Using robots to cook, and selling on food ordering apps like Uber Eats, this restaurant has sold thousands of meals at cheaper prices than…

All the dishes in this photo are cooked by robots

Better Days has sold thousands of meals this year on delivery apps. Recently, they announced that all meals are cooked by robots.

SECRET RESTAURANT PREPARES FOOD WITH ROBOT ARMS

At 12:28 p.m., a customer ordered chicken tikka masala through the Uber Eats app. Seconds later, in a small room in a Queens warehouse five miles away, a robotic arm sprung to life. It took three cardboard boxes out of the refrigerator and placed them in the oven for about three minutes. Half an hour later, the order was placed at the customer’s door in a brown paper bag.

This is Better Days, one of several new businesses automating food production. Over the past six months, the company has delivered thousands of meals under a variety of names using delivery platforms like DoorDash and Uber Eats. Unless a customer scrolls to the bottom of the website and clicks on the tab called “Our Technology” (then scrolls to the bottom of that page), the customer won’t know that Better Days treats are made by a robotic arm.

The company changed its name to Better Days earlier this month and revealed that all of its food is cooked using automation technology. The reason they kept it a secret was because they wanted to see if anyone would notice. “It was important to have clear testing without any hype regarding the robot,” said Yegor Traiman, CEO of the company.

In New York City, there’s nothing stopping a restaurant from secretly preparing food with robotic arms. Automated restaurants are inspected just like any other food business, but beyond the letter grades, there are surprisingly few restrictions on robots in commercial kitchens.

According to a New York spokesperson, none of the city’s major food delivery apps — Uber Eats, Grubhub or Doordash — require restaurants to disclose whether they automate food production, in when state hygiene regulations “do not mention the use of robots”. According to the State Department of Health, many items on the city’s health checklist simply do not apply to unstaffed restaurants.

Dishes are individually packaged with QR codes

Over the past two years, Better Days has been tested in international cities like Paris and Barcelona: They’ve sold more than 100,000 robot-made meals. The company arrived in New York City in May and is operating out of CloudKitchen in Sunnyside, Queens. This is the startup of Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick. They rent space to delivery-only restaurants. More than two dozen businesses deliver food from this facility.

Even if the company isn’t breaking any laws, questions are still being raised about robots and food production. Besides the cost of a dish, what will change when robots cook for real people? There are more and more companies like Better Days.

BENEFITS OF USING ROBOT COOKING: MORE COMPETITIVE PRICES

Salad chain Sweetgreen opened its first automated cooking location this year; CEO Jonathan Neman said he expects all of the company’s locations to be fully automated within the next five years. Chipotle CEO Steve Ells is starting a new robot-run restaurant chain in New York City next year.

Companies claim robots are more accurate than humans in repetitive tasks, such as chopping vegetables. By cutting labor costs, they can undercut competitors and sell food at lower prices: about $15 for a bowl of salmon, rice and vegetables at Better Days, compared with $17 for a single product. Similar products at Sweetgreen.

Robots are already present in New York kitchens. They pour coffee, deliver dim sum and slice avocados. Better Days also wants them to make your lunch.

The company says its robot can be programmed to cook almost anything: salmon, chicken, garlic naan, and more. Once food orders are placed online, they will remove the items from the refrigerator and place them in the oven to monitor the food’s humidity and temperature.

The company’s robot can cook salmon fillets in less than three minutes.

This is the beginning of something bigger. Depending on developments in Queens, Traiman wants to open 500 automated restaurants in the next five years.

At least for now, humans are part of the equation. Better Days has a private, staffed kitchen where meals are prepared. Employees chop vegetables, season meat and package food orders for delivery to Queens – where they will eventually be cooked by robots and enjoyed by humans.

“Everything that requires a human touch, we have a human chef doing,” Traiman said. However, there are still limits to what robots can do.

Hoang Ha