Chipotle Mexican Grill has announced today that they are testing two new prototypes in some of their restaurants. The first one is Autocado, a cobotic avocado processing prototype developed in partnership with Vebu. Autocado is designed to cut, core, and peel avocados before they are hand-mashed to make the restaurant’s signature guacamole. It is currently being tested at Chipotle’s Huntington Beach, Calif. location at 20972 Magnolia St. The second prototype is the Augmented Makeline, a cobotic makeline developed in collaboration with Hyphen. This prototype is currently being used at the company’s Corona del Mar (CDM), Calif. location at 3050 East Coast Hwy.
Check out the Chipotle Autocado machine in the video below.
Autocado Continues Through the Stage-Gate Process
Vebu and Chipotle teamed up with Certified Training Managers from Chipotle’s restaurants to study the company’s preparation process and identify tasks that are time-consuming and less preferred by crew members. In the Huntington Beach restaurant, where Autocado is being used, crew members can now focus on helping with other food prep tasks and providing outstanding customer service, while Autocado handles tasks like cutting avocados, removing their skin, and separating the fruit. On average, Autocado takes approximately 26 seconds to fully process one avocado. This year, Chipotle is expected to use around 5.18 million cases of avocados in its locations across the U.S., Canada, and Europe, which is equivalent to 129.5 million pounds of fruit.
The current iteration of Autocado features an updated design and size agnostic avocado processing abilities, meaning that the machine recognizes variability in the fruit and automatically adjusts itself to accommodate the size of the avocados being loaded.
Enhancing Digital Ordering with the Augmented Makeline
Chipotle’s Augmented Makeline, developed in partnership with Hyphen, utilizes automated technology to assemble bowls and salads, while Chipotle employees manage the top makeline to prepare burritos, tacos, quesadillas, and kids’ meals. Around 65% of all Chipotle digital orders consist of bowls or salads, making the Augmented Makeline a tool to enhance employee productivity and ensure accurate fulfillment of digital orders, thus providing a more consistent experience for digital customers.
