Beijing grants food license for robot chefs

Robot chefs will soon be cooking meals for Beijing residents after the first food operating license was issued in the Chinese capital.

The permission was granted to robotics start-up EncoSmart by the Market Supervision Bureau in Beijing’s Haidian District, the second-largest in the city and home to over three million people.

It’s the first license of its type awarded to a robot system and marks a major step towards quickly adopting artificial intelligence (AI) across the food industry, according to a report published by the state-run People’s Daily.

EncoSmart’s Lava series robots will be deployed at catering kitchens across the city and will prepare foods such as french fries and fried chicken. The robots run on an operating system that’s designed to teach itself how to cook new dishes as well.

The robots can also recognize various ingredients, determine cooking times, and adjust food flavor and texture.

It’s expected that these robot chefs will not only reduce costs and improve efficiency but also standardize food processing and meet the “precise” taste demands of consumers.

While catering robots “are still in the early stages” in China compared with mainstream competitors in the West, the sheer size of the country’s food service industry will help to advance the technology quickly, according to Chen Zhen, founder and chief executive at Enco Smart.

"What we need to catch up on the most is the accumulation of data from different use scenarios,” Chen was quoted as saying by the People’s Daily.

City officials also worked with EncoSmart to devise new rules needed to regulate the robot work and ensure food safety and hygiene. These rules would set a standard for the rest of the AI catering industry, according to the report.

Founded two years ago in Beijing, EncoSmart already operates an unmanned robot kiosk serving fried food at Dongsheng International Science Park in Haidian.

The firm plans to expand to other locations in the capital after securing the license, as well as pilot its robots with China’s major restaurant chains by the end of the year.