Miami’s newest robot chefs can’t make pizza or burgers yet, and we have yet to see them make a croqueta. In fact, they are still impressed by sushi.
But they can – and are – infiltrating the world of delivery and takeaway food in a healthy and affordable way.
The latest innovation in the robotic kitchen comes from Better Days Robotic Kitchens, which uses proprietary AI robotics to prepare nutritious and well-rounded meals and serve them at fast-food prices. Customers order from Better Days through apps like Uber Eats, DoorDash or GrubHub, pick up the meals or have them delivered and enjoy the fact that they are not eating chicken wings for the third night in a row.
As the AI trend spreads to more fields, robot chefs are slowly popping up in Miami, most recently at Florida International University, which earlier this year introduced Beastro, a commercial, self-contained robot kitchen, to the Eighth Street dining hall campus. The university’s catering school also experimented with a robot bartender named Cecilia in 2022.
Better Days’ robot chef is different from Beastro – the cooking algorithm is more complicated – but the concepts share a similar philosophy: they aim to provide healthier choices. While Beastro offers FIU students and staff dining hall alternatives, Better Days founder Yegor Traiman said the driving idea behind his concept was to create a more affordable and healthier alternative to delivery and takeout.
“I came to this place to solve the problem of how to make healthy food portable and accessible to the most people,” says Traiman, whose background is not rooted in the restaurant or service industry, but in engineering. “I have spent the last ten years in the robot world. I really knew what robots can do and what they can’t do. The idea was: let’s maximize what robots can do best and where robots can outperform humans. And that is precision.”
The process starts in the Better Days commissary’s kitchen and does not eliminate the human element. Fully human chefs create the recipes and prepare the food – chopping and blanching the vegetables, seasoning the meat – and putting it in specially designed packaging. At the franchise locations, the AI-powered robot places the food in the cold room and waits for an order to arrive. After an order, the arm picks up the container and transfers it to the robot ovens.
The precision comes in the cooking process. The AI algorithms and sensors calculate the exact weight of each dish, as well as other parameters, such as how cooked a customer wants the dish. It also calculates when the delivery person will pick up the item and the travel time to the destination. At the end of the process there is even an extra thermal scanner to ensure that the dish is done.
The end result doesn’t taste like fast food. It tastes like salmon with lemon dill and tandoori chicken, meatballs and macaroni and cheese. A spicy rigatoni that is not too spicy and not too bland. Side dishes like a crispy, nutty rice pilaf or vegetables like lemon peppercorn or turmeric-roasted cauliflower. There are even desserts on offer, although we’re sure the surprisingly light Basque cheesecake doesn’t fall into the ‘healthier’ category.
The dishes range in price between $4 and $10, while the “Better Meal” deal costs between $12 and $15 for a main course and two sides, vegetables or dessert.
Currently, Better Days operates one ghost kitchen in South Miami. A Brickell location will be coming on board soon. One of the robots has also been franchised to a small take-out restaurant run by husband and wife team Cem and Ece Kinay in a former Pizza Hut location at 3830 SW Eighth St.
Cem Kinay sees the Better Days robot – which he calls “R2D2” – as a kind of sous chef that will help expand the company’s offering. Better Days provides the robot and the prepared meals, and all the Kinays have to do is hand them to customers or curious delivery drivers (who, says Ece Kinay, are happy to take videos of the robot).
“The options we have now fall into the fast food category,” said Cem Kinay (the couple also sells burgers, hot dogs and wings through the delivery apps). “There is a lot of demand, but this neighborhood is surrounded by offices and various companies. If I were someone who worked in an office here, I don’t know how many times a week I would want to eat a hamburger for lunch. We considered coming up with our own concept, but then we came across Better Days, a fully automated solution that bridges the gap in the kitchen that we had.”
In addition to local employees, the Kinays receive a lot of business from students at the neighboring University of St. Augustine Health Sciences, according to Ece Kinay.
“We are getting feedback from the students and they are grateful that we are here because of the award,” she said. “And the best thing is that the robot is completely autonomous. It does all the work. All we have to do is take it and put it in a bag.”
The Kinays use four ovens and one arm as part of their Better Days package, a configuration that can process 60 orders per hour, Traiman said. Franchisees can add ovens as needed.
“We have no borders,” he said. “But as a location’s revenue grows, we can add additional ovens and additional robots.”
Traiman envisions other applications for the robot besides ghost kitchens, such as a supermarket or gas station that wants to offer take-out meals or a hotel that wants to offer meals after the kitchen is closed. He doesn’t see it as an innovation that will eliminate jobs, but as a way to supplement entrepreneurs looking to expand menus and revenue streams.
“It’s still far off in the future,” he said of the idea of a fully automated robot doing all the cooking for a brick-and-mortar restaurant. “At this point I really believe the application doesn’t take anything away. It strengthens what exists.”
