Hey bot, make me a sandwich!
Ever since it made its debut at Y Combinator’s Demo Day back in August, we’ve been keeping a close eye on Bistrobot— a sandwich-making robot.
With hopes of one day expanding into more stores and dining establishments, the Bistrobot was recently installed at Andi’s Market right here in San Francisco. The automated machine crafts peanut butter sandwiches on white bread with your choice of honey, blackberry jam, sweet chili or chocolate sauce. Earlier demonstrations have even included Nutella.
“It’s already much faster than traditional methods, and we’re working to make it cleaner and more consistent,” founder and CEO Jay Reppert recently told us. “For me personally, the coolest part about Bistrobot, and why I’m working on it, is because I think robots are awesome and this is a way for more people to share in something really cool without having to spend a lot of money,”
How it works is pretty straightforward. For just $2, a customer places an order on a tablet kiosk and then watches through its transparent plexiglass enclosure as the robot creates their sandwich.
And we agree, PB&J is the most simple sandwich around, but when a robot is the chef, things get a bit more interesting. The Bistrobot team notes that it’s easy to change around the menu, making the device even more versatile and appealing to commercial users. Impressively, the robot can produce 300 sandwiches an hour — that equates to five per minute.
While Bistrobot may still be in its infancy, we definitely look forward to seeing what the future holds. Until then, you can watch it in action below! (You may also want to check out fellow Y Combinator grad TeaBOT, which as its name would imply, is an automatic tea-brewing machine.)
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