Robo-Cook had been working alongside his kitchen-gardener, the Germinator at the Paddy O’Furniture Virtual Pub for some time. Together they led the fight for clean food, growing flats of microgreens, and nitro-brewing coffee, tea and Italian sodas. Rumors on the (pedestrian only) street swirled that they’d been transported from a future air-polluted Gotham by Porcupine.com (delivered by time-travelling drones).
Porcupine had lost its bid to open a third second headquarters in San Francisco. Locals there – who were receiving universal basic income – spent their idle days protesting against any cafeteria equipment manufacturers who were not paying their robots at least $15/hour. The company decided to manufacture their burger-flipping androids and micro-green gro-cabinets at one of their other-second-headquarters instead.
Paddy O’s waitron, Rosie was out walking their cyborg pet Astro, when she was alerted to the familiar “Danger, Phil Robinson, Danger!” coming from their 120 square foot kitchen. It seemed that not only had the walk-in door been left ajar, but the salad robot was out of pumpkin seeds. Jumping onto her Segway, she sped back past Uber Eats driverless cars. Upon arrival she discovered that: big data had already been transmitted from the appliances to upper management’s mobile devices, that an alert was issued to the headsets in the kitchen, and that HACCP violations had been recorded online.
Because no fossil fuels were being burned, the tiny kitchen needed no external exhaust. It used a heat management system to move energy to and from foodstuffs as needed in the multi-purpose appliances, (including the zero-condensate dish machine); it was LEED-certified and green. Food miles were measured in centimeters, as much of the produce was produced in-house (also, they’d converted to the metric system for good measure).
The layout was ergonomic, so only one ‘bot was needed to “man” the line; the equipment was all leased, in order that the most up-to-date hardware was on-hand. Firmware and menus were downloaded daily directly to each IOT appliance, as all were connected directly to the ‘net.
The mini-combi-oven steamer was self-venting, as was the fryer. The clam-shell griddle featured chrome plating for heat retention and throughput. A Cook & Hold and a mini multi-cooker mixer kettle, and a sous-vide circulator completed the hot side battery, a blast chiller/shock freezer rounded out the cold side, and a three-D printer created all of the garnishes.
Robo-Cook was so proud of his workspace that he exclaimed “Honey, I shrunk the kitchen!”, but no one heard him as the place was a people-less self-serve take-out and delivery only.
In today’s world, the machines all talk to each other, how come the people don’t?
Even though some of my best friends are robots, most are industry folks who willingly shared much of their knowledge of these gee-whiz innovations at the recent
NAFEM show.
