We explore how purpose-built food assembly robots, computer vision, and better data can push restaurants beyond thin margins and burnout. We share what we learned by running a living-lab restaurant, why we paused it, and how we’re deploying the tech inside partner stores.

• Origins in delivery work and engineering
• Why restaurants lag in automation
• Building a living-lab restaurant for rapid iteration
• Pausing the pilot to deploy with partners
• Using robots for repetitive prep and assembly
• Keeping humans focused on hospitality
• Capturing sensor and vision data at the line
• Pitfalls of bad “labor optimization” AI
• Onshape for fast design, version control and collaboration
• Rejecting humanoids for task-specific mechanisms
• Expansion paths into catering and hospitality