This is Planet Money from NPR.
A couple weeks ago I met up with reporter Justin Cramon in Philadelphia's Chinatown.
Hey, Justin.
Hey, Erica.
Good to see you.
Justin covers the food scene in Philly sometimes, and there's something he wanted to show me.
We walked past restaurants advertising hot pot, hand-drawn noodles, dim sum, and then stopped in front of what looks like a convenience store.
Is this it?
Is it.
It has a sign that says Insta Foods.
We go in, and towards the back, we see a man.
Kenny.
Yep.
Great to meet you.
Kenny Poon is a co-owner of this place.
He's been in the restaurant business for about 25 years and he's just brought in an exciting new cook.
He can make over 5,000 different dishes.
5,000?
Yes.
Wow.
Kenny says his chef has great qualities that he really values.
So far, he never came late, never called out for a sake.
I asked him for overtime.
He never said no to me.
He works overtime?
He works overtime.
Does he never complain?
Never complain.
Kenny tells us the cook's name is Robbie.
Can we actually, can we meet Robbie?
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Come on.
Wait, this is Robbie?
That's Robbie right here.
Yep.
Robbie's a machine, not a human.
The always on time, never sick, never talks back employee is an automated walk.
A robot chef.
Hello and welcome to Planet Money.
I'm Erika Barris.
And I'm Justin Kramon.
Robot chefs, they're here.
They're at White Castle flipping your burgers, at Panda Express stir-frying your vegetables.
They're in restaurants all over the country.
Today on the show, what do robot chefs mean for the restaurant industry?
We find out from a leading economist how jobs might be lost and gained, or maybe just changed, through automation.
And then we see how it's playing out and plating out in real life.
Also, how's the food?
We pit a human chef against a robot in a taste test smackdown.
Restaurants are the latest frontier for robots.
Automated machines have gotten better and better.
So today, to test out the technology, we wanted to pit a robot against a human chef.
And like any good SmackDown, we start by meeting the competitors.
In one corner, we've got Robbie.
Since Robbie's a robot and can't actually talk, Kenny helps us describe his star chef.
It's about six feet tall and a couple feet wide, mostly metal, with a big LED screen across the top.
And at the center of it all is this basket.
That's where the cooking happens.
It looked like a washing machine.
And then inside this machine had all the ingredients.
The basket is essentially a wok.
It heats up and spins in different tubes, squirt sauces and seasoning, as all the ingredients are tossed around.
That's contestant number one, Robbie the Wokbot.
For contestant number two, we go to a nearby restaurant called Ting Wong.
It also serves Cantonese-style wok dishes.
But at Ting Long, humans do the cooking.
When we get to the kitchen, we find about six people prepping vegetables and meat, steaming rice.
In the center of it all is Judy Huang.
I am basically the office person, the translator.
If they need anything fixed, I hook them up with it.
I have the schedule, whatever that needs to be scheduled.
So all the side jobs.
You do everything.
Other than the cooking part.
Judy's the co-owner here at Ting Wong.
We asked her to introduce us to Robbie's competitor.
My name is Phuong.
Phuong Hoang Chiang has been a chef for 13 years.
He makes 35 an hour and he's wearing his chef's hat and apron and standing over a well-seasoned wok that sits on an open flame.
Chef Phuong is not comfortable speaking English, so Judy helps translate.
How many dishes can he make in, like, an hour?
About 20 to 30.
Oh my goodness, that's a lot.
So the chef, he actually went to competitions in China.
Judy shows us a picture of Feng on a stage holding up a plaque.
What is this competition?
Like, what does all that say?
It's a chef competition in the Guangdong province.
He got first place.
Wow.
Okay, so that's contestant number two.
An award-winning chef from Guangdong province with over a decade of experience.
Chef Fong and Robbie are here for the Chef vs. Robot Smackdown.
They're each going to make three dishes.
Beef chow fun, fried rice, and wok stir-fried beef.
And a judge will determine which one takes the crown.
Now that we've met our chefs and laid out the rules, the Smackdown begins.
