Are Robots The Future Of Fast Food Restaurants?

San Francisco will soon get its very own burger-flipping robot.

A startup called Momentum Machines debuted a robot a few years ago that can cook and serve up to 400 burgers per hour – and now the company is creating a restaurant concept around said robot.

According to Eater, a Craigslist job listing explains that the new restaurant will be opening soon in the city’s South of Market neighborhood and is looking for a variety of positions to run the startup’s first restaurant.

“This location will feature the world-premiere of our proprietary and remarkable new advances in technology that enable the automatic creation of impossibly delicious burgers at prices everyone can afford,” the Craigslist ad states.

The burger robot is fully autonomous and has the ability to grill the patty, slice toppings and assemble the burger without any assistance from a human.

When it comes to the food service industry, the rise of robots and unattended technology has long posed a question: will human positions actually be rendered useless?

Last year, San Francisco became home to a “fully automated” fast-casual restaurant called Eatsa, where patrons order their food using on-site iPads and receive their meals through small glass compartments that SFGate calls “reminiscent of the classic mid-20th century automats.” No fuss, no muss … no human servers in sight (although there remain human workers in the kitchen to actually prepare the meals).

Scott Drummond, co-founder of the health food establishment (it is in San Francisco after all, and many of the product offerings are quinoa-based), describes the Eatsa experience as “essentially lunch on demand. Eatsa’s Order Anywhere concept translates to zero wait time for customers. No more waiting in line. No more $12 lunch salads. Just delicious food that is nutritious, affordable and quick.”