Krispy Kreme Now Using Robots To Make Donuts
When thinking about donuts, the first words that instantaneously go through my mind is the phrase, “It’s time to make the donuts.” Connected to those words is the mental image of the Dunkin Donuts employee leaving his house at a ridiculously early hour exhausted but dedicated to the mission to feed the masses delicious balls of fried dough for breakfast Those early mornings could soon change for some Krispy Kreme workers, though.
During Krispy Kreme’s Investor Day conference COO and interim CFO Josh Charlesworth said that he feels there is the potential to add robots to both factories and storefronts over the next few years which was reported by Nation’s Restaurant News.
According to Gizmodo, “The company is allegedly aiming to have 18% of their donuts produced with automation.” These robots that Charlesworth is referring to can add filling to donuts, remove those filled from the production line, and place them in their packaging. Many fast-food chain restaurants have been experimenting with different types of robotic automation to help with rising labor costs for these companies to operate under a manageable budget.
Some of the innovations that we have seen become reality over the last year or so are Subway’s AI smart fridge that contains premade sandwiches for customers to self-service, Taco Bell opened a mobile order based take out only restaurant, and McDonald’s recently opened a fully automated location that services take out and drive-thru capabilities with no human workers onsite.
Krispy Kreme CEO Michael J. Tattesfield is quoted by Gizmodo as saying, “So probably within the next 18 months, you’ll see some automation starting to go into the frosting, the filling, the sprinkles, and even the packaging.” The fast-food world is going through some major facelifts as companies look to cut ever-increasing labor costs as well as increase their production efficiency so they can get a higher volume of their products out to the consumer to drive revenue growth for their stakeholders.
Krispy Kreme’s big factory stores that supply grocery stores, convenience stores, and other high-volume purchasers of Krispy Kreme donuts do 12,000 points of access daily. If they can find ways to streamline efficiency and cut company labor overhead in the process by utilizing robotics it will only positively influence the bottom line of the company’s balance sheet.
These technological innovations bode well for the companies that have been investing in their research and development departments. Tasking them with creating solutions that impact the opportunities that companies face to assist with decreasing expenses and generating additional revenue to make the corporations more profitable. The unknown in all these advancements is what are the impacts on the people that work for these companies when their jobs become expendable because a robot is capable of completing your functions quicker and more efficiently than a human possibly could.
That raises all kinds of moralistic questions about implementing robots in areas that previously were staffed with humans. This could cost someone their way of making a living.
As it looks like all companies are moving in that technological direction, then the question to ask is what happens when Artificial Intelligence and robots take over all our jobs including the decision-making positions? How is that possible you might ask, the answer is that artificial intelligence and robotic programming can measure many diverse factors into a cumulative equation and then allows it to make the most risk-averse and logical decisions.
