There’s Always Money in the Banana-Peeling Robot

“Amanda Hoover”

Morning Brew

“Two robotic arms with prongs that resemble hands hover above an unpeeled banana on a table. One prong picks up the banana and the other grabs a section of the peel and pulls it back slowly. It turns the banana and delicately takes off each successive piece of the peel. In about 50 seconds, the robot has successfully stripped the banana, a task so simple a monkey could do it.

That might not seem like a big deal in 2022 (weren’t we supposed to have flying cars by now?), but peeling a banana is a task that requires fine motor skills, something so unique to primates that robots have struggled to master the nuances. This robot had to learn nine skills to get the job done, including peeling to the left or right and picking up the banana. A human had to show the robot those tasks 17,319 times, which took 811 minutes of training.

The robot comes from the University of Tokyo, which introduced it earlier this year. It’s far from perfect—it only manages to peel a banana about 57% of the time—but its invention points to a future where machines might rival humans in kitchen tasks. That’s important, because while they might not be taking over your Sunday night meal prep, robots will likely become more common in industrial kitchens, making your drive-through burger on a kitchen assembly line.

That’s not exactly new territory for robots to conquer. Flippy takes over the fry station at restaurants like White Castle, using its giant arm to move baskets of fries and breaded chicken into bubbling hot oil (restaurateurs can rent Flippy for about $3,000 a month). Others take orders from kiosks, shoulder the strenuous task of kneading pizza dough, or mix drinks (Makr Shakr whips up cocktails, and Botrista makes trendy teas, lemonades, and lattes). But these kitchen robots aren’t that common, as automation has been slow to take hold in the food service industry. That’s in part because restaurant wages historically have been abysmally low, and owners didn’t have much incentive to shell out thousands of dollars for cyborg chefs when there was an eager pool of human hands to exploit.

But that’s changing. Since the Covid-19 pandemic, more restaurant workers have thrown in the towel, rejecting verbal abuse from unhappy customers and stagnant wages. Between March and July 2022, an average of 760,000 people quit jobs in accommodation and food service each month, more than any other industry aside from transportation and trade. In July, 5.6% of food service workers left their jobs, according to the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics. That compounds worker shortage concerns, as the labor pool was already expected to dwindle over the next decade due to a declining birth rate (in Japan, where the banana-peeling robot was created, this trend is more pronounced and is what’s driving automation efforts now). For those with dusty help wanted signs in their windows, robots might be a promising solution.

Then, of course, restaurant workers are demanding a living wage. As the cost of living has ballooned, workers at Starbucks and Chipotle have unionized, and their requests include higher wages. In early September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill into law that establishes a state council to oversee the fast-food industry. It has the power to raise the minimum wage in the Golden State as high as $22 an hour for fast food workers, while other workers in California will see $15.50 as a minimum wage under an older law. If those pay increases are realized, a banana-peeling robot might seem more economical for restaurant and franchise owners.

“The conversation around man versus machine is put in the context of job losses, and especially in the short run, and for lower skilled workers,” said Elizabeth Crofoot, senior economist at Lightcast, which studies labor market analytics. But labor shortages mean that’s likely not going to be the case. “So all these concerns about destroying jobs are likely going to ease, because we’re going to continue to see all these labor shortages, at least through the end of the decade.”

But robo chefs, by their nature, will have limitations. Without taste buds or true sentience, certain fine dining skills evade robots. What’s shaping up is likely a future where robots will take over the most tedious and even risky tasks to work alongside humans, who will do other forms of work in kitchens, or even build and oversee the machines.

Take Panda Express, which put the Panda Auto Wok in more than 100 of its restaurants this year. It uses a robotic arm to stir labor-intensive dishes like large batches of chow mein. It gets noodles prepared and onto your food court tray about 25% more quickly, according to the company. But some companies have made promises they can’t deliver. Zume Pizza, a Silicon Valley startup, used robots named Pepe, Georgie, Marta, and Bruno to make pizza alongside humans in a delivery truck, bringing four-minute pizza delivery to Silicon Valley. The endeavor ultimately folded, and Zume laid off half its staff in 2020 before pivoting to focus on food processing and packaging—areas of the food supply chain that are easier to automate. (In case you were wondering, the robots were repurposed to make packaging.)

As any novice chef can tell you, some food tasks are easy, while mastering others is tricky (although many of us can handle the banana peeling, unlike robots). Robots are good at repeating the same task, but in food prep, tomatoes are not always the same size, and batter isn’t always the same consistency. Some bananas are riper than others. Those challenges stand in the way of fully automating kitchens. And when it comes to skilled, artisanal food, robots might be less useful.

“I don’t see robots going out and trying to match an Omakase master, like a soba noodle master,” said Eric Fernandez, research and development chef at the Culinary Edge, a food innovation agency. “And I think it’d be a long time before you see a robotic pizza restaurant be the best pizza in America, for example. But at the same time, the majority of pizza that’s eaten is not eaten at that restaurant. It’s eaten as a kind of utility slice, a meal for people to have sustenance. If you can make that more affordable for them, I’m all on board for that.”

Customers likely won’t notice as robots become more common behind kitchen doors. But as the bots gain more skills and speed, they could make workers’ lives easier. And if they ever truly master banana peeling, maybe George Michael Bluth can finally take that day off from the banana stand.