Robots can cook, where is the chef? [Industry insiders: Smart kitchens are a development trend, but machines cannot completely replace labor]
Pour the cleaned and cut ingredients into the smart cooking machine. Chef Wei Shouliang no longer takes the spatula, but opens the controller operation menu, presses a button, and the machine starts to stir fry the ingredients automatically.
A few minutes later, a pot of fragrant dishes was finished, and Wei Shouliang took it away and put it on a plate.
On July 15, an artificial intelligence cooking machine introduced by Ji Nian Yiyue Center in Sanmin Community, Jianghan District, Wuhan City attracted the attention of netizens as soon as it appeared.
Whether robotic cooking will replace chefs has become a topic of curiosity.
Recently, the reporter visited and found that cooking robots have been applied from catering enterprises to households.
Restoring Chef Operations with Machines
Established at the end of June this year, Ji Nian Yiyue Center is one of 11 community elderly care service centers opened by Wuhan Ji Nian Elderly Care Service Co., Ltd.
The center has an independent kitchen, and two chefs are responsible for preparing meals. In addition to supplying the elderly living in the elderly care center, they also radiate 3 kilometers to the surrounding area, and create a 15-minute elderly care circle through meal delivery services.
Every morning at 9 am, the chef starts to prepare lunch, and the menu is different every day.
The three-course lunch on July 20 is beer duck, shredded pork with green peppers and garlic water spinach.
After washing and cutting the raw materials and completing pretreatments such as blanching and oiling, Wei Shouliang prepared different seasonings according to the recipe. The proportions of salt, sugar, monosodium glutamate, cooking wine, etc. were refined to two decimal places.
The chef mixes the ingredients according to the weight of the ingredients to ensure that the fried dishes maintain the same taste each time.
The reporter saw at the scene that the intelligent cooking machine looks like a sloping drum, and various ingredients and seasonings are automatically and continuously stirred and stirred under the control of the computer program to ensure even heating.
Five or six minutes later, Master Wei pressed the "dish out" option on the control panel, the drum mouth was automatically lowered, and the finished dishes were poured into the basin.
The dishes cooked by the intelligent cooking machine are bright in color and fragrant, and the taste is not inferior to the chef's craftsmanship.
Guo Wei, the head of the catering department of Wuhan Ji Nian, told reporters that the three dishes that day were only part of the dishes developed by the company. At present, there are more than 30 standardized dishes of this kind.
Taking shredded pork with green peppers as an example, there are regulations on the main ingredients and the proportions.
There are also strict requirements for the production process of each dish.
For example, the frying process needs to be fried at an oil temperature of 170°C for 30 seconds; the seasoning should be put in after 5 minutes of frying, and the machine temperature must be kept at 95°C.
"This is the use of programs to reproduce the chef's skills." Guo Wei explained that the company collects and analyzes a large amount of data on the chef's manual frying process, finds the best value, forms a program menu, and uses the machine to automatically restore the chef's best results. good operation.
"As long as the process is strictly followed, the taste of the dishes will be the same no matter who is doing it. A person who doesn't know how to cook can make a chef's craft by poking the screen a few times." Guo Wei said.
In Shenzhen Zhigu Tianchu Technology Co., Ltd. Wuhan Branch, one of the cooking robots has text, pictures and voice prompts throughout the process. The operator only needs to follow the preset steps.
Another new product even dispenses with auxiliary personnel, and can automatically add ingredients and seasonings during processing.
Yang Cheng is the company's sales manager.
According to Yang Cheng, the cooking robot developed by the company can be customized according to customer needs.
The company and nutrition experts jointly developed recipes that meet the taste of the elderly, including cooking methods such as roasting, braised, stewed, boiled, and stewed to ensure that the dishes are soft and glutinous, while retaining the original umami and nutrition of the food.
Yang Cheng said that after the production process of various dishes is standardized, operators who do not know how to cook can replace the chef within one hour of training.
He revealed that the cooking robot developed by the company can store the production process of up to 2,000 dishes.
There will be fewer and fewer chefs in the future
The original intention of Wuhan Ji Nian Elderly Service Co., Ltd. to introduce cooking robots is to provide the elderly with delicious, nutritious and hygienic standardized meals.
The company will also build four such independent kitchens this year, and introduce more smart kitchen utensils such as cooking robots.
"In terms of cost, a cooking robot can replace at least one chef." Guo Wei calculated an account: a machine is 80,000 yuan, and if it is calculated according to 5-year depreciation, the annual equipment cost is 16,000 yuan.
Now hire a chef with a monthly salary of not less than 8,000 yuan, and also need various expenses such as accommodation, welfare, and personnel management costs. "If you hire one less person, the cost will be recovered in less than a year."
