The hunger for Nando’s is real as the restaurant chain is using a robot to crank out a bottomless bounty of chips for Londoners.
The droid can make a whopping 550 portions of French fries per hour - that’s a lot of cheeky Nando’s orders.
If you’ve dined at the Nando’s in Park Royal recently, you may have even eaten fries made by the robot.
The West London branch is the first restaurant in the world to use an autonomous appliance that can fry up to 60kg of chips per hour.
The machine, known as the /FRYR210, uses state-of-the-art robotics and motion control to handle the entire cooking process. Not that you could tell by looking at it. At first glance, the droid looks like just another industrial-grade cooking appliance.
But don’t let its looks deceive you; this is one mean, chip-making machine. The bot can shuttle multiple baskets of chips from the freezer to the deep fryer without the need for human intervention.
When the fries are ready, it takes them out and drops them into a container for the restaurant staff to collect. Perhaps, in the future, it will also come with a robot waiter to deliver them to your table.
All told, the bot can provide 30 cooked baskets of chips per hour. That’s enough fries to satiate even the biggest Nando’s fan, including holders of the top-secret Nando’s black card that’s rumoured to grant you free orders.
Nando’s just completed its first test of the droid at its Park Royal branch in a bid to reduce food and oil waste, and to cut down on energy consumption, the company said.
“In testing Karakuri’s /FRYR, we wanted to see how we can further improve the quality, consistency, and availability of our chips, while meeting our environmental objectives,” explained Cameron Roberts, group chief operating officer at Nando’s.
Although this is the first time the frying robot has been used in the wild, droids are gradually becoming a more common sight at cafés and restaurants.
AI-powered barista-bots are already popping up in Korea and Singapore, while the company behind the Nando’s bot (Karakuri) also makes a droid that can whip up personalised meals, including healthy poke bowls. The latter is being utilised by grocery delivery service Ocado, which also uses bots to retrieve goods at its warehouses.
“Chips are key to a restaurant’s success, both in terms of customer satisfaction and brand consistency,” said Barney Wragg, Karakuri’s CEO and founder.
“Our /FRYR product range is representative of how new technology can support every restaurant’s mission to improve their service in ways that were impossible five years ago.”
