Fast food just got even faster.
When it comes to flipping burgers, robots are making mincemeat out of the human competition — just check out the newly-opened Burgerbots in California’s Silicon Valley, where automated line cooks can churn out meat pucks in under 30 seconds sans sleep, bathroom breaks or hair in your food.
“The vision was to bring consistency, transparency, and efficiency to food service,” said Elizabeth Truong, creator of the innovative concept, located in the tony and tech-y town of Los Gatos. “For restaurant owners, it means better visibility of food costs, more accurate forecasting and – ultimately – better decision making.
Unveiled in collaboration with ABB Robotics, the shtick involves two cybernetic assembly droids working together inside a special burger-making cell to assemble the all-beef patty noshes with superhuman precision and speed, Interesting Engineering reported.
The process kicks off with a fresh-cooked meat puck slapped onto a bun inside a box, before getting ferried along a conveyor belt that’s stamped with a QR code.
As the food’s getting shuttled along, the intuitive Flexpicker (that’s one of the droids) selects its toppings — including special sauce, lettuce, cheese, pickles, and onion — lickety-split, utilizing the QR code’s data.
The burgernator then passes the baton to the YuMi (that’s the other mechanical meal maker) so it can put the finishing touches on the nosh. Total time elapsed: 27 seconds per sandwich — and without a side of attitude.
This assembly process makes its debut a year after California’s controversial $20 minimum wage law sent shockwaves through the Golden State’s fast food scene. But if you think taking a human out of the equation is going to save you money on your bill, forget it — the finished product here reportedly costs a heady $18.
Naturally, automating the fast food process might seem rough on human employees at a time when machines threaten to render various vocations, including restaurant gigs, obsolete.
According to 2025 data from the World Economic Forum, automation and AI could result in the loss of approximately 92 million human jobs by 2030 with cashiers and fast-food employee gigs clocking in among the most at-risk careers.
ABB Robotics
But before you try and organize a strike, it’s worth noting that Burgerbots hasn’t run humans out of the business.
Turns out, the machines are only responsible for the meat-grinding-to-burger compiling portion of the process, after which the nosh is handed off to a flesh-and-blood server.
Bosses claim the bots are meant to enhance rather than replace their non-bot counterparts — and even claimed that most industry insiders welcome their new overlords, per the Robot Report.
“When we asked the hospitality industry, 89% of managers and 73% of workers said they are open to the integration of robotics to automate tasks within their operations,” declared Marc Segura, president of ABB Robotics, referencing a survey of 1,250 hospitality workers.
“By taking over repetitive and time-consuming tasks, robots allow staff to focus on what matters most – creating memorable dining experiences,” he said.
And while it might sound like just another kooky West Coast trend, Truong envisions robotronic co-workers could become ubiquitous in the future.
“In the next five years, I believe that most restaurants will have some form of robotic automation, whether it’s back-of-house preparation, assembly, or even front-of-house service,” the bot boss said. “It will become less of a novelty and more of a necessity.”