All right.
Chef Fung gets to work on his first dish beef chow fun, this rice noodle dish with meat and onions and vegetables.
Judy makes a gesture for us to lean in and listen.
What are we listening for?
You know when you hear that crispy oral sound?
That's when they're preparing the wok.
Chef Fung starts adding strips of beef to the wok, to the sizzling oil.
You need it at extremely high temperature.
Can you do it at home?
No, you can't pretty much.
He drains the beef, adds vegetables, and starts tossing everything into the air.
Flames around the wok rise up about two feet.
It is very intense.
The key to Cantonese wok cooking is something called wakhe, sometimes translated as breath of the wok.
Think of it as the super high heat that kisses the food and imparts this special flavor, a bit of caramelization, that the char of it is gonna be different.
The flavor of it, everything the seasoning, and you can taste that it's made by humans versus a robot.
Chef Phuong tosses in some sauces and spices, gives it a couple more shakes and spoons the finished dish onto a plate.
Now it's time to go see what Robbie's been up to.
Our robot competitor has also been working on the first dish, beef chow fun.
Where is the fire?
Where is the flame?
It's electric.
So it's all electric.
The wok is electric.
There is no roaring fire.
Instead, Robbie has a touchscreen.
Now, Robbie isn't fully automated.
It's only partially automated.
And that touchscreen tells Kenny, the human prep cook, what to do, which ingredients to add to the hot spinning basket and when.
So here comes Kenny, and he just threw in some onion.
So you're still putting everything in manually.
Oh, yeah.
That's not that different from a wok, though.
But now you don't have to stir fry no more.
Whoa, it's rotating.
It just turned up the other way around.
The opening of the basket turns so the sauces can get squirted in.
The drum spins some more, and then a timer runs out and the screen flashes.
Kenny gets ready for the final step.
So now he is tilting it down and scooping it into a silver mixing bowl.
And I guess it's done.
Whoa!
Watching the robot engulfed in steam.
That sound was Robbie auto-washing himself.
Okay, one dish down.
Both chefs get started on their next dishes.
And while their walks are heating up, let's take a minute to talk about automation.
Restaurants have been trying this for ages.
It is ripe for automation because it's very labor intensive.
On the other hand, some of the labor is very cheap.
So it's not going to be that profitable unless the machines are really superb.
We reached out to someone who has done a lot of work on automation and labor.
My name is Daron Asamoglu.
I am an institute professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
You're being very humble.
Is that the Nobel Prize behind you?
It might be, actually.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
That's mine.
You see, here is the secret.
They also give you three fake ones.
So I don't have the full gold one there, so...
Now he hasn't specifically studied the restaurant industry, but he's done some of the leading economic research on automation and how it affects the people who work in fields like manufacturing and office work.
Daron and a co-author, Pasquale Restrepo, did a big innovative thing in a study that was published recently.
They actually quantified how many jobs automation added or subtracted in a bunch of local economies.
They specifically chose industries that, between 1990 and 2007, used a lot of automation, like car or electronics manufacturing.
And they estimated the effect automation had on jobs, workers, and their wages.
Darren explains that it's not as cut and dry as just robots steal jobs, because there are really two forces at play here, two effects that are both vying for dominance.
OK, so let's take car manufacturing, for instance.
Robots could paint cars, a job that was once done by humans.
So that's an example of robots taking jobs.
Daron says this is called the displacement effect.
By displacement I mean just very simply the fact that if robots are doing painting, then workers who were previously specialized in painting are no longer going to do that.
They're displaced from the painting tasks.
But there is also this other force, this other effect that's happening.
Robots can also make jobs or complement existing jobs.
Once workers are displaced from jobs, the tasks that robots can now do they can go and do other things.
And sometimes not always, but sometimes that could actually be a good thing for them, because they're doing more interesting things.
If robots are painting, that could create opportunities for new jobs.
Maybe there's a need for engineers to design the robots, or machinists to take care of them, or more managers to handle the workflow.
Daron says this is called the reinstatement effect.
