late night with chefs. Yours truly, Doug and Truffle Boy are back at it again on our weekly podcasts. We've been super busy traveling from moving to states to states, doing lots of cool events, meeting lots of new people, and just really solidifying ourselves as. Chefs in this industry, and we're super excited to bring on some old speakers and some new speakers, as well as some new topics back to the podcast and kind of regrow this community and get back on the pulse of this industry. So, without further ado I would to welcome Doug back in how you've been Doug? Yes, yes. Amazing. Amazing. Thank you for the warm welcome. Thank you everybody for tuning in and listening to us. Me truffle boy, we are excited to be back. As he said, it's been a whirlwind. I'm in New York City now. He has been all over the place cooking for some of the coolest people at the coolest events. And best believe we have made a lot of connections with a lot of chefs that I know that you guys are gonna want to hear from. So, without further ado, we want to talk today to you guys about kitchen automation. Ai. The biggest buzzword there is right now. and what does that look for the future of the kitchens? How is AI gonna play a role in our everyday lives in the kitchen? And how many people are gonna be out of a job because of it? Love that. Love that. Yeah. AI's definitely been the hottest trendiest thing. and it's, it's a wider spectrum now too, on it. Some people, are very scared about it. And some people, Gary V are if you're not gonna learn how to use it, you're just gonna get stuck in the past. So it's, it's been crazy. And I'm following a couple really cool guys that, are showcasing all what the AI and automation can do within the kitchens. So I'm super excited to talk about this subject with you, Doug. Yeah. What, what do you got? What do you got ready for us? So let's get into it. So the biggest companies I see right now is Spice which is backed with Danielle Balu and Sweetgreen. And then we also have Miso Robotics both on very different ends of the spectrum, I think, when it comes to AI integration and robotics into kitchens. we have all these companies doing a lot of different things that are shaping the future of the food service, and this is a list of the eight companies shaping the future of restaurant robotics from back of the house.com. And we talked about miso robotics, but we have Chow robotics, kitchen robotics, true bird Bear, robotics, X R O robotics, XI robotics, hyper Food robotics. and all of these robotic companies please look into as you but a lot of them are doing the quick service, route of fixing Denny's, Chili's Domino's Pizza Buffalo Wild Wings, all of those fast food, fast service, high turnover rates low interest jobs. Love that. And I think that the, the company that I think is really focused on technology and kind of recognizes themselves as a technology company more than a food company, which was really eyeopening to me, is Domino's. they're all about automation, speed, efficiency, and how to automate every single part. from orderings, the app, they're, they're always the transcender of Delivery service app things even more so than Uber, and Uber's just a giant tech company, that Domino's has been able to stay in business because of that, because of their automations, because of their technology, cuz of their softwares in place. So that's really cool. And obviously McDonald's they're the leader in all of this tech. It's, it's hard to stay organized with that many locations. So props to them,, I mean, they have a, a big market cap. I know as far as ease of use of interface for their app as well as they've even been able to program, the pizza emoji will automatically put a order in for you. Yeah. How easy is that? The fact that. All you have to do is send a single emoji. Right? And so that ease of use is what they've really tried to capitalize, how to make it as easy as possible, as fast as possible, as consistent as possible for the guest. And Domino's has done a great job of that a hundred percent. Miso Robotics is coming to us out of California. They're doing a lot actually with Levy, which I know you're familiar with. As well as Jack in the Box, white Castle, a couple other QSR restaurants out there now. Miso Robotics, I think is gonna be the future a hundred percent. They have been able to basically complete an entire robotic line. That does everything besides, ordering the food, which I'm sure is the next step. But flippy, which, what a name. but flippy is a completely autonomous line that not only will do your french fries to perfection fry them, but actually cook's, burgers chicken tenders, what have you. it's basically a line that has a lever in the middle, and this robotic arm just swings from one side to the other. And so obviously there's a lot of interest in that when you talk about, fast food operations, right? Your labor overhead down to nil. The robot doesn't call out, the robot doesn't get sick. and as someone me, I see a lot of, scared in that, right? I mean, you have dozens of people who hopefully will be one day chefs who want to become chefs, but everybody has to start somewhere. And so, I see this automation in the kitchen almost Blocking the entrance to that chef role. And beyond, obviously you still have your chefy restaurants and everything else, but not everybody has access to start their careers in Michelin environments, A hundred percent. I've worked in McDonald's before, while I was doing it. Was it the best experience of my life? No. But now I've also worked at three Michelin Star restaurant. But everybody has to start somewhere, and now you have all these robots. So