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Comment by joezydeco | Hacker News Reader

The article doesn't mention that Taco Bell's kitchen systems are designed to eliminate many weak links in fast food preparation and handling. It doesn't prevent the line worker from sneezing influenza on the burrito, but that's also not how you get e.coli outbreaks.

If CMG is looking to get past their previous history of systemic food safety issues, this was probably a good choice.

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The article also doesn't mention that Chipotle's first big period of expansion was while it was owned by McDonalds. I have to imagine that McDonalds had an expertise in this area that at least matched Taco Bell if not greatly exceeded them.

McDonald's did indeed help Chipotle get their logistical systems in order. CMG and MCD still share some common suppliers.

One area where Chipotle resisted McD's advice was in automating their kitchen systems. One example was the steak. CMG believed hand-marinating and grilling their steaks in-store was a core feature that couldn't be changed. It's also a highly risky procedure when it comes to food safety and cross-contamination.

Other things, like the carnitas and barbacoa, were changed to be prepared offsite and shipped to the stores for sous-vide rethermalizing and serving. The steak was also changed to this method after the outbreaks (and long after MCD divested).

And alas the barbacoa at least hasn’t been half as good as when it was store prepared.

I understand why Chipotle has shifted focus so dramatically to food safety, but they’ve taken their eye off the ball on quality. My local shop has even had trouble getting the formerly routinely delicious rice cooked properly. I assume this is because of demands for a much tighter preparation schedule and serving window.

Why is it so hard for a fast food chain to avoid cross-contamination vs. other restaurants? Is it because they don't train workers properly?

Other restaurants have food-borne illness problems occasionally too, but when you have thousands of locations it makes national news.

But they should be isolated incidences unless you have a systematic problem. One chef treating meat incorrectly can cause issues in one restaurant but not across the country.

What Chipotle experienced was more than what you'd expect to happen in well-run restaurants that prepare everything themselves.

That might be part of it. Plenty of other restaurants need (at the least) experienced cooks who probably would have gotten bounced out if they couldn't keep food safety more or less in order.

A lot of it, I would guess, is simple scale. There's like 800 more Chipotle restaurants than Chili's, and I'd be damn sure the volume of meals coming out of each one is skewed far towards Chipotle as well.

Your average Chili's kitchen is more automated than a Chipotle.

http://www.middleby.com/midmarsh/PressReleases/Brinker-9_12_...

I mean, if my experiences are anything, it's because people don't care enough. At fat food joints you've got a bunch of high school and college kids who want to get off and party or get off and finish their mounting homework. It's not willful, just part of being 17/18/19 at an "unimportant" job. We had some adult-adults who worked there as well, and it was a night and day difference.

Again, it's not willful or malicious, just laziness.

> At fat food joints

I don't know if that was intentional or not, but I like it! :)

Also, when you are only paid $6 after taxes for every hour you work, why should you care? The company doesn't value you enough to care.

Eh, I agree and disagree. It's difficult to care when you're not paid a lot and other similar jobs are dime a dozen, but morally I can't say it's right. And, really, I have a difficult time believing 16/17/18/19 year olds are going to put in a lot of extra effort flipping burgers, even if they're paid $10 or $15 an hour. Kids are kids, I was one too.

Right, but if the company wanted to focus on quality, then it's their fault for hiring kids or otherwise setting wages at a point where only kids can really afford to work there

Total agreement on that point.

2019 = Order via speech recognition

2020 = Automated kitchen systems prepare ingredients

2021 = Burrito preparation via robotics

2021 = End-to-end order fulfillment without human involvement

Just a matter of time before raw ingredients are lab grown and harvested by robots. Not too long ago, this was pure fantasy. Only now is it starting to look inevitable, for better or for worse.

It's still pure fantasy.

every one of the constituent parts presently exist, if in early forms. i think his timetable is far too compressed though.

There is a small chance that we will see something like Star Trek food replicators in our lifetime.

Do you mean matter replication (no we won't as this violates the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle similar to the transporter), or something akin to a very complex vending machine that can make things from Ramen to Fajitas?

The latter, a very fancy food printer.

Voice based ordering is already available through Alexa and their iPhone app, cmg just behind the times

I guess what I don't understand is why we don't have more human-free systems for food payment. All of 15 years ago, I went in a company cafeteria in Tsukuba, paid a vending machine, and took the ticket to the cook. If I had been able to speak any Japanese back then, I probably could have customized my order there. But here in the US we're still hiring fast food workers to take standardized orders.

Because Japan's demographics made it imperative and conversely our importation of cheap labor subsidized or delayed the need to introduce automation to offset costs.

Coin-operated vending machines for food was actually somewhat popular in the US in the early 1900ds before fast-food. Check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat

There's a burger chain here in the Bay Area called The Melt which has iPad-based kiosks where you can order your food, pay for it with a credit card, and pick up a buzzer (to let you know when it's ready) without having to talk to anyone. It's glorious. I wish all restaurants offered stuff like that.

They're starting to appear. McDonalds has now introduced it in multiple European countries, plus isolated restaurants here and there (e.g. Burgerlich in Hamburg, which has touchscreens embedded in the tables: https://goo.gl/oJAh9v)

Almost every McDonald's I've been to in Europe and Canada has a set of Kiosks where you can order what you want (in English) and pay. You then take a number from the kiosk and sit down and somebody brings your food out to you or screens display your pickup number when it's time. Most ones in the U.S. have stubbornly held on to the less efficient queue at the counter and talk to a bored human system.

You can order McDs on a touchscreen at some locations in Cambridge (Massachusetts not England), it's already made it to America.

Had the same thought when I was in Tokyo and seeing it more frequently in Scotland where there are more self-serve kiosks at McDonalds than there are regular tills.

The robots will still somehow make the burritos too large and the tortilla not properly contain it.

A burrito making robot sounds like a great kickstarter.

One of the reasons Taco Bell has been so successful is the separation between POS and prep line. We know everything that happens, and generally when, in sequence. Chipotle is missing tons of data with their on demand prep model.

I'm not sure Niccol is going to like their lack of basic metrics.

Source: work on the restaurant ops software

Truth.

And if you see scales suddenly show up at CMG stores, you'll know what's up.

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