ABB Robots in Fast Food Kitchens: Automat to BurgerBots

For most of the last century, fast food ran on people. Line cooks sliced tomatoes and flipped patties by hand. The closest thing to automation was the automat, a wall of coin-operated windows that staff restocked from behind, so a person still made every sandwich.

A Horn & Hardart automat in New York, between 1960 and 1980. Photo: Bernard Gotfryd / Library of Congress, public domain

The first wave of kitchen robots in the 2010s aimed higher. Burger machines and pizza bots got plenty of press, and several shut down within a few years because a whole kitchen was too messy and varied to automate. The systems that survived usually handled a single station, such as frying or drinks.

A robot barista kiosk at Singapore Changi Airport Terminal 3, October 2024. Photo: Nick-D / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Kitchen robot makers in 2026 have mostly taken that lesson. goodBytz released a more compact version of its emma kitchen robot on September 9, and its luca robot makes salads and bowls around the clock at a Leonardo hotel at Vienna Airport. Some airports also have robot coffee kiosks.

An ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker above the topping dispensers at BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California. Photo: ABB

ABB's own example is the BurgerBots restaurant in Los Gatos, California, which opened in 2025. An IRB 360 FlexPicker, a delta robot made for fast pick-and-place on food lines, follows a QR code on each order and drops the right toppings onto the bun.

The FlexPicker drops lettuce into an order tray on the BurgerBots line. Photo: ABB

A dual-arm YuMi cobot then finishes the burger, which ABB says takes about 27 seconds in total. The robot controller also keeps count of onions, tomatoes, lettuce and sauces, so staff know when to restock. For wet prep areas that get hosed down, ABB sells the IRB 1200 Hygienic arm.

A dual-arm ABB YuMi puts the finishing touches on a burger at BurgerBots. Photo: ABB

The next installs will likely be single-station robots in places where kitchens run 24/7 with small crews, like hotels and military bases. A compact cobot such as ABB's GoFa could eventually portion ingredients on a home counter, though that will probably start the way restaurants did, with one job per robot.

A briefing on the Autonomous Kitchen's robotic cooking system at Camp Walker, South Korea, February 2026. Photo: U.S. Army / Sgt. Deziree Keay, public domain

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