Chipotle is trying out a latest employee that’s angling to arrange the chain’s famed avocado twice as fast as the present pace.
The Mexican grill on Wednesday introduced Autocado, a robot that’ll be tasked with the arduous technique of slicing, coring and peeling avocados before human hands then mash the fruit and add other ingredients. The brand new device can hold as much as 25 kilos of avocados directly that may be loaded in by a employee on the eatery, the corporate said.
The prototype is currently being tested on the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, California. The corporate expects to check the device in restaurants later this 12 months, CNBC reported.
Chipotle partnered with robotics company Vebu, which worked with certified training managers from Chipotle to learn the way avocados are prepped before being served to patrons.
“We’re committed to exploring collaborative robotics to drive efficiencies and ease pain points for our employees,” Curt Garner, Chipotle’s chief customer and technology officer, said in an announcement.
“The intensive labor of cutting, coring, and scooping avocados may very well be relieved with Autocado, but we still maintain the essential culinary experience of hand mashing and hand preparing the guacamole to our exacting standards.”
Immediately, it takes about 50 minutes to whip up a batch of guacamole with the goal to chop that point in half with Autocado.
“Autocado has the potential to work alongside Chipotle crew members to create the identical, delicious guacamole that Chipotle fans love but more efficiently than ever before,” said Vebu CEO Buck Jordan in an announcement.
Chipotle is expecting to serve up 4.5 million cases of avocados this 12 months which equals greater than 100 million kilos of fruit, the corporate said.