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Automatic Hamburger Machine - 50 Years Ahead of Its Time!

Automated Foodservice · 102.1K views · 2014-01-16 · 10:40

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Overview

A circa-1964 film showing AMF's AMFare system, which ordered, cooked and packaged hamburgers, fries, shakes and more automatically for a pilot fast-food operation.

On Hacker News

HN cites it as historical precedent in threads about restaurant robots and automation, noting it worked but was not cost-effective.

Discussed on HN; no positive recommendation is recorded in this export · HN mentions 2015–2024

Topics

Manufacturing & industrial processesHistory of computingCooking & food
Search by tags
amfare1964automated restaurantfast foodhistory of automation

What people said

alnwlsn · 2024-04 · Joke / meme

What's old[1] is new again. I guess with an AI to take your order, the last piece has been solved. Only took 60 years. [1] [VIDEO]

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OnlineGladiator · 2021-08 · Criticism

That thing is well-known to break all the time. You can even find people on Yelp talking about how the robot is broken. It's mostly old technology anyway; it's still a fundamentally mechatronic system similar to what AMF made several decades ago. [VIDEO] That one didn't make money either, and it also broke a lot, and had all sorts of other problems. Believe it or not, the core technology has improved a lot less than you might think. They may have put a prettier skin on it but it's still the wrong approach.

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Animats · 2021-08 · Reference

We absolutely can automate cooking a fucking hamburger, and as soon as it's cheaper than the cheapest labour It's time to link to the AMFare video again.[1] This was done 50 years ago, but wasn't cost-effective. Country Garden in Beijing has several automated restaurants. They have 6 restaurants on this system now, one of which seats 600 people. So at scale, this is starting to work. Maybe. Looking at the videos, it looks hard to clean. Commercial food processing equipment has a look of "can be blasted with boiling soapy water daily", and not seeing that here.[2] [1] [VIDEO] [2] [LINK]

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Sources

Video by Automated Foodservice, played through YouTube.

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