Jack in the Box has a new robot employee manning the grill and the fry station.
The company is testing a robot from Miso Robotics, best known for Flippy the burger-flipping and fry-frying robot. Miso CEO Mike Bell said Jack in the Box (NASDAQ: JITB) is a perfect spot to test robotics and potentially scale up across the country.
“For us, it’s solving the biggest problems the soonest,” said Bell.
That means there has to be as much scale as possible. Building a robotic solution or fitting a Flippy installation into an existing brand means a lot of work and teams of engineers, efficiency studies and a lot of testing. The international QSR category is a logical place to find an environment of incredible scale with all sorts of routine tasks.
“We usually send a team in a couple people in to observe their operation and understand their key metrics,” said Bell. “Every QSR is different, some are extremely different. We look at it and say this is where we think we can help. Some are easier than others, some have really big menus that do all kinds of things from chicken on bone to frozen stuff. Some are easier than others to hit a ROI. We send that survey team in and get them an ROI and some basic math.”
Jack in the Box, which just announced it would be partnering with Miso at a San Diego, California, location is a great example of the scale Bell and Miso look to attack.
“They are a classic fit for us, they have such a diverse menu of fried items, not just fries—but things like tacos, their No. 1 fried item,” said Bell. “We created a couple new functions that are just for them. Flippy 2 is 80 percent consistent, then there’s a 20 percent customization process for brands. We created these specialty baskets that allows Flippy to grab the tacos.”
Tacos, unlike fries, don’t float when they cook. So those custom baskets keep the tacos in place and allow Flippy to take over most of the activity. It saves some part of that labor, to be sure, but Bell said the conversation is less about replacing workers than just staying open, even though that’s how many brands start thinking about automation in the first place.
“We’ve been able to change the topic of discussion. Everyone came in and got to know us talking about minimum wages. Today, it’s, ‘We can’t open stores because we don’t have the headcount. That’s the initial get-to-know-you call. But the value proposition has completely changed. We say this is not a labor-cost savings, it’s a revenue boost,” said Bell. “Certain brands are very quant [finance] focused and they understand the redistribution of labor, they deep on it. when you free up 50 to 100 percent of a station, they quickly know where that body can go next.”
The franchise model, unlike a lot of the prior tests, will be something he has to navigate. Which starts with the franchisor, then big franchisees.
“You have to have the mothership approval then you go with the big influential franchisees,” said Bell. “Those guys are self-made business people and they’re aggressive and ready to go. They’re generally faster movers than the headquarters. Selling these guys on the potential and getting them in makes the one- and two-location operators easier afterward.”
It’s the process he learned from prior CEO roles at restaurant technology companies. So watch for some big-name franchisees to roll out some robots as an indicator that robotics is about to move fast.