"Now our two chefs add a cooking machine, and the efficiency of serving meals is much higher than the original five chefs." Guo Wei introduced that this small cooking machine can make 100 to 150 dishes at a time, and it only takes about 6 minutes. far more than artificial.
"From the perspective of future development trends, there will be no need for chefs in the kitchen in the future." Yang Cheng said, "Smart kitchens are the development trend. After a large number of smart kitchen utensils are equipped, there are only a few operators in the kitchen, and the operation is carried out according to the program. Simple operations and other auxiliary tasks are enough." The main job of a chef has changed from cooking to auxiliary tasks such as washing vegetables, cutting vegetables, and adding seasonings.
Yang Cheng believes that the emergence of intelligent kitchen utensils such as cooking robots has a rigid market demand.
The catering industry, like other manufacturing and service industries that rely on manual labor, has experienced a serious shortage of labor supply in recent years. It is extremely urgent to improve the level of intelligence and automation in the catering industry. Therefore, intelligent kitchen utensils such as cooking robots are urgently needed.
More than ten years ago, cooking robots have appeared on the market, but at that time, the design was relatively simple and the function was single.
Today, with the advancement of technology, the intelligence level of the current cooking robot has been greatly improved, and it is described as "a pot with memory", and the "irreplaceable" status of chefs is gradually being challenged.
Yang Cheng found in his daily contact with customers that the chefs replaced by cooking robots are ordinary chefs, not all chefs.
"The so-called ordinary chefs, in simple terms, refer to chefs who can only make ordinary dishes." Yang Cheng believes that these dishes are not complicated in craftsmanship, and can be done with cooking robots, with stable quality and large amount of dishes at one time. Manual processing, more cost-effective.
"After the standardization of Chinese food, there will be fewer and fewer chefs in the kitchen in the future, while the number of kitchen workers will increase." Zhang You, a 48-year-old restaurant owner, believes that the large-scale application of intelligent equipment such as cooking robots in catering enterprises is inevitable. It is also market demand.
After using the cooking robot, the production efficiency of a kitchen worker is several times that of a chef, but the salary is much lower, which is conducive to reducing costs and increasing efficiency of enterprises.
Wentu/Reporter Shi Qiang
some dishes
Can't rely on machines
According to Cai Honglin, director of the Clinical Nutrition Department of Union Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, as long as it is not overcooked, there is no difference in nutrients between cooking robots and chefs.
However, there are some differences between the two in terms of the diversified taste of the dishes and the taste of some dishes.
The advantage of the cooking robot is that it breaks through the limitations of the original chefs in limited time, fixed location, and limited diners, so that everyone can eat freshly fried dishes and taste the deliciousness of different regions.
The chef's personalized cooking skills are copied into programs, which can not only pass on these skills well, but also meet the development needs of catering customers.
In a restaurant under Zhang You's name, two robots were introduced more than a month ago. At present, the cooking robot can make more than 30 home-cooked dishes. Zhang You hopes to expand the online fast food and takeaway business.
At noon on July 21, the reporter saw at the scene that the dishes processed by the machine included fish-flavored shredded pork, fried loofah, and scrambled eggs with tomatoes. Many people complimented the taste while eating on the spot.
Zhang You admitted that the cooking robot also has its own shortcomings. For example, not all types of dishes can be cooked, and it will be powerless for some fine dishes with more complicated production processes. At present, it is most suitable for dishes that can be completed at one time.
It is inappropriate to say that "cooking robots replace chefs", chefs and machines "have their own strengths".
Guo Wei also found a similar problem: the cooking robot could not complete steaming and cooking, and some ingredients could not be blanched or oiled first.
Due to the limited intelligence of the machine, it is necessary to manually add seasonings.
Some citizens also encountered similar problems.
Dai Yun, who lives in Hanyang, recently spent more than 10,000 yuan to buy a home cooking robot. The overall user experience is not bad, especially the lack of lampblack makes her very satisfied.
However, when making dishes such as dried meat and shredded pork, dried seeds were horribly stirred.
Although the family in charge of cooking does not need to be in charge of stir-frying, they must stand by and add seasonings and accessories according to the machine's prompts.
"It is impossible for equipment such as cooking robots to completely replace manual labor." Wan Jiemin, a catering expert in Wuhan, believes that intelligent kitchen utensils can liberate chefs from the labor of some rough processing or popular dishes, and improve cooking efficiency.
"There are only two ways for chefs to go in the future." Zhang You believes that chefs with insufficient ability will transform into kitchen workers, who are responsible for operating various smart kitchen utensils in the kitchen; chefs with strong ability will enter the central kitchen to engage in scientific research and be responsible for developing new dishes. Cooking robot design menu.
(At the request of the parties, Dai Yun and Zhang You are pseudonyms in the text)