food

Fried chicken-cooking robot to start working at Japanese convenience store

13 Comments
By Casey Baseel, SoraNews24

What makes Japanese convenience stores so amazing is their variety. Inside, you’ll find not only snacks like chips and ice cream, but tasty bento boxed lunches, bottles of hot tea, and onigiri rice balls.

And as if all that wasn’t enough, convenience store chain Lawson is giving us one more reason to stop by: a fried chicken-cooking robot.

This 153.8-centimeter tall pinnacle of technology cooks Lawson’s Karaage-kun brand of bite-sized fried chicken morsels. One of Japan’s favorite snacks, Karaage-kun is so loved that the chain sells about 20 billion pieces annually (each pack contains five pieces). As with all Japanese snacks, there’s a constantly evolving list of limited-time flavors, like pitch-black Black Hole and Dragon Quest healing magic.

The first Freshly Cooked Karaage-kun Robo model will be installed at Lawson’s TOC Osaki branch in Tokyo, with its first day on the job being Tuesday. The designers say its automated cooking procedure is 80 percent faster than the conventional method, allowing each and every customer to enjoy speedy cooked-to-order fried chicken.

▼ Karaage-kun

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But while the robot can handle cooking duties with ease, it doesn’t yet have sales skills, so you’ll still need to order and pay for your fried chicken with a human clerk at the counter, who’ll give you the customary paper Karaaage-kun packaging. Then you scan the package’s bar code at the robot and insert the package, and the machine does the rest.

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The Freshly Cooked Karaage-kun Robo’s initial test run will last until Dec 28, but Lawson says it eventually plans to upgrade it to fully automated status.

Source: Lawson via IT Media

Read more stories from SoraNews24.

-- Dragon Quest Heal magic-flavored fried chicken coming to Japan to keep video game fans’ HP full

-- Japanese convenience store’s fried chicken pizza burger is a some-assembly-required masterpiece

-- We taste makunouchi bento at four Japanese convenience store chains【Taste comparison】

© SoraNews24

©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.

13 Comments
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BIG DEAL !!!

I have been buying drinks from robots for years !!

3 ( +3 / -0 )

Oh great. So instead of just handing over money and the staff handing me my snack we now have to do a whole little routine.

They've missed a step though, there should be a form to fill in.

Hey Lawson, Do we get paid for working there?

2 ( +2 / -0 )

Way to get rid of humans.. Robots are replacing labor force for quite some time now, but this is the next level... Why bother with humans when you can use a machine to do it much better and offset the cost and mistakes caused by human error..

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Do people actually eat those little chemical McGarbage things? There’s no chicken in them. Just corn, corn starch, a dash of butane to keep them fresh and a heap of chemical flavorings. Yum! Yum!

1 ( +1 / -0 )

hi nice beverage from germany

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Probably just a microwave in a fancy box.

On the "who cares, as long as people are buying" axis, it's appropriate for the rollout to begin in Osaka.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

You could paint a face on a garbage can in Japan and the media would call it a robot.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

They look like nuggets, which is most likely mechanically separated white meat chicken from China. I always thought karage were those chunks of chicken thighs. Yuuk on both of these.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Er, "Visit the Lieutenant?"

0 ( +0 / -0 )

Oh no. This robotic precision would keep me from the lucky bonus sixth piece of Karaage-kun that I sometimes get.

0 ( +0 / -0 )

They look like nuggets, which is most likely mechanically separated white meat chicken from China. I always thought karage were those chunks of chicken thighs. Yuuk on both of these.

Now you killed the positive image I had about those nuggets....

0 ( +0 / -0 )

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