San Francisco nonprofit uses meal-plating robots to cover volunteer gaps

In short: A San Francisco nonprofit is renting two robot arms to help assemble meal trays because it cannot reliably find enough human volunteers.

What happened

Project Open Hand, a nonprofit in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, prepares and packs meals for people with specific health needs. It started in 1985 during the AIDS crisis and now also serves people with conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease.

Putting together these meal boxes is not simple. Different people need different ingredients and nutrition, and meals must avoid allergies. Staff say the biggest problem is not speed, it is a shortage of volunteers, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic reduced the number of corporate volunteer groups.

To help, Project Open Hand is renting two robots from a local company called Chef Robotics. The robots do not cook or chop. They focus on “plating,” which is the repetitive job of scooping and placing food into the right sections of meal trays (like a careful, automated cafeteria server). The nonprofit pays a subscription fee to use them.

Project Open Hand’s CEO, Paul Hepfer, told WIRED the robots can add about 200 meals per hour on top of the roughly 500 meals per hour volunteers can assemble. When the robots are running, human volunteers can move to other jobs, like chopping vegetables or cooking.

Why it matters

This is a practical example of robots being used to fill a labor gap, not replace a full kitchen staff. For people who rely on these meals, even a modest boost in output can mean more consistent deliveries and fewer delays.

Source: Wired