When you think of Chipotle, you probably think of burritos, guacamole, and tortilla chips.
But what should really spring to mind are robots.
The brand is going all-in on automation. First, it introduced Chippy, a robot tasked with cranking out tortilla chips; then came Autocado, a guacamole-making robot; and finally, a robot built to assemble your salads and bowls.
Now, Chipotle is bringing robotics to the source of its ingredients: the farm.
The company’s $50m Cultivate Next venture fund recently invested in Greenfield Robotics, an agtech startup that makes AI-based, autonomous robots to support regenerative farming.
Per Chipotle, the robots:
With Chipotle’s investment, Greenfield Robotics will add more capabilities to its robots, including soil testing, crop planting, and microspraying.
Beyond the bots, Chipotle’s fund is also investing in Nitricity, a fertilizer startup that uses artificial lightning to create cleaner, more energy-efficient fertilizer.
Nitricity’s tech mimics a natural process in which lightning strikes break down nitrogen in the air before rainwater brings it into the soil.
The startup is currently testing its process with lettuce farmers in California’s Salinas Valley.
Chipotle isn’t the only restaurant hopping on the automation bandwagon — chains are increasingly experimenting with AI in the kitchen:
Plus, some restaurants are going fully futuristic with $25k robot waiters.