Reinstatement means essentially now how we are creating new jobs or new types of jobs in order to bring workers back into the production process.
These two forces, displacement and reinstatement, are going in opposite directions.
And in the end Daron and his co-author found in the areas that they looked at.
Displacement won out.
They found that one new robot per thousand workers reduced employment by about three workers and overall wages decreased by about 04 percent.
But the effect of automation on wages can be different for different workers.
Automation can complement higher wage workers.
Robots can help them do tasks and be more productive, allowing their wages to go up even higher.
But automation can displace middle wage workers and force them into lower wage jobs.
Think like people on the assembly line who painted cars.
They might end up pouring paint into machines or doing janitorial work.
That probably means their wages go down or they might even lose their manufacturing job altogether.
And these competing forces aren't just contained to the manufacturing industry.
Theoretically, workers losing their jobs might create an excess of labor and drive down wages in other industries.
But also some workers who benefited from automation might earn more and have more disposable income.
Maybe they use that money to go out to eat more.
This creates more jobs in, say, the food industry.
Some of those displaced manufacturing workers who used to paint cars could get a job at a restaurant as a waiter or prep cook.
Now.
Up until the last decade or two, restaurants haven't really faced these automation effects.
Some of the skills required in kitchens, the dexterity of say, julienning vegetables or mincing garlic.
Some of those jobs take fine motor skills and levels of precision that robots have not been capable of.
So what we've seen in these other industries in manufacturing in the 90s and early 2000s hasn't really happened in the restaurant industry.
Yet.
In the last 10 years, that's been changing.
Robots are stepping up their game.
They've started by taking over the simpler, more repetitive jobs like frying and burger flipping, but they've been working their way up the ladder to finer knife skills and even preparing complicated sauces.
So Robbie the Walkbot might complement higher-end workers, making them more productive.
But it could also replace some workers and push some middle-skill workers into lower-skill work.
So the line cook ends up just pouring raw ingredients into the robot or doing some other grunt work.
Back at the Smackdown.
Chef Bong and Robbie are both finishing up their second dishes veggie fried rice.
The dishes look and smell pretty good to me, but we have called in a professional to be the official judge.
Let's go meet him.
Why am I the judge of this competition?
It's my fascination.
Shola Olinloyo is a chef.
He's worked in some famous restaurants on the East Coast.
He's a big name in Philly and New York.
You may have seen him on cooking shows.
You are underselling him.
All right.
He didn't want us to name names, but he's cooked for some pretty famous people and Hollywood stars.
Fancy.
And it all started back when he was a kid in Nigeria.
I grew up in West Africa.
You know, there were no like, you know, whole foods or super freshers.
We went to the market, we bought stuff, we cooked it.
So Shola's our judge because he knows food and because he knows the restaurant industry.
He says the economics of that industry is notoriously tight.
The median profit margin for a restaurant is 3 to 4 percent.
That seems small.
It is very small.
You can make that much more than that in treasury bills if you just do nothing, right?
Just give your money to the U.S. government and go on vacation.
Actually, you'd get about the same for a lot less work.
And that's why automation is so appealing for restaurant owners.
Rents are high, the cost of food is high, and labor costs are high.
Shola says robots may be able to help restaurants stay competitive.
Are you pro automation?
I'm pro automation.
I'm pro automation where it makes sense.
And it makes sense in a lot of places.
Shola is a consultant for restaurants and companies in the food industry.
They'll sometimes ask them to look at new technology like automated ovens or special food processors, and tell them how to make the technology better.
So Shola's pro-automation, but he's also pro-taste.
He cares about food and flavor.
But he says for food that isn't high-end, like burgers fries, chicken wings, the majority of people won't notice the subtle differences between human and robot cooking.
Most people won't tell the differences, especially with high glutamate foods that are just like hot and crispy and saucy.
Does that like make you want to cry that people can't tell?
No, it doesn't make me want to cry.
It's just, it's just the truth.
You know, it's the reality of cooking.
