Global Franchise 9.1

he food business is a numbers game – it is all about time, margins and efficiency. Over the years, restaurants have suffered on all three fronts, especially the last two. While labor costs have always moved in one direction, the pandemic poured accelerant on a growing problem. The Great Resignation was covered in detail when people found the opportunity to break free of their jobs and move to new industries and areas that they preferred. As a result, food service brands had a smaller pool of employees to draw from who demanded higher wages. This has affected the margins of many franchisees who constantly bounce between profit and loss. Coupled with the increasing unavailability of a dependable labor force throughout the U.S., franchisors and franchisees have looked for cost-cutting measures that doesn’t compromise the quality of the products and services they provide. While brands have always made technological updates to improve customer service, they’ve been more reticent to bring tech into the kitchen. Understandably so, any automated cooking process needs to be completely perfect, and demonstrate significant improvements in terms of time and cost to justify the learning curve that comes with replacing or augmenting human labor. But brands are certainly making that plunge now. Chicken wing brand Wing Zone announced a partnership with Miso Robotics to have all its stores fitted with the Flippy 2 robot, a robotic fryer. And while Wing Zone will use Miso Robotics’ products to fry foods, Jack in the Box will use them to flip burgers. In 2022, Starbucks sparked a major conversation when it debuted its prototype Siren System Cold Bar model on its Starbucks Partners TikTok account — the company’s official account dedicated to employees. In the video, a Starbucks barista demonstrated the process of making a Frappuccino using this automated system with minimal input from the barista. While many employees commented to express their excitement, others had a bone to pick with the proposed system. Some of the difficulties expressed were that busy locations would likely need multiple Siren System Cold Bars, especially during peak hours. Others had an issue with its order customization ability, with two in three drinks requiring customizations, according to Starbucks. But more importantly, employees expressed frustration with the company’s decision to tentatively spend millions of dollars on the system while effectively ignoring their growing unionization efforts. According to a Starbucks’ press release, the system was intended to alleviate many of the daily struggles that employees faced when making beverages. It even claimed that certain drinks could be made with fewer steps and, in some cases, in half the time, but employees voiced a different opinion – that it would slow them down, increase wait times, and further complicate their already stressful workflows. While the increased consistency in products is one element of adopting new tech, brands are also looking forward to regular operating hours and a dependable work force that never gets tired or puts a strain on management. What do the new robots do? For QSR brands operating in the world of burgers, fries and pizza, robotic solutions exist to ease the burden on kitchen staff. Miso Robotics is a popular manufacturer in the industry, as the major deal with Wing Zone suggests. The company produces four products, two of which perform a very similar job. The Flippy 2 and Flippy Lite are similar solutions that offer automatic fryer robots, and much more. The Flippy Lite is a compact tool, three feet deep and six feet wide, and comes with storage facilities too. It can even season the foods it fries. Its bigger counterpart, the Flippy 2, is larger and can handle more complex tasks. While the Flippy 2 robot starts a $3,000 a month, the average cost of employee turnover can cost a franchisee $150,000 a year. Coffee is big business, with main streets and cities dotted “Our job is to put great food on a plate, creating a reaction; how we get there is going to change” Flippy cooking wings T GLOBAL-FRANCHISE.COM 37