To serve you freshly stir-fried dishes, Laoxiangji restaurants have started using robots to stir-fry in woks.

Author | Huang Nan

Editor | Yuan Silai

After the "Xibei Youmiancun" incident, the term "prepared food" has become a taboo. So, a strange sight has emerged in the back kitchens of chain restaurants: several cooking robots are neatly lined up. Even during peak hours, there are only a few staff members. All they do is pour the pre - cut ingredients into the pots according to the recipes.

In less than two minutes, the robot finishes cooking. After the meal is taken out, the robot automatically enters the cleaning process to prepare for the next order.

The days of using prepared food to satisfy customers are over. This is painful for food and beverage brands, but it has revitalized another industry. Geng Kaiping, CEO of Zhigu Tianchu, a cooking robot company, told Yingke that in just the past month, the number of catering enterprises that have actively contacted and inquired has increased by nearly 10 times. Their client list includes large enterprises such as Goertek, Muyuan, and Foxconn.

For a long time, the catering industry has always faced a core dilemma: it is difficult to balance the speed of food delivery, the taste of dishes, and cost control. Although the traditional Chinese stir - frying mode can guarantee the wok hei and flavor of dishes, it is limited by the efficiency of food delivery and high labor costs. In addition, due to the high mobility of chefs and uneven technical levels, it has always been difficult to achieve large - scale development.

In contrast, cooking robots can precisely control the heat and standardize the operation process, reducing human participation. Many catering enterprises are using the solution of "fresh ingredients + cooking robots" to ensure the taste, improve the efficiency of food delivery, and reduce labor costs.

A kitchen revolution driven by intelligent equipment is steadily advancing in multiple catering scenarios.

From Obscurity to the Forefront

Looking at the development context of the domestic catering industry, the industry has gone through three key evolutionary stages. From the single - store model that relies on the skills of chefs to the period of chain expansion that pursues standardization, now it is an era with dual demands of "high cost - performance" and "high quality".

In the first two periods, many intelligent cooking devices could, to a large extent, replicate the wok hei and taste of traditional Chinese stir - fried dishes through precise temperature control and imitating actions such as tossing and stir - frying, approaching the level of on - site cooking by senior chefs.

However, when restaurants try their best to make themselves more homely, using robots to cook seems to be something to hide. Even last year, few catering brands were willing to publicly disclose that they had purchased and used cooking robots.

Zhigu Tianchu cooking robot in operation (Image source/Enterprise)

Since this year, in addition to increasing the purchase of robots, they have also actively shown off the robot chefs in the backstage. According to public information such as prospectuses, about 388 restaurants under Laoxiangji have adopted equipment such as cooking robots, intelligent steamers, and intelligent chicken soup stoves; since Xiaocaiyuan started using cooking robots in 2023, nearly 200 stores have been covered.

The logic behind this is simple: in the third stage, diners would rather eat freshly stir - fried food by robots than pay for prepared food.

At present, when the industry is facing the balance between standardization and personalization, an investor who focuses on the catering track told Yingke that the direct motivation for catering brands to accelerate the layout of cooking robots this year is the industry's reflection brought about by the previous prepared food incident. "In the past, chain catering enterprises represented by Xibei improved efficiency through central kitchen pre - preparation. However, as users' resistance to prepared food intensified, catering enterprises urgently needed to find new solutions."

Actually, after demystifying the so - called "handmade" concept, robots are a good choice. The essence of fast - stir - fried Chinese cuisine lies in two key elements: precise heat control and even stir - frying techniques. These two key abilities are exactly the technological advantages that intelligent cooking machines can surpass humans in.

Through built - in multi - channel sensors and intelligent temperature control algorithms, the machine can achieve millisecond - level temperature adjustment and maintain the most suitable firepower output. At the same time, the mechanical stirring arm rotates at a constant speed. Not only is the stirring efficiency higher than that of manual work, but it can also avoid uneven stir - frying caused by physical fatigue.

Currently, all series of Zhigu Tianchu robots are standard - equipped with precise temperature control, automatic stirring, and intelligent feeding systems. This data - based management ensures the unity and stability of the brand in cross - regional and cross - store operations.

Built - in multi - channel sensors and intelligent temperature control algorithms to retain "wok hei" (Image source/Enterprise)

Moreover, they can also refine some unique brand flavors on the premise of consistent output.

The principle is not complicated. For example, in addition to selling standardized equipment, Zhigu Tianchu also provides customized software functions for enterprise customers and has independently developed an AI intelligent dish platform.

