Robots make burgers at this San Francisco start-up backed by Alphabet Inc. and the restaurant already has a waitlist

Creator is a start-up restaurant in San Francisco that uses a robot to make burgers.
The restaurant is backed by Google’s parent company, Alphabet Inc. and already has a waitlist to get in.
Creator’s robot makes your burger in five minutes or less, placing toppings and condiments with precision.
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Following is a transcript of the video.

Here, a robot makes your burger from start to finish.

Alex Vardakostas: I grew up flipping burgers, my parents had a restaurant. [I’ve] made a lot [of burgers] in my life. Making that many burgers for folks, all the time, you start to realize that there are a lot of missed opportunities to make things a little better for everybody.

Vardakostas: Right now we have a system with 350 sensors, 20 computers, 50 actuators, and algorithms, and codes all over the place but we’re finally here. It’s finally able to do it.

How does it work?

Vardakostas: So what we have is one of the most advanced culinary instruments out there. It does pretty some cool stuff. One, it makes literally the freshest burger ever.

The first step after you place your order, is a bun will go into the system and it’s a whole brioche roll. In other words, [it’s] not the pre-sliced variety that you might be used to.

Using a whole roll keeps it fluffy and preservative-free, since it isn’t exposed to air.

The brioche roll is sliced, buttered, and toasted.

Next, the toppings are sliced fresh.

Vardakostas: In the middle of the robot is basically a huge refrigerator. It’s a case that contains lettuce, pickles, tomatoes, onions. We have two types of cheese that we grate to order directly on the bun and then 15 different sauces.

So the robot will do different things simultaneously. There’s a lot of software tracking to make sure the timing matches up. And so while we’re building the burger with the toppings, like slicing tomatoes, pickles, grating cheese, melting cheese, at the same time, the meat is being ground and placed into the griddle, and then cooked to order.

Every single ingredient is elevated one way or another.

The robot combines technological precision with gourmet techniques.

Vardakostas: It uses some gourmet techniques that are pretty much impractical to do by hand. So, as an example, we literally align the meat as it’s coming out of the grinder to go vertically along with your bite, so your incisors hit the seams of the meat and crumbles in your mouth, as opposed to having your teeth have to cut through them.

The robot also uses artificial intelligence to cook each burger perfectly.

Vardakostas: There are 11 thermosensors just watching everything from the ambient temperature, to the temperature of the cooking surfaces, and adjusting [them] every single time. We don’t cook any burger the same [way].

How does it taste?

Melia: This is really good.

Vardakostas: It’s dangerous.

Vardakostas: I think one of the most exciting things about Creator is that we’re serving [a] very high quality, gourmet burger with high-end ingredients at six bucks.

Currently, Creator only has one location in San Francisco…

And there’s a waitlist to get in.

Vardakostas: Solving an engineering challenge like this has been incredibly difficult. It’s not just a technology play or something like that. We wanted to make the best dining experience ever.

There’s been a conversation about [robots] taking away jobs and I think that the reality is, it doesn’t make sense for us to have to fear better tools and better equipment. At the end of the day, it’s making a much higher quality product at a lower price available to everybody. This impacts everyone who eats, which is all of us.

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