Hot, fresh baskets of fries produced in 15 to 30 seconds with no human involvement. That’s a lofty ambition. That’s what Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers thinks it can achieve with its RoboFry system, which it will be bringing into locations starting in September.
Erick Von Merveldt, VP of franchise training and innovation.
“We will be able to get into a true fry flow,” said Erick Von Merveldt, vice president of franchise training and innovation, in an interview. “That’s what we like to call it, where you have fresh fries coming up quickly.”
Freddy’s has been working on fry innovation for a few years. It had considered other automated systems but they generally required a big footprint, which didn’t tuck in comfortably to its back-of-house space. But the RoboFry solution, which has been developed by tech partner Charter House Innovation, is smaller. And that has Von Merveldt excited.
“You can work around it very easily,” he said.
Not only is RoboFry lean, its output is mean. It can perform a number of autonomous fry-station functions, from filling and shaking to cooking and dumping. All that would be left for staffers is to season and scoop.
“It’s a great labor-redistribution tool as it gives staff members more face time with guests,” he said.
Right now the brand is putting RoboFry through its paces at its training and innovation center, studying it for its performance in cook time, throughput, and product quality. Come September, RoboFry will meet the public at a location in Belleville, Ill., which is the home of the brand’s newest prototype, which features a mobile pick-up window and an enhanced kitchen layout to enable high efficiency across channels.
The brand is being careful not to introduce RoboFry during the summer. Those days are sacred.
“We call it our 100 days of summer. We want all of our locations focused on operations during those days and not have to learn anything new because that’s the busiest time frame,” he said. “We test in the fall, fine-tune in the winter, and then roll out in the spring before summer hits again.”
The automation can perform four independent functions with no supervision.
RoboFry will meld nicely into Freddy’s cook-to-order system.
“Nothing hits our grills or fryers until a guest orders it in the restaurant or in drive-thru or mobile,” he said. “RoboFry will give us an efficient way to get fries faster without adding more team members.”
Having next-level back-of-house automation is one thing. Integrating it into a brand’s POS is another. Freddy’s is confident the tech will talk to each other comfortably.
“It’s important that a team member is able to hit a button and not worry about the integration,” he said.
And integration not just with the POS but the KDS system as well.
“We work with Prefectos for our KDS. As RoboFry integrates in to the POS, it also goes into Prefectos,” he said. “Everything will work together to meet our time standards.”
Freddy’s has invested significantly into the Prefectos KDS, which is yielding results through its visual approach. “It almost has a video game feel,” he said. “It shows a picture of the menu item and everything that needs to be done to make it. It makes it easy for a team member to follow. Since we’ve implemented it, it’s taken our training time down by 30 percent. It’s completely revamped our make station and our bagging station.”
Freddy’s is already considering how the RoboFry automation can be used to make additional menu items, including tots, onion rings and cheese curds.
The AccuTemp system has cut the patty-making time in half.
This comes on the heels of its partnership with AccuTemp for a clamshell cooking system, which helped it go from an average of two minutes per burger patty to 45 seconds. Freddy’s is all-in on the value of automation.
But one step at a time. The brand believes in testing. And testing some more.
“We’re going to take our time and make sure that we get the true ROI we believe we can get out of RoboFry,” he said. “If this works well in September, we’ll probably look at going into a beta test in multiple locations, with franchisees as well.”
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