it's that breach, that gap is, a little bit more limited as far as if these automations happen in the kitchen. How does someone become that fry cook that fuels this passion to make them wanna do something crazy move to New York City and work in a Michelin restaurant? Yeah, I definitely agree and especially I think with McDonald's you spoke, I recently read an article where they have their first fully automated storefront, so that's really cool, but also that eliminates every employee in the building. But yeah, I think a lot of people did get their starts in franchises and it was an easy way in to see. Whether you it or not is that gonna make it harder for people to enter the industry? Yes, but it's also gonna be, I think it's just gonna change, right? Maybe, culinary schools will have, internships that are partially subsidized by the school or by the restaurants can take these people in. I think the biggest issue right now that we have is that your starting pay isn't worth the culinary school that you're going into. So that's a really hard thing to swallow is you're gonna go spend 30,000 a year for a culinary school at bare minimum, and then you're gonna start as a 45,000 a year employee. You're setting yourself up for 10 years of really hard work. So maybe. With the automation, we go a different route. That enables one more creativity. Since you don't have to do the day-to-day struggle, now you're all focusing is on the recipe and kind of perfecting that, which is, I think really cool because a robot can't add or can't taste, right? So the product has to be fully finished. By the set recipe or by the automation that it's getting. And then I think a lot of people with the young in incomers who are really good with tech are gonna be able to be the ones that are programming these or maintaining these. So it's really interesting to see which way it goes. And I hope that, we as chefs are ready to pivot into a, a smarter, safer way to onboard and bring new. Employees into this field and, and start a lot new careers with this automation. Definitely. And we as chefs have already had to play so many hats in the kitchen, right? We've had to be the plumber, we've had to be the mechanic, we've had to be the electrician, you name it. We've tried to fix it ourselves before calling somebody out. So now here's another hat. software engineer chefs are gonna have to start learning how to code, right? If the robot goes down, maybe there's an error in the code. How do we integrate these, high work ethic, high quality, high value career professionals? Into these technical systems that have only started to pop up, I would say in the last five years. Now I upload all my invoices on my phone, that's insane. I remember having to spend hours and hours every night logging everything in an Excel sheet that gets emailed out to the accountant. And now it's just. Photo on my phone, make sure it's not blurry so that the computer can read every single line of information. But then you're good. Your budget, your food costs, exactly where you stand, how much you have to spend for the rest of the month. And it's insane. I mean, shout out to companies Margin Edge that are doing this and just kind of making our jobs easier in the sense of Time allotment. Obviously it's already incredibly long hours. And so having these systems that reduce that is amazing. But it's definitely going to be, I think a big shift in technical skill. And we talked about seeing those younger chefs who are coming from the schools. Hopefully the schools start to integrate a little bit of that. New knowledge that they're gonna need in 10 years. Still being in kitchens, right? Cuz when we were back in middle school, we were the, one of the first classes or one of the first years to use the iPads to take orders and things that. That was almost 10 plus years ago, so, Just goes to show that I think the, the food and beverage industry and chefs are very adaptable and therefore, hundred percent, we take on that new technology quick. we don't want to use a convection oven anymore. We want the rationales, Yeah. They make, things more consistent. Yeah. Yeah. We, There's no need. There's, there's smarter ways to do it. And I think that the work life balance has changed. I think chefs are, stepping and spending less hours in the kitchen. And for that reason we're finding easier ways to get to the same result. Right. And that's ultimately, Where we're either gonna, accept it or not accept it as if the quality's there, right? If these robots are producing food that the quality is not there, then the customer's not gonna come back. That's a great point. I've thought about this a lot and I think that there's a big pros and cons and you could probably spend hours on every single one of them. But, in our industry, The guest is always right and we've all seen those laundry list of modifications. And so how is something this going to react when it's not just, one plus one equals two? there's a thousand steps in between that it's gonna have to figure out. And again, if it keeps putting mayo on that sandwich, that's no Mayo. Time and time again, that's a lot of lost money. And you're right, people aren't gonna come back. And that is software. And then, that, that is finicky. we, especially at, going around big properties, internet goes down server goes down, those are things where. That's where a human can, switch and adapt or do something, whether it's take manual cards or, or, switch to cash or figure, figure another way to get payment. And I think that's a huge thing, right? imagine you have a flippy burger chain spot that's fully automated and you're. Internet gets cut down