Popcorn Robot: From Steam Wagons to ABB Arms

A popcorn robot can sound like a novelty, but popcorn was one of the first snacks a machine ever made in front of a paying crowd. Street vendors used to shake kernels in wire baskets over open flames, until a Chicago candy maker built a steam engine to do the stirring for him. Today wheeled robots pop corn at Chinese tourist sites, and vending machines fill cups with nobody behind the counter. This post traces that path from fire to kiosk, looks at where ABB's food robots could fit, and asks what it would take to put a robot behind a cinema counter.

A popcorn machine at a cinema concession stand in Valley View, Ohio. Photo: Tim Evanson / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.0)

How popcorn went from wire baskets to Cretors steam wagons

Through most of the nineteenth century, people popped corn by hand. Home cooks shook it on the stove top, and street vendors held a wire basket over an open flame until the kernels burst. What came out was hot and dry and often unevenly cooked, with burnt pieces mixed in among the raw ones. The phrase "popped corn" appears in John Russell Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms in 1848, and on the US East Coast loose kernels were sold under names like Pearls and Nonpareil. How a batch turned out came down to the vendor's eye and wrist.

Kettle corn stirred by hand in an open pot at Conner Prairie, Indiana, in 2008. Photo: Serge Melki / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Charles Cretors ran a candy shop in Decatur, Illinois, before moving to Chicago, and his company dates its start to a Chicago vendor's license issued on 2 December 1885. By 1893 he had built a machine, driven by a small steam engine, that roasted peanuts and popped corn in oil, and his patent for it was granted that year. The engine turned gears, a shaft and a stirring agitator, so the corn popped evenly in its own seasoning of clarified butter, lard and salt. Exhaust steam kept the finished popcorn warm and blew a whistle to draw customers over.

A C. Cretors and Company steam powered popcorn machine on a street cart, around 1905. Photo: unknown, via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

In 1893 Cretors took his popcorn wagon to the Midway of Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition and handed out samples to the crowds. By 1900 his company was selling the Special, the first large horse-drawn popcorn wagon, and his street carts carried steam-powered poppers. The same engine even worked a small puppet, the Toasty Roasty Man, to catch customers' attention. It was simple automation. One engine took over the stirring, timing and warming that a vendor's hands used to handle, and each batch came out much like the last, wherever the cart happened to be parked that day.

A 1907 horse drawn popcorn wagon by C. Cretors and Company at the Long Island Museum. Photo: Mike Peel / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Where the popcorn robot stands today

From the 1930s, popcorn moved indoors into cinemas. During the Depression it sold for 5 to 10 cents a bag and did well while other businesses failed. In 1938 Glen W. Dickinson Sr. put popcorn machines in the lobbies of his Midwestern theatres and found that popcorn earned more than the tickets did. The kettle machine behind the counter has changed little since then. A person still measures kernels and oil, tips out the kettle and scoops the cups. Coin-operated popcorn vending machines have done those steps on their own for years, in places from Berlin to Tokyo.

A popcorn vending machine near Akihabara, Tokyo, in 2009. Photo: moof / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)

Robots have started to go further than vending machines. During China's National Day holiday this October, the robot maker CrossVerse Intelligence sent its wheeled W1 Pro robots to scenic spots in more than 30 cities, where they made coffee, ice cream and popcorn on site, according to a report republished by 36Kr on 8 October 2026. In August, visitors to a robot themed market outside Beijing's National Speed Skating Oval could buy robot-made popcorn and cotton candy. In the US, Sweet Robo in Brooklyn sells automated popcorn machines next to its cotton candy and ice cream robots.

A Mt. Comfort Coffee robotic vending kiosk, the same kind of self contained robot cell as a popcorn kiosk. Photo: Oleg Yunakov / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not sell a popcorn robot, and we found no ABB popcorn project. Its food robots already handle jobs next to one, though. At BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California, an IRB 360 FlexPicker and a two-armed YuMi cobot assemble custom burgers and box them, while the controller keeps track of ingredient stock. The IRB 1200 Hygienic is a small six-axis arm with an IP67 body and food-grade H1 oil, built for handling food. A popcorn kiosk made from these parts is only a possibility for now. Our post on robotic smoothie kiosks shows how similar cells are put together.

An ABB IRB 360 FlexPicker stacking burger toppings at BurgerBots in Los Gatos. Photo: ABB

What it will take to put a robot behind the cinema counter

In a factory, popcorn is already mostly a packing job, and that is where ABB robots fit most directly. Large popcorn and snack plants pop in bulk and then fill bags and cartons, and IRB 360 FlexPicker delta robots pick light packs off moving belts at high speed. The stainless FlexPicker can be washed down with hot water and detergent, which helps when oil and salt hang in the air. Programs for lines like this are usually built and tested first in RobotStudio, and our post on snack food packaging covers the end of the line in more detail.

An ABB FlexPicker delta robot picking small packs off a conveyor. Photo: ABB

In cinemas, stadiums and malls, a useful popcorn robot would take the dull parts of the counter: dosing kernels and oil, tipping the kettle, filling and seasoning cups, and wiping down at closing time. A collaborative arm such as the GoFa CRB 15000 could work at an open counter, with SafeMove slowing it whenever a person reaches in, and between batches the same arm could pour drinks. Nobody has deployed a system like this yet; it is a design idea. Hot oil, sugar coatings and children leaning over the counter mean safety has to be settled before anything else.

A wash down FlexPicker being sprayed clean, as food lines require. Photo: ABB

At home, the popcorn robot is still the microwave bag, which General Mills first patented in 1981, or a pan on the stove. A general purpose home robot that can pour kernels into a pan is years away and would cost far more than the snack is worth. Kiosks and factories share the same open problems: a robot cell is expensive next to a cheap snack, hot oily equipment needs cleaning every day, and someone has to be trained to keep the machines running. The W1 Pro robots at Chinese tourist sites show the idea works in public, but nobody has yet shown that it pays.

A popcorn vending machine at the Dong Xuan Center in Berlin, 2012. Photo: Anagoria / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 3.0)

Innovation

AI solutions for effortless ABB robot control.

Automation

Robotics

ceojohntran@chatwithrobot.net

+84905311611

© 2025. All rights reserved.

qtran1215@gmail.com