ATOSA
Intelligent French Fry Robotic Solution
After being featured on the floor of this year’s NAFEM Show and winning a Kitchen Innovations Award at the upcoming National Restaurant Association Show, the Atosa intelligent french fry robotic solution is turning a lot of heads before its launch. “We will be announcing the name of the robot soon, so stay tuned,” says Jennifer Ward, vice president of sales at Atosa USA. “These first phase prototypes will ship in the next several months.”
Though the system is targeted at quick serve and fast casual restaurants as well as arenas and stadiums, Ward notes that the opportunities are endless. By nearly automating the cooking of french fries, she says the solution helps alleviate labor shortage issues and can cover the cost of up to two employees with a return on investment of less than a year. Atosa gathered data from multiple customers and visited several locations to review challenges within kitchens, which shined a spotlight on the benefit a robot could offer. The six-axis “co-bot” allows the system to seamlessly adapt to peak and non-peak times, while giving operators the option to use their fryers manually if desired. It can even connect to point of sale systems to directly tap into orders placed.
What Salespeople Need to Know
The system operating in continuous mode highlights the output that’s possible with minimal operator involvement. The user fills the hopper in the freezer with fries and selects a few options like batch size on the control panel. From there, the arm grabs a basket and places it under a dispensing chute, holding steady as the system dispenses fries into the basket. The basket is placed into the fryer to cook for three minutes, with the arm shaking the basket to ensure even cooking. Then, the arm grabs another empty basket and the process repeats until all baskets are filled with fries and those fries are cooking. Finally, when the product is done cooking, the arm lifts the basket from the fryer, shakes off excess oil, and dispenses fries into the dump station.
This innovation can be adapted to an existing fryer battery and dump station or purchased as a full, all-inclusive solution. The full solution contains a freezer, robotic arm, fryer battery, control panel, hood, and dump station. A built-in oil filtration system and Ansul fire suppression system are also included. For safe operation, the arm automatically stops moving if motion is sensed nearby and restarts when no longer detected. It can be stopped manually by touching the arm and restarted by touching it again.
Although the current solution is for single product dispensing, Atosa is already looking toward future enhancements. According to Ward, the next generation of this robotic solution will not only offer multiple product dispensing, but also automatic packaging.