White Castle to Test Robot Cooks Made by Pasadena Company

A Pasadena company is providing robotic cooks to the White Castle restaurant chain to test their ability to grill up hamburgers and fry french fries.

Miso Robotics’s “Flippy” robots will be placed in kitchens for testing and potential future integration, the company announced Tuesday. The latest version of the robot is known as a “Robot-on-a-Rail” system, or ROAR. 

“The deployment will put autonomous frying to work for enhanced production speeds, improved labor allocation and an added layer of health and safety in the cooking process,” Miso Robotics said in a written statement.

“Miso Robotics couldn’t be more excited to bring Flippy ROAR into White Castle. Artificial intelligence and robotics brings a very real opportunity to continuously enhance the cooking process and optimize taste for restaurants,” Miso Robotics founder and CEO Buck Jordan said.

“White Castle’s brand is iconic, navigating new challenges to bring their menu to more customers, prepared in a healthier environment by staff in better working conditions that adhere to social distancing needs is something only Miso Robotics can do,” he said. “We look forward to being a part of White Castle’s next 100 years.”

The robots are expected to start flipping burgers and handling fry baskets later in the fall.It’s means to test the taste, quality, efficiency of the machines, along with their compatibility with existing point of sale systems, according to Miso. After that, wider use is expected.

The fast food chain said as it approached its 100th anniversary, the time seemed right to the years to come.

“With 100 years of quick service success, the time has never been more perfect to envision what the next century of White Castle and the restaurant industry looks like,” White Castle CEO Lisa Ingram said. “Miso Robotics understood where we could improve and stay true to White Castle’s brand of taste, innovation and best-in-class dining. A great customer and employee experience is in our DNA, and we are thrilled to bring the future into our kitchen with solutions that will transform the industry and make the White Castle experience all that it can be for generations to come.”