Miso Robotics Announces Flippy 2 for Automated Frying
Miso Robotics Announces Flippy 2 for Automated Frying
Company has put hamburger grilling on the, errr, backburner as it focuses Flippy on frying.
Miso Robotics announced the newest version of its Flippy robot today. Dubbed Flippy 2, the new robot incorporates feedback from White Castle, which has been piloting Flippy as an automated fry cook since last year.
Flippy 2 sports a number of new improvements over its predecessor, including automating steps that previously required a human to interact with the robot. Flippy 2 has a brand new AutoBin system for dispensing a variety of lower volume and specialty food items like onion rings and chicken tenders directly into a fry basket. Flippy’s computer vision and AI can automatically recognize the food, place it into the deep fryer to cook and once cooked, Flippy transfers the food to a hot holding area.
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According to Miso’s press announcement, Flippy 2 requires less than one full-time employee to operate, and can make 60 baskets per hour. Flippy 2 also takes up less space with a 56 percent reduction in aisle intrusion and a 13 percent height reduction.
Flippy has been going through all kinds of changes lately as it matures. A couple weeks back, Miso announced it was modifying the Flippy platform to make it easier for the robot to fry up chicken wings. Those changes were made for a partnership with Inspire Brands, which is testing Flippy for its Buffalo Wild Wings restaurant brand.
While Flippy started as a burger flipping robot, that functionality has been put on hold for a bit as the company focuses its efforts on Flippy as a fry cook. Dodger Stadium, White Castle, and now Buffalo Wild Wings, are all using Flippy at the fry station. Even Caliburger — where Flippy got its start making burgers — is only using Flippy at the fry station at its Shorline, Washington location.
“We hit the pause button a little bit on the grill for Flippy,” Miso Robotics CEO Mike Bell told me via video chat this week, “The functionality’s there, it's great, it works well. But what we found along the way is the problem set for restaurants in the fry station is significantly greater — it's an immense problem.”
Bell also said that White Castle, which had announced last year that it was expanding its use of Flippy to ten additional locations, held off on implementing that rollout as it waited for these new revisions to be made with Flippy 2.
For more on Flippy’s evolution as well as the state of its implementation with White Castle, check out my full Q&A with Bell (🔒).