On the platform, brands can customize cooking programs according to the characteristics of dishes and local taste preferences. For example, how many grams of salt should be added to Mapo Tofu and whether sugar should be added to Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes. At the same time, the platform can also assist chefs in debugging new dishes and quickly convert their experience into reproducible digital recipes.

Through this solution, robots free chefs from repetitive operations, allowing them to focus on more creative dish - development work.

The catering industry has gradually divided into two camps. Street - side family restaurants are responsible for the local charm, while chain restaurants provide services, environment, and dishes above the passing level. With rising labor costs and high rents, the prepared food model has reached its end. For the latter, introducing robots is the most practical choice at present.

Can reduce the participation of human chefs and effectively reduce costs (Image source/Enterprise)

According to market data calculations, a medium - sized cooking robot suitable for fast - food restaurants produced by Zhigu Tianchu is priced at about 60,000 yuan. One pot can complete the production of 3 to 5 standardized dishes. The equipment uses high - wear - resistant body materials and industrial - grade core components, with a service life of 8 - 10 years. The average monthly usage cost is only about 600 yuan.

Compared with the current salary standards of catering chefs ranging from 8,000 to 15,000 yuan, cooking robots can help stores save nearly 10,000 yuan in labor costs per month. Calculated over an 8 - year service life, they can cumulatively reduce the operating costs of enterprises by 680,000 to 1.34 million yuan.

Entering Large Enterprises

In addition to restaurants, robots are also taking over canteens comprehensively.

Muyuan Co., Ltd. has about 3,000 closed factory - style farms across the country. It needs to prevent African swine fever and has little contact with external personnel. In addition, most of the farms are located in remote areas, making it difficult to find professional chefs. Obviously, if employees can't eat well, they won't stay for long.

To meet the needs of this special scenario, Muyuan Co., Ltd. has introduced Zhigu Tianchu intelligent cooking robots. The equipment is easy to operate, and ordinary employees can operate it after short - term training.

More importantly, intelligent equipment has significantly reduced the manual operation links in the kitchen, strengthening the biosecurity control system that farms attach great importance to. This solution has been gradually applied in other leading and mid - sized large enterprises in the breeding industry.

Traditional enterprise group - meal management has long been trapped in a dilemma. On the one hand, enterprises hope to improve employees' catering welfare by providing freshly stir - fried dishes. On the other hand, using traditional chef teams has problems such as high labor costs, poor dish stability, and serious food waste. Especially when a large amount of large - pot dishes are pre - prepared in advance, it often leads to the embarrassing situation of either supply falling short of demand or a large amount of leftovers.

In response, Zhigu Tianchu's large - scale cooking robot has added a 15 - channel high - precision seasoning system to ensure precise execution from ingredient feeding to temperature control. Based on the dining characteristics of the group - meal scenario, a full - closed - loop feedback mechanism deeply linked with the cooking backstage has been developed.

The "brain" of the cooking robot is linked with the front - end intelligent weighing equipment (Image source/Enterprise)

Among them, the intelligent scheduling system is equivalent to the "central brain" of the cooking robot. It can be linked with the front - end intelligent weighing equipment in real - time, capture data such as the remaining amount of dishes and the distribution of people, and feed it back to the backstage for dynamic decision - making.

Take Goertek Group, a leading enterprise in the Apple supply chain, as an example. In its daily factory scenario, it needs to meet the centralized dining needs of hundreds to thousands of people, with extremely high requirements for the efficiency of food delivery and standardization. After introducing Zhigu Tianchu's cooking robots, their large output of 10 - 15 kilograms per batch and fully automatic cooking function, combined with the dynamic meal - replenishment mechanism of the intelligent scheduling system, can significantly reduce the labor costs in the kitchen.

When the system detects that the consumption of a popular dish has reached 50%, it will automatically send a meal - replenishment instruction to the robot, and the robot will immediately start production. From sauces, soups to main and auxiliary ingredients, the entire process of ingredient feeding, stir - frying, and cooking is automatically completed, ensuring that a new batch of dishes is ready before the current batch is sold out.

The current situation of the restaurant of Goertek Group after being transformed based on the Zhigu Tianchu solution (Image source/Enterprise)

This "small - batch, multi - batch" dynamic meal - replenishment mechanism can ensure that even in the later stage of the peak dining period, employees can eat freshly cooked dishes. Since the cooking volume always matches the real - time demand, it can fundamentally avoid a large amount of leftover food caused by inaccurate estimation. According to actual measurement data, the food waste rate can be effectively reduced by more than 70%.

Whether in the canteens of large enterprises or chain restaurants, cooking robots have stepped out of the background. Their popularization is also an allegory of this era: as long as the needs for industrialization and standardization exist, robots will sooner or later become a key role.