The world has seen a tremendous influx of AI (artificial intelligence) technology — from ChatGPT to Snapchat AI — but nobody could have prepared me for this next step in our evolution. Ladies and gentlemen, theys and thems, Chipotle has announced their latest futuristic friend, Autocado: the world's first robot guacamole maker.
Autocado is currently being tested by the Chipotle Cultivate Center in Irvine, California, to enhance their guacamole-making capabilities. Seeing as the company uses roughly 4.5 million cases of avocados every year (that's about 100 million pounds of avocados in case you were curious), it makes sense that they'd be looking for creative solutions to speed up their guac production.
According to the company, it takes employees roughly 50 minutes to make a batch of guacamole, from the first cut of the avocado to the last mash of the guacamole. With the introduction of Autocado, employees would be free to use those 50 minutes to assist customers or complete other tasks.
“We are 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 a recent statement. “The intensive labor of cutting, coring and scooping avocados could be relieved with Autocado, but we still maintain the essential culinary experience of hand mashing and hand preparing the guacamole to our exacting standards.”
How does it work? First, an employee loads Autocado with up to 25 pounds of fresh avocados. The avocados are then shifted into a vertical position and moved through the processing device which slices the avocado in half, removes the skin and the pit, and discards of any waste. Once this is complete, the now-naked avocados are dropped into a large metal bowl at the bottom of the machine where an employee collects them and adds ingredients and hand mashes to complete the process.
Autocado wouldn't be Chipotle's first dabble into robotics. Chippy, an autonomous kitchen assistant who makes tortilla chips, is currently being tested in Fountain Valley, California.
Is this the way of the future? Or, more importantly, a future we see ourselves benefitting from? Either way you slice it, you get some delicious guacamole out of it.
