CASE STUDY FOOD SERVICE
we’ve gathered from September to mid-
December.”
Adds Ince: “Where that helps us from a
back of house perspective is that we know
by half past 11 what’s happening and as we
would do with any service we batch cook
so with the robot, what we don’t need we
don’t prep.”
FEEDBACK AND FUTURE
Although yet another COVID crisis
that prompted a Government
directive to work from
home where possible,
hit phase one of
the project, the
deployment and
feedback on the
system has been
very successful
reports Wragg.
“From our
point of view,
this has been a
true partnership in
working with the team
at AS to solve any issues. It’s
been a real collaboration too with
Ocado who have been really supportive,
right down to including updates on their
staž bulletin boards, and their team are
giving us the most useful feedback.
“It’s always very interesting to find out
what people really like, and by ož ering a
meal you can specify hasn’t really been
done like this before, so we have the belief
that the system is what people wanted.
It’s been a delight to see repeat customers
coming in, and they really like the fact they
can be specific about what is in their meal.
26 FEBRUARY 2022
Also, people love being able not to wait or
queue in a work environment and with the
pandemic, it’s given staž that extra feeling
of safety.”
The next three months is about improving
the proposition including tweaking the
menu and changing how the ordering
works, (which includes the appointment of
a specialist third party app developer) and
constantly looking at gathering statistics to
improve the ež iciency of the working
environment.
Says Wragg: “We plan
to continue to super
service everything
as currently we’ve
two orthogonal
groups of people
from catering
and engineering
so we want to
have a lot of slack
in the system,
while gathering
statistics to help get
ež iciency up and the
working processes down
to the minimum level of support.
This all while giving the catering team more
and more insight and data to make the
preparation and ordering process more
ež icient.”
For the Atalian Servest side, with the team
now confident in serving food through the
robot the aim is to increase customer choice
by exploring the technological capabilities.
Says Ince: “We’ll now introduce new items
which will give healthier options, more
complex carbs, refresh the proteins and
ož er diž erent flavours, as there’s a whole
new world of possibility in customising food
for our customers. Contract catering is not
the high street as we see the same people
every day, so menu fatigue is something we
have to avoid. That’s why we’ll aim to keep
everything, fresh, exciting and help people
make the choices they want.”
He concludes: “For us it’s been a huge
learning curve and we’ve had conversations
on how to approach it, particularly in dealing
with brand new tech, but the service staž
and chefs have embraced it. We’re here to
give customers what they want, and when
we see people every day saying they’re
getting exactly what they need, the team are
standing a foot taller. They know they’re at
the forefront of something quite remarkable
that doesn’t exist anywhere else.”
For FMs who wonder if this level of
innovation is something which will catch
on in foodservice, Wragg believes it ož ers a
viable solution to all the many challenges
facing the foodservice sector.
“You’ve heard of ‘so¢ ware as a service’, but
there’s a new term, ‘robotics as a service’. We
work on that model. See the tasks that need
doing, look at where there is an opportunity
and the value that we can bring in helping
fulfil a task that you’d normally hire people
to do. That helps establish whether there
is a cost saving in waste reduction and
performance increase, and what that means
in a like for like Opex basis. Ultimately, I
believe that is why it is an attractive and
straightforward reason to migrate over to
use our technology.”
www.atalianservest.co.uk/
https://karakuri.com/
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