Former Chipotle CEO introduces food-making robots and a 'digital-first' approach to restaurants. Discusses consumers' shift to eating less meat. Challenges and benefits of automation in fast-food industry, aiming to solve industry challenges and innovate culinary practices.
Kernel integrates food-making robots for precision and consistency.
Colonel's focus on reducing stress on employees and enhancing food quality.
Deep dives
Innovating the Fast Food Landscape
Steve Ells, founder of Chipotle Mexican Kitchen, discusses how Chipotle's assembly line style of ordering revolutionized fast food. With his new restaurant, Colonel, he now integrates automation, using robots for precision and consistency in food production. The focus is on reducing stress on employees and enhancing food quality through careful preparation. Ells emphasizes the reinvention of restaurant operations and acknowledges a need for a more traditional restaurant ambiance in Colonel's beta phase.
Automation and Margins in the Restaurant Industry
Colonel's initial slow opening strategy without marketing aimed to test the platform's stability, facing occasional system crashes. With minimal infrastructure, low power requirements, and a reduced labor force of three well-compensated employees, Ells anticipates strong margins in the future. Automation, accommodating high turnover rates and labor challenges in the fast-casual sector, allows for a focus on hospitality and adapting to evolving customer needs.
Revolutionizing Fast Food Dining with Technology
Ells forecasts widespread integration of automation in the restaurant industry, with Colonel's platform designed to effortlessly incorporate new technologies. By emphasizing efficiency through a central kitchen and quick food distribution, the goal is to offer freshly prepared, consistent, and diverse vegetable options in fast-food settings, aiming to shift American dietary habits towards healthier, more sustainable choices.
Restaurants are a tough business with tight margins, from the cost of food to paying for staff. Kernel, the new venture by Steve Ells, the founder and former CEO of Chipotle Mexican Grill, is trying to fix that by introducing food-making robots and a "digital-first" approach to restaurants. In this conversation from the WSJ Global Food Forum in June, reporter Heather Haddon talks with Ells about his new bet on consumers’ desire to eat less meat, and on a business model that could solve some of the industry’s thorny challenges.