Not every singer is Whitney Houston, but they still make money and sell music, you know?
Shola is not the only person who thinks there's a place for robots in kitchens.
We talked to a lot of people in the food industry and they've told us robots can do things humans can't do.
Like Robbie, for example.
In the time it takes the human to make four servings, Robbie can make 15.
And while a human can have an off day or an off dish, the robot is consistent.
Now, the robot does break down sometimes and that can be a problem for a restaurant for a couple hours or a day, or however long it takes to fix it.
But for the most part it is remarkably consistent and makes the same quality of food every single time.
And that comes at a cost.
According to the manufacturer, a company called Next Robot, Robbie costs about $36,000 right now.
That's a lot for most restaurants.
So many kitchens rent their walkbots.
And it ends up costing about $5 an hour.
But as technology improves and there's more competition in robot chefs, the cost for walkbots will probably go down.
Right now for the dishes we bought for this competition.
The food made by the robot costs about the same as the food made by a human.
But if the robot gets cheaper and the robot food gets cheaper, there might be a bigger and bigger difference.
All right.
We've got our competitors.
We've got our judge.
Let's see how the cooking is going.
First, Chef Fung is at work making our vegetable fried rice.
And you have to have strong arm muscles to do that.
That's what I'm saying.
He is working hard.
I definitely don't get that kind of air time on my fried rice.
We asked Chef Peng if he thinks a robot could do his job.
And he's like, no way.
There's no way a robot could get that caramelized flavor, that wok hei, into a dish.
Do you think it's going to be better?
Do you think it's going to be better?
He's confident that it's going to be our dish, because if you lack wok hei in a dish, it's just a regular dish.
Okay.
Chef Fung likes his chances.
But Judy tells us there's a problem with human chefs right now.
No one wants to do this type of intense labor anymore.
Have you hired recently?
Recent?
No.
We've tried previously hiring, but we just have to let them go.
Judy says people will come in, work a few days, and then they bounce.
Not for them.
Or they just can't do it.
The technique isn't there.
Robots could help with that staffing problem.
So she gets why restaurants would get a robot rather than hire qualified human chefs.
I understand 100%.
I'm not going to lie.
But as a diner, I know for a fact that they can taste it.
I can taste it.
I'm a diner, too.
Judy can imagine more and more robots in restaurant kitchens.
And she's sad that future generations might lose the flavor and tradition.
Things like waque that were such a part of her childhood.
Next, we check in on Robbie the Wokbot.
It is also making the vegetable fried rice.
After the robot finishes and self-washes, Kenny, the prep cook, and I peer into the drum.
And there's still some rice in there.
So now you're spraying it with a water hose.
And is this still easier than having a human chef making it?
Oh yeah, for sure.
Why so?
The human chef, you need at least two months to learn to know how to use the wok.
To use this machine, all you need is 30 minutes or an hour.
30 minutes of training versus months or years of training.
That means Kenny can hire just about anyone.
Now I don't have to require a main chef.
How has it changed the staffing for the restaurant?
It's easier.
So now I don't need to ask them, what's your skill no more?
All I need to ask them, what's your availability?
So hiring, staffing, training, all those costs have gone down.
As Robbie worked on the next dish, we told Kenny about their SmackDown competitor.
Ting Wong.
Ting Wong's good.
I order food from them all the time.
So who do you think is going to be better, the robot or the human?
I think my friend, why you put me in a spot like this?
He seems a little taken aback.
I think we're very similar.
It's a close competition.
Very close competition, yeah.
But like you feel pretty confident that the robot can stand up to the Oh yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
Do you think you could tell the difference which one's made by the robot?
I don't think so.
All right, enough speculating.
It's time to taste some food.
The Chef vs. Robot Smackdown?
That's after the break.
Now it's time for what we've all been waiting for.
The Chef vs. Robot Smackdown.
Both competitors...
Robbie, the robot, and Chef Fung, the human, made the same three dishes.
Our judge, Shola, is going to judge two things.
First, he'll try each of the dishes head to head and judge them on taste.