right? Happens, yes, there's insurance, but also it's we're not gonna know till we start going. That's always gonna happen. I mean, there's fires that we put out day and night, so there's just gonna be the new standard or new norm of fires that we'd be putting out. oh yeah, I gotta fix my arm. Or on the flip beer, I gotta do an oil change on this machine. No, and I think at the core of it, the adaptability of humankind will hopefully prevail the wave of robotic, just interest and, and structure in general in the kitchen. But it's, I would say, the need for adaptability. In the kitchen is higher than other careers,. Yeah. Cuz you're not doing the same thing day in, day out. you got four seasons, almost never. It's almost never the same day twice. No. And and that's what, that's what I think. the diehards, that's what we crave for, the problems that we get to come in and solve every day. I used to be scared of oh, what's gonna happen? And now I know that, I'm well equipped to whatever does come my way, I'm able to adapt and switch it out. And I think that comes with experience and that's something that. As a young culinarian, I didn't listen to my mentors as much when they would they're take your time. get your experience just cuz you can replicate one thing or the other. It's do it so much till you can't do it wrong. that's, that's the experience that, comes with years of dealing with problems and coming up with creative solutions. And especially with the covid year, how, how creative our industry has gotten and how advanced it's gotten, right? They fought for outdoor patio. Now outdoor patio's a thing every year, right? They fought for to go alcohol beverages. Now that's a thing, giant Capri sons for adults. And that's enabling, people to, to enjoy. That's what we're here for in this industry, is to create enjoyment, create memory, create nourishment, and as well show our personality within that. So I think with the automations there, there's gonna be really cool uses for it and I think that, there's gonna be some that we'll potentially regret down the line and end up 86. I love that. I I agree. I think that one of the big things about dining out, right, and especially after Covid, you said, is that connection with the chef and who's cooking the food. And I mean, I know I have graded hugely from that influx of wanting to actually know who's behind the food that you're eating. But also, is it gonna feel the same? Are you gonna have that human connection with who's making the food when that it's a flippy back there? Or it's just coming from a conveyor belt and there's, a motherboard, reading a set of instructions, putting the food through a tube, moving mechanical arms and here you go. There's no soul, there's no heart, there's no intent behind. What's being put on that plate now the more interesting part would be that intimate part, are we gonna miss that? And if so, I think, that there's, the quick service restaurants can definitely get away with it. The, the casuals can definitely use a fry station guy. There's, there's definitely a lot of things that I do. On my day to day that a machine could easily do and do it faster, better, and cleaner than me, and more sanitary than me. And those things I'm okay with, fries, right? we know whether it's a machine doing it or you're doing it, or a burger on a griddle, getting flipped. Those are easy things. Now when we're talking about a chicken roula that's stuffed with, the seasonal veg of the week. Then I don't think you can create something as complex as that, but there's sushi machines and Japan is just 20 years ahead of everyone else, and they're literally living in that AI future. I think right now they're the first ones to, to really have the, the hand on the pulse on that with robots and stuff that. Definitely. I mean I know during my time living there was, incredible just to see kind of the appreciation for the future. I think a, a lot of times in other countries, especially in western countries, the future is very scary. It's very unknown, right? But Japan definitely seems to kind of embrace that and we see that in their food. But also in the automation in the kitchen is light years ahead of what we have over here. Yeah, they're, it's insane how much technology is wrapped around in their life. We think, that our TikTok habits are bad. you look at Tokyo, they're they're getting married to robots. There. They got. Robot for every little thing that they, they might have in addition to those automated vetting machines that are crazy that they cook up the food for you right away. Those are super popular there. And I think just overall, it's the acceptance of people. I think there's gonna be a lot of pushback, but at the same time, in these more Democrat states, you're gonna see a, a much faster rollout of these machines. New York, there's a huge Push, I would say to be, Tokyo, to have the biggest, the brightest, the fastest, the most efficient, the newest. And I can vouch that it's definitely a city that never sleeps. It's, always on the move. Yeah, I love that about New York and I am super excited to see which ones of the companies will become the leaders. Obviously, you were talking about Misa Robotics and that's huge because to have that mindset be able to explain to the programmer what's happening inside of Chef's Mind is, I think gonna give them the advantage. That they need to kind of get as much of that intimacy or soul into those robots, into that programming, into that software. And who knows, maybe they'll they'll be the rise of the food industry. Robots by themselves. there's a lot of, you give a robot a knife, things could happen. I love