.
Robots do the jobs people no longer want to do.
Robots offer many well-known advantages to health care food service operators — reliability, consistency, food safety, flexibility, efficiency, and overall cost savings. They work 24 hours a day, don’t call in sick, don’t take vacations and they don’t create drama in the workplace. The overall biggest advantage of robots in health care food service, in a future labour-tight environment, is to free up staff so they can spend more time on client care. According to Kaila Saunders, RD, NM, solutions specialist with Gordon Food Service, “New technology is an opportunity for kitchen operations to not only streamline meal prep, but also elevate the dining experience. By reducing time spent on repetitive or time-consuming tasks, food service teams gain more time to connect with residents and focus on delivering personalized care.”
ROBOTICS TODAY
Today, there is a wide variety of commercially available single purpose robots that can do a variety of back-of-house and front-of-house tasks. These include:
- Plate wash and ware wash robots, such as the Nala Robotics Spotless
- Sandwich-making robots, such as Nala Robotics’ sandwich bot
- Salad-making robots, such as Dexai and Remy by Cibotica
- Bread-making robots, such as Wilkinson BreadBot and maBagette
- Coffee making robots, such as Cafe X, Coffee Bot, Coffee Robot
- Beverage-making robots, such as Botrista and Alberts One smoothies
- Ice cream-making robots, such as SOLATO
- Pizza-making robots, such as Stellar Pizza, Hyper-Robotics, Nala’s Pizziola, Mr. Go Pizza, PizzaForno, Pizza ATM and Picnic often in a vending format for direct use by consumers in retail food service
- Burger-making robots, such as Robo Burger and Aniai
- Burger-flipping robots, such as Flippy by Miso Robotics and Gastronomous used by Harvey’s
- French fry-cooking robots, such as Atosa and Chippy by Miso Robotics, which are used in Cali Burgers, Jack in the Box and White Castle restaurants
- Meal-cooking robots, such as Oliver by Else Labs, Chef Jasper, RoboEatz, Eatch, Appetronix (formerly SJW Robotics), Aitme, Cook-E, Cala, GoodBytz, Beastro by Kitchen Robotics, Nommi by Wavemaker Labs, Mezli, Moley Robotics and Wingman by Nala
- Meal-delivery robots, such as Keenon, Swisslog and Aethon tugs who deliver retherm carts from the kitchen to the dining room and meals to patients
Of these, the most promising opportunities are likely to be the food production robots that can automate back of house tasks in the non-client facing part of the operation. While there is a novelty value to robots delivering food to clients, most operators are likely to want to maintain the human-to-human connection on the service side of the business where it can be best leveraged to drive client satisfaction.
“Robotics provide not only operational efficiency but also enhancements in food safety, quality, and nutrition for clients.”
— Cherie Furlan-Craievich, RD
ROBOTICS TOMORROW
Certainly, the above unit operations and tasks can be automated with current technology. The economics, practicality, capital, and space requirements of having so many robots doing so many different things in the kitchen make it a real challenge for food service operations producing under 1,000 meals per day.
Significant efforts, however, are being devoted to reimagining the entire food service system, with automation and robotics at the heart of this vision. Take restaurants for example. In Canada, 72 per cent (and in the U.S., 85 per cent) of restaurant meals are no longer eaten in the restaurant (i.e. take-out, delivery, or drive-thru). Rather than being a place to go out for an evening’s entertainment, restaurants are on a path to becoming local autonomous food production centres for meal pick-up or delivery.
Sweetgreen, a fast casual restaurant chain in the U.S., has introduced Infinite Kitchen, an automated salad-making technology developed from innovations acquired through its purchase of Spyce, a pioneer in the robotic wok-based cooking concept. Chipotle is automating bowl and salad production (bowls and salads are about 65 per cent of their production) with the Makeline technology it acquired through Hyphen. McDonald’s in Fort Worth, TX is testing automated take-out only restaurants with automated self-ordering by phone and kiosk and drive-thru pick-up only. Robo Chef is a chain of restaurants purpose-built around its automated cooking technology that has expanded to using Robo Chef robots in preparing buffet meals for dinner cruises on Dutch Oriental cruise lines. With labour being in short supply and convenience being such a powerful driver, it’s not too much of a stretch to see the future of food service where much of our prepared food comes from localized robotic food production centres which can serve both consumer and institutional markets.
Experts agree. Cherie Furlan-Craievich, RD, food service consultant, says, “Robotics provide not only operational efficiency but also enhancements in food safety, quality, and nutrition for clients. It’s essential to begin planning for the integration of robotics to effectively address the challenges we are currently encountering in foodservice operation today.”
THE WAY FORWARD
Robots are stepping in to handle tasks that people are less willing to do — and, with staffing shortages on the rise, they’re becoming an essential part of the workforce. Robots can replace human labour in many kitchen tasks but their practicality in terms of economics and operations is a real challenge for kitchens serving under 1,000 meals per day. What we are seeing, however, is the beginning of a reimagining of the food service model itself. The automation of food production, in quantities suitable for automation, is changing the way we produce and deliver food to our clients. Just as the automobile changed society in ways we could not imagine at the time (giving us drive-in movies, drive-thru restaurants, motels, commuting, suburbs, and shopping malls), automation and robotics will change the way we do food service in ways we can barely imagine today.
Brad McKay is founder and chief executive officer of Meals On the Move, a company developing a chain of robotic food microfactories to serve better food, delivered fresh to health care in Canada. He is the recipient of the Canadian Institute of Food Science and Technology President’s Award and Emeritus Award and is a professional engineer and innovator. He can be reached at 613-863-1613 or brad@mealsonthemove.ca.