Lotteria to introduce kitchen robot Alpha Grill

South Korea's Lotte GRS, the operator of fast food franchise Lotteria, plans to introduce a kitchen automation robot Alpha Grill in stores. 

Alpha Grill is a South Korean kitchen automation robotics startup Aniai's artificial intelligence (AI)-powered robot. It grills burger patties or dispenses sauce in restaurants, as well as a cloud system for kitchen operations and food quality control.

The company aims to address labor shortages in the food franchise industry, which primarily involves simple cooking tasks, and streamline the burger-making process for higher efficiency.

Currently, Lotteria's patty cooking process consists of seven manual steps. With the Alpha Grill, in contrast, it can omit six additional steps besides supplying the patties for burgers, such as pressing and flipping the patties. 

For example, using the Alpha Grill to cook patties reduces the total patty cooking time from 5 minutes to 1 minute and 50 seconds, a savings of 3 minutes and 10 seconds. This reduces the average monthly labor time for one worker by about 5 hours, improving labor conditions.

Lotte GRS plans to introduce an improved version of the Alpha Grill in the Lotteria Guro Digital Station location in Seoul, where renovation work is scheduled to be completed in January next year. The company will continue to enhance the robot based on on-site testing.

"By utilizing the Alpha Grill, the efficiency of staff utilization in the store is improved, and the time spent on simple tasks such as cooking on a hot grill is reduced, resulting in an improved working environment," a Lotte GRS source said. "Furthermore, it can secure a faster store turnover time, shorten the service time for customers, and reduce the labor intensity of store employees."

Write to Ji-Yoon Yang at yang@hankyung.com