Of course, this won't be how food is prepared by robots ultimately. Each step will more likely be performed by small robots optimized for the task.
Food will also probably be driven from place to place by robotic vehicles. You might have one company making noodles and sending them to other companies five minutes away that incorporate them into a dish or other product.
Virtual supply chains will eliminate a lot of capital cost of setting up a restaurant and reduce the delays that destroy freshness and necessitate preservatives. Like fabless semiconductor companies, there might be prepless restaurants.
Another company may just do all the selection and slicing of your vegetables for you. They may be picked overnight at their peak and delivered to you so you can throw them in your omelet. The slicing might even happen on the trip to you.
I can see you selecting a recipe and a web app that prices and source all the ingredients for you. If you love to cook but don't enjoy finding or prepping some or all of the ingredients, such arrangements could help you save money and get better results.
Quite a few people eat the cheapest and most convenient foods they can find. But in the future, healthy food will be cheaper, fresher and will find you, hopefully making crap truly uncompetitive.
Your assuming a vary high density food distribution network. Most restaurants in the US are in fairly low density areas. So while food is often prepared offsite, the shipping delays result in preservation issues.
He also assumes cheap transportation of goods. Economics & business is poised to change as we know it when oil production starts flagging, if comparable alternatives are not found.
"Buying local" may one day no longer be the luxury option at the grocery store ;)
This might look like a good idea, but you need to include the energy costs from building all those tiny robots. Fixing them when they break down. Building a strong enough roof to hold them, 6 inches of topsoil and your crop. Irrigation and fertilizer and pesticides for that crop. Storage space for that crop for the better part of a year including some form of climate control to minimize spoilage etc etc.
Honestly, sectioning off the mid west and transporting the food to you by trains is actually a much better idea. You can still use robots but you get to use really big and cheap ones that do a simple job and get regular maintenance by people that know what their doing. You can also minimize the contamination from air pollution etc.
PS: Moving 2 weeks supply of food around the world by boat can easily take less energy than driving to a 5 miles to the super market to pick it up. If you want to be as environmentally friendly as possible, move to a big city and become a vegetarian. Living in the countryside feels more natural but it's much much worse for the planet.
Once robots are growing the food, a lot less of it will be imported. Even with the cost of maintenance, robots will be cheaper than human labor, eliminating a major reason for importing.
I guess if you think of robots as they are today, it may seem like they'd break down a lot. But agricultural robots will eventually be more like insects and, like many living things, cheaper to replace than repair.
I don't understand how a more eficient chain of supply and preparation will make healthier food cheaper. I was under the impression that generally lower quality goods are cheaper then higher quality ones, which in the case of food means healthier food. Could you explain your reasoning?
Lower quality foods are generally cheaper, but its not because cheapness leads to low quality. Its because these foods are cheaper and more convenient that we put with their low quality.
Things cost what they cost because of what's involved in producing them.
A lot of cheap food is cheap because its factory food. It can be grown and processed using machinery, which makes the labor involved per meal very low. Wheat, soy bean oil and corn syrup.
Most vegetables cannot be grown using machinery (yet), but robots that can tend a plant intelligently, that can select and pick vegetables at the right time and assemble them into a meal, will eliminate most of the labor involved.
Of course, this won't be how food is prepared by robots ultimately. Each step will more likely be performed by small robots optimized for the task.
Food will also probably be driven from place to place by robotic vehicles. You might have one company making noodles and sending them to other companies five minutes away that incorporate them into a dish or other product.
Virtual supply chains will eliminate a lot of capital cost of setting up a restaurant and reduce the delays that destroy freshness and necessitate preservatives. Like fabless semiconductor companies, there might be prepless restaurants.
Another company may just do all the selection and slicing of your vegetables for you. They may be picked overnight at their peak and delivered to you so you can throw them in your omelet. The slicing might even happen on the trip to you.
I can see you selecting a recipe and a web app that prices and source all the ingredients for you. If you love to cook but don't enjoy finding or prepping some or all of the ingredients, such arrangements could help you save money and get better results.
Quite a few people eat the cheapest and most convenient foods they can find. But in the future, healthy food will be cheaper, fresher and will find you, hopefully making crap truly uncompetitive.