My first impression of Naperville, Ill., was that it has a lot of restaurants.
As I drove through the Chicago suburb on a rainy afternoon last week, I passed what felt like every chain I’ve ever heard of, and a few that I haven’t. (Poke Burrito, anyone?)
But I was not going to any of those restaurants. I was going somewhere that was a bit off the beaten path, in more ways than one. I turned off the busy main drag and into a giant, nearly empty parking lot set back from the road. At the far end of the lot was a long, low building called the Mall of India. And in the far corner of the mall, which was also mostly empty, was a food court.
From the outside, it looked like an ordinary food court. There was a dining area with dozens of seats. There were cash registers and menu boards and glowing signs for brands called Thai 76 and One Mean Chicken.
If you walked up to the counter and ordered something, and sat down and ate your meal, you’d have no idea that the joint is run almost entirely by robots.
Nala's food court offerings at the Mall of India. / All photos by Joe Guszkowski
The operation is the brainchild of Ajay Sunkara, the co-founder and CEO of Nala Robotics. He owns the mall, and also the food court, which was created by Nala to showcase its technology. I followed Sunkara behind the counter of Thai 76 and through a swinging door into the kitchen, most of which is occupied by two large robot arms.
These are the line cooks, Sunkara said. On the other side of the room, a laptop sat open on a table. That is the chef, he said.
When an order comes in from one of Nala’s brands, the “chef”—powered by Nala’s proprietary software—pulls the recipe from its database, which currently includes a little over 50 dishes. The recipes are programmed by Nala’s engineers. Just like regular recipes, they tell the machine what to do.
The “chef” also checks if the customer has ever ordered before, and, if so, whether they left any feedback. For instance, maybe they said the noodles they ordered a month ago were too spicy. The chef adjusts the recipe accordingly, and then sends the order to the line cooks.
Nala's industrial-grade robots are similar to those used in auto manufacturing.
The cooking system is equipped with two burners, two fry baskets, and various kitchen implements that the arms can grab and manipulate. A dispenser behind the arms is stocked with spices, meat and veggies.
Sunkara put in an order for lemon rice, and a burner fired up. The robot arm picked up a wok and placed it over the flame. A spigot in the counter rotated over the wok and squirted oil into it. The robotic line cook was cooking.
Meanwhile, its automated colleague had started making a chicken and noodle dish. The bots can work simultaneously and are programmed to avoid colliding as they move around. They can cook up to eight orders at once, Sunkara said.
The robots handle every step of the cooking process besides plating and serving, which is done by a human. They even do some of the prep, like marinating chicken, but most of the ingredients arrive pre-cut.
An automated oil dispenser kicks off the cooking process.
As a result, Sunkara said, the operation requires only two human workers—one to clean and one to take orders and serve food.
This arrangement results in significant labor savings. Nala’s labor costs are around 10% to 12% of sales, he said, estimating that the restaurant spends about 60% less on labor than traditional operations. (For reference, Nala’s entrees range in price from about $9 to $14.)
Not only does it need fewer workers, Sunkara said, but the robots also fill what would typically be the higher-paid back-of-house jobs.
He acknowledged concerns that robots could take jobs from humans. But he compared the bots to personal computers in terms of their potential to make people’s jobs easier.
“The quality of life will improve with a robotic solution,” he said.
I asked what would happen if a human line cook couldn’t find a job because a robot was doing it. Sunkara suggested that robots will actually create new career opportunities for restaurant workers. Instead of working in a restaurant, he said, the line cook could open their own using Nala’s platform.
The bots can perform hundreds of different motions tailored to specific dishes.
That scenario is a big part of the company’s business plan. It’s offering its robots as a service for aspiring restaurateurs, who can upload their recipes to the system and open a restaurant in 24 hours for less than $1,000. After that, they pay Nala a monthly licensing fee based on sales volume.
Nala has already launched one such concept in Naperville, called DesiOwl. The late-night Indo-Chinese street food brand is available only on third-party delivery apps.
“Startup costs were minimal and exponentially lower than it would cost to open a traditional restaurant,” said Michael Chintamaneni, owner of DesiOwl, in a press release announcing the news this month. “It seemed too good to be true.”
Currently, about 70% of Nala’s business is on-premise. Most of it comes on weekends, when it offers a buffet for hungry mall-goers. On busy days, Sunkara said, Nala processes about 600 or 700 orders, but it has the ability to do up to 2,000. And though it offers just four concepts right now, its capacity to add new ones is “virtually unlimited,” he said.
This year, Nala plans to open more locations featuring a new version of the robot that can make pizza and burgers. The first is slated for a strip mall in the nearby suburb of Elgin. It’s also in talks with restaurant chains interested in using its technology, including a large pizza chain, Sunkara said.
Lemon rice and chicken noodles, prepared by Nala's bots.
We were sitting in the food court eating the rice and noodles the robots had prepared. The food was hot and seemed to have quality ingredients. It looked good, it tasted good. There was no indication that it had been cooked by the cold, algorithmic mind of a robot.
The artificial intelligence that powers the bots is always learning, Sunkara explained. With every order, the system gathers customer data and gets smarter.
“Eventually you want the AI part to start making its own recipes,” he said—brand-new dishes formulated for individual customers, based on their unique tastes. Regular restaurants can't really do that. The prospect is both exciting and a little scary.
Right now, Nala doesn’t advertise its robots to the public. But Sunkara said the company is researching customer perceptions to determine whether it should be more open about them. In the age of COVID-19, he said, people might be interested in the touchless element of robotics, for instance.
Before I left, the robot prepared another helping of chicken and noodles for me to take home. Then I drove out of town, past the many restaurants gearing up for lunch, amid an ongoing pandemic, likely short-staffed and almost certainly paying more for food and labor. My visit to the quiet little food court in the Mall of India seemed to loom large over the scene.