Do Robots Want to Kill Us with Arugula?
What happens when animatrons make our salads?
By Ed Goldman
At first I think I have a bad phone connection when I call the president/CEO of Apex Sneezeguards International, Garth Blezyew. His products have protected our nation’s salad bars from people with germs caused by contagious maladies for generations. “Everything from the Bubonic plague to the common code,” he says cheerfully.
“Common code?” I ask, fearing I’ve once again fallen behind in my grasp of techno slang.
The marshall diet plan
“Common code,” he repeats.
“Could you spell that, Gar?”
“C-O-M-M-O—“
“No, the other part.”
“C-O-L-D,” he says. “Like what I’m suffering from at the moment. Ironic, no?”
Well, sort of. Because I happen to be calling him to ask if the decision made by the “fast-casual” chain Sweetgreen—per the Wall Street Journal—to open “its first restaurant staffed by a proprietary robot that shoots kale, cheese and other ingredients down tubes into bowls traveling in a conveyor belt” will affect not only the salad bar industry but also, and most particularly, his own.
In short, who needs a sneezeguard when your greens are torpedoed to your salad plate?
According to the Journal story I read—while enjoying my usual vegan lunch of plant-based plants smothered in vinegar-free vinaigrette—the robotic salad shooter was the brainchild of a tech startup called Spyce which took “around two years to design a robot that could squirt dressing to order, apportion eggs and handle soft ingredients, some of which initially got stuck in the machine’s tubes.”
“Sure, I’m worried about the future of sneezeguards,” Blezyew says. “But I keep reminding myself that I felt the same way when the crouton was introduced for commercial use. I knew our sneezeguards could protect farm produce from diseases but I had no idea how they’d do against as formidable an opponent as toasted bread cubes. Well, I’m proud to say that our R-and-D gang eventually figured out how to shield the croutons from carrying the amoebas of mass annihilation. We called the project Going Against the Grain.”
“Nice branding, “ I said.
“Bran, yeah.”
“No, I said—“
“Once we knew we could protect salad bar patrons from discomfort or death, we expanded to breakfast-buffet sneezeguards. You can now attend a 6 a.m. Rotary meeting and know that canister of Oat Bran is perfectly safe to scoop from. You may get a roughage onslaught but not e-coli.”
After wishing Garth a speedy recovery from his “code,” the call ends—but not my self-questioning.
First, I wonder if the robotic salad shooter will replace not only the sneezeguard but also the salad bar—and if so, does that prospect please or unsettle me?
Second, do salad-bar employees behave more like humans than robots? From the evidence, their assigned tasks would seem to make the average barista’s duties (make coffee, misspell your name and ask for a tip) take on somewhat heroic proportions. All they appear to do (when prodded by a manager or customer) is refill the containers of garbanzo beans, dyed beets and flaccid cucumbers. They don’t engage in light artistry, as baristas do when they use steamed milk to “draw” a clover leaf atop your latte. One thing we don’t want is salad-bar workers doing little designs with cherry tomatoes to crown our servings of arugula. Of this I’m certain.
On the other hand, those who herd our salad bars rarely process our payments much less ask us for tips. Can we be sure a robot, armed with a weapon capable of drenching us in poppy-seed dressing, won’t be programmed to threaten us? Will they be able to say thug-like things such as “Nice little Armani coat you’re wearing. It’d be a real shame if someone were to flood it with Hidden Valley ranch, am I right?”
All in all, I wish the Sweetgreen chain the best of luck with its animatronic adventuring. My only hope is that if I ever dine there my robot won’t be suffering from a bad code.
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).