it. for chefs starting off, or, or chefs kind of having a writer's block or a creative block, you can always open up Chad, G B T or a Luna ai or even Meta, which is all, all three of the big ones are competing. just for fun, I'd go on Chad g Bt and be write me a 25 truffle recipes. and then you could take that and edit it and, it creates a easier workflow and gives the user more creativity and a faster workflow, right?, what you wanna say, but sometimes you don't know how to start it. You don't know how to end it. This kind of helps you shape that body of structure, which I think is really cool. And I've been using it, for recipes, for for captions, for Instagram, anything that I can kind of see where this goes. Is it always perfect or does it always make sense? No, most of the time it's gibberish, but we are we're in the beginning stages of this. This is the.com boom in ai, which is starting out slowly right now. So next three, four years, we're really gonna see it scale out, which is really cool. Definitely. I liked how you, allude to, it's not perfect yet, but it gives you a place to start. Right? a lot of times we have so much going on and to. Have that hurdle of having to do everything from scratch can be really hard to I gotta make this outta thin air. At least AI can often give you a place to start to kind of make that launching pad a little bit easier. Yeah, and I think it does, it does great in that, as a personal assistant, Chefs are stretching themselves more and more and putting more hat titles. It's nice to have Margin Edge to put on all your invoices. It's nice to have chef Tech to put in all your recipes. it's nice to have all these easy to order apps there's another app that connects all your purveyors into one. It's is what we use. Yeah. Reiki and it's a free, yeah, it's a free service. It's insane. But they're also, they're a data company, so there's a trade off. You're giving them your data and how much you order, and they're giving you a free service that makes it easier to order. But all these tools enable us to spend less time in the kitchen and more time in our personal lives without sacrificing the quality. I feel Definitely they have saved me hours and hours of time. even Margined has the ability to input invoices or inventory. And so with being able to have an automated inventory system where, you're not writing everything down on a sheet of paper, you're literally counting, it'll put it in categories for you, dairy produce. Dry goods, all based off of that data that you're taking a photo of on your invoices. Incredible. What an absolute time saver, inventory has to be done every single month. There's no way around that. And this has cut the process in half for me. We're chefs. We wanna be in the kitchen cooking, we wanna be breaking down fish, we wanna be, tasting that stock, tasting those sauces. So for us, anything that's a tool that cuts down a 30 minute process into five or 10, we're obviously gonna integrate it right away. That's the cool thing about the food industry and automation and AI and how that that's all just brewing in this giant soup of, the future that we're looking at. As we wrap up this conversation I want to just shed light to the fact that, These companies are doing a lot in terms of making our lives easier and really thinking about the chef at the end of the day. And so I can't be mad at them for that. But, thinking about the person who's not the chef yet, the person who maybe has this passion that they're trying to pursue I think. We have to be very careful with the integration of these systems into our, our current restaurants. On that note, I think it's over the years it's become harder to train people. Especially right now when we don't have that many people coming out of culinary school straight into a job. A lot of the newcomers are not. As equipped to take this stress and that's something that we should definitely talk about on our next podcast. Done, done. Done. That's segue. Yeah. Conversation, work life stress, balance. Yeah. Fuck your work life balance. How many Instagram reels I've heard? Yeah, it's insane, but it's true. And the more in the future we go, I think the less we're gonna wanna work. Yeah, no, we could definitely talk for hours about just I how lazy humanity can be if we allow it. I mean,. Disney made a whole movie about it. So we'll see. cuz I guarantee you nobody's putting in Marco Pierre hours anymore in the kitchen. No. Besides the, the three and two and one, but even them, they don't have the, the amount of hands that they used to have or be able to get away with. I think that's a perfect way to wrap up our podcast. I wanna say thank you to everybody for tuning in, for listening in. Make sure to follow us. We got a website coming out very soon. We're putting all the final touches on it. But we are very heavy on Instagram, YouTube, our website is gonna be a, a big hub for this platform that we're trying to create. Everybody check out our Coming Soon website late night with chefs.com. You can find behind the scene content of us. You can contact us if you have a question about any of the episodes. You can also see all of our previous episodes on there or listen to them on Spotify or Apple Podcast. Ann, hint, hint, we do have a merch shop going up on the website soon which will be an awesome way to support this podcast. Me and Truffle boy do this out of our own pockets, to have you guys be there to support us to continue this mission of connecting the food and beverage world together. One chef at a time. Hell yeah. thank you everyone for listening in, and we'll see you guys next week. Late night with Chef is out. Stay safe.