Meet Chippy – Chipotle’s Chipper Chip-Making Chip-Bot

Your next bag of Chipotle chips may soon be made by a robot. The king of fast-casual dining is teaming up with Miso Robotics to develop Chippy to cook and season their famous tortilla chips. Through A.I. machine learning, Chippy is trained to recreate the exact recipe. 

Also, its name is Chippy. How f**king cute is that?

Chippy is being tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center, their innovation hub located in Irvine, CA. It will get its first live restaurant experience in Southern California later this year. 

So, Chippy Is Going To Make All Of Chipotle’s Chips?

Potentially. Chippy’s cousin, Flippy 2, is already being used at White Castle to flip burgers and was tested at Buffalo Wild Wings. 

But we’re not talking about a simple patty flip or wing fry. We’re talking about chips, folks. You think a cute lil robot can just waltz in and make tortilla chips? 

Miso Robotics CEO Mike Bell feels confident:

“This brand is crazy about freshness and their ethos is that everything’s got to be made really well.

“We’ve had their culinary team to our facility, doing blind taste testing … getting high marks and getting past that team was a really big pressure for us.”

Corn tortilla + fried in oil + salt = Chipotle chips. Idk man, you think a robot can handle that? 

Oh, Great. MORE Robots Replacing Workers. 

Chipotle isn’t looking to replace humans with Chippy, so says Curt Garner, Chipotle’s CTO:

“We didn’t approach this from a lens of trying to solve a labor problem. We approached it from a lens of what would make it easier, more fun, more rewarding, and how do we take away some of the tasks that team members don’t like and give them more time to focus on the tasks that they do?”

I can’t imagine a single Chipotle employee feels passionate about the chip-making part of the job. 

This won’t be the last time we hear about robots in restaurants, guys. It’s only a matter of time before we get this…