Then he's going to guess which dish was made by the human and which one was made by the robot.
Let's get to it.
The first dish that we'll be presenting you We're going with beef chow fun first.
Shola starts by smelling both dishes, picking up each plate and putting his whole face in.
I mean, they both smell like chow fun.
He notices something about one dish.
This smells more caramelized on the meat side.
Do they both look, like, reasonable?
Yeah, they look reasonable.
He takes his time trying each of the two dishes.
And Shola says both had good noodle texture, but he had a clear favorite.
I feel like this is the human one.
To me, they both tasted about the same.
And I will say, I agreed with Shola.
I thought I could taste that char, that huacay in one of the dishes.
Shola writes down his scores.
All right, on to the next dish.
So what do we have here?
Vegetable fried rice with egg.
Okay.
He loads up his chopsticks, takes a bite.
I feel like this is the human one.
What makes this look human?
Because it seems to have the visual impression of what would be fried rice.
Because it has a better representation of vegetables.
Shola thinks the other one was made by the robot.
It's too dark.
I noticed that the vegetables looked beat up.
They were too tiny.
And the rice looked kind of mashed up.
But surprisingly, Shola likes the one he thinks was made by the robot.
This tastes better.
More glutamate response because obviously a substantially larger amount of soy sauce has been used.
Okay, we're down to the last dish.
So these are the wok stir-fried beef.
Shola gestures to one with his chopsticks.
I feel like a human being would have been proud to make that.
It's colorful.
You can see different shades of peppers.
And it has that umami, fermented black bean flavor.
Shola takes one last bite and jots down the final scores.
Okay, here are the results.
I will say on all three, Shola was correct about which was the human dish and which was the robot dish.
So you were right every time.
Oh, I'm surprised.
Did the human dish win every time?
The human dish did not win every time.
In the end, the human won the beef chow fun and wok stir-fried beef.
But the robot won the fried rice.
Even though Robbie's dish didn't look the best, it won out on flavor.
The robot put up a good showing.
But it couldn't do what Chef Bong had learned in over a decade of wok trainings.
OK, the human may have won out on taste, but that's not the only way people decide where they eat.
There are other factors to consider.
Chef Fong costs the restaurant $35 an hour.
Robbie costs $5 an hour.
Chef Fong makes four servings in the time it takes Robbie to make 15.
And people might decide they value cost and convenience more than taste.
Daron Asimoglu, the Nobel Prize winning economist, says this is the kind of thing that people will have to figure out.
Whether they want somewhat better tasting but more expensive food made by a human or the food that is made by a robot.
So there are always tradeoffs and consumers are going to make those tradeoffs.
But I think consumers are going to work that out because they're going to be voting with their feet.
Lots of fast food and fast casual restaurants are already using automated tools like White Castle and Panda Express.
And as people get busier and more used to robots and restaurants, margins get slimmer and slimmer.
Restaurants have more incentive to bring robots into kitchens.
And if people aren't willing to pay extra for food made by a human, we might be seeing a lot more robot made food in our lives.
Some exciting news.
Planet Money has a book coming out and we're going on tour.
The book is called Planet Money, a guide to the economic forces that shape your life.
I will be at the Pittsburgh show in April.
If you can't come to that one, there are 12 stops on our tour.
We'll be in New York, D.C., Portland, one in Oregon, Chicago, Seattle, a bunch of others.
Every stop will have different hosts and guests.
And you'll get an exclusive tote bag with your ticket while supplies last.
Get tickets at the link in the show notes or go to planetmoneybook.com.
And thank you.
We have some photos and videos of the Robot Chef in action on our Instagram.
We're at planetmoney.
And give us a follow while you're there.
This episode was produced by Sam Yellow Horse Kessler.
It was edited by Jess Jang.
It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Robert Rodriguez with help from Sina Lafredo.
Interpretation help from Guo Jingnan.
Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.
Special thanks to the National Restaurant Association.
I'm Erica Barris.
And I'm Justin Craymon.
This is NPR.
Thanks for listening.
