assembling a big mac is certainly easier than many existing processes in factory lines, too. Why doesn't a robot do it? (Which could multitask and easily keep track of a dozen items on the grill, moving between them in tenths of seconds.)
Burger king has had fully automated burger cookers for about as long as I've been alive. They're mechanically interesting and I got to study one on a school tour. It turns out the needs for sanitation and cleanliness are the driving design factor and even a "simple" flame-throwin' grill is bumping up against the economic limits at this time. Dealing with bread and refrigerated vegetables would result in the cleaning, sanitization, and QA costs exceeding the cost of simply doing it by hand.
Also simplicity of troubleshooting is critical, in an industry where all non-customer facing labor has converted completely over to illegal aliens. A "paper jam" in the sandwich wrapper, or similar, cannot be allowed to completely shut down the facility. Also employee turnover is an issue, monkey-see monkey-do works pretty well for repetitive manual labor, not so well for obscure robotic troubleshooting procedures.
In summary we have numerous robotic / automated appliances but the majority of labor in a kitchen is best done by hand for numerous design and financial constraints.
Wow, very interesting information. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on the subject. I've always wondered about automation in fast food restaurants, but what you say does make a lot of sense.
The least human interaction I've seen in fast food is Febo in Amsterdam, where you just pick up a pre-made burger from a little "pod" of sorts and pay for it (by handing money to a person) at the back of the store.
Regarding jams and malfunctions: I envision a robot restaurant to not be completely staff free, but still have a trained mechanic on site to deal with any issues like these.
I guess it all comes down to cost, which is unfortunate because it should be cheaper in the long run to cut your staff by 99%. Plus being the first robot restaurant kind of markets itself.
