It may sound like we’re pulling this story out of an episode of the Jetson’s, but the future is here and automated mobile restaurants are starting becoming a reality. That got us to thinking, in the absence of employees and ServSafe food managers that have completed food safety courses, how exactly will we know if the food safety standards are being maintained in future automated restaurants?
Food Safety Standards and the Future of Restaurant Automation
While current examples of automated restaurants appear to be types of juice and smoothie bars, it’s not too hard to fathom that technology will eventually provide opportunities for automation to serve more complicated dishes that require storing and cooking raw foods.
While the Minnesota food code doesn’t currently contain a section regarding robot chefs, we’d have to speculate that much more than the cooking process would have to be automated. Sanitation procedures would have to be closely followed, and we feel those procedures should at least be moderated and supervised by a living, breathing human being. Here are just some procedures we feel would have to be monitored by a ServSafe food manager:
- Hot and Cold Holding Temperatures
- Sanitation of Cooking Utensils
- Temperatures of Finished Product
- Quality of Raw Ingredients
As we all know, machinery can malfunction and even our computers freeze up from time to time. Without human observation, who’s to say that a robotic restaurant hasn’t had some sort of memory failure? If storage temperatures drop for hot-held foods or refrigeration fails, will an automated system have fail-proof safeguards for preventing customers from receiving tainted product?
Another major issue we see with automation is the quality of product. Not all products store for the same duration of time, and there can be product that may be spoiled or damaged that an organic chef can spot that robotic system won’t be programmed to assess.
While the Foodarackacycle may be several decades off, the foodservice industry and ServSafe food managers will have to adjust as automation becomes more and more prevalent.
How do you feel about the concept of maintaining food safety standards for automated restaurants without on-site human monitoring?
