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Exclusive Interview
Miso Robotics: AI & Robots in The Kitchen
From the sizzling precision of Flippy to the real-time intelligence of Zippy, Hull reveals how AI and automation are doing more than just frying fries; they are safeguarding workers, empowering managers, and delivering on the elusive promise of the perfect guest experience.
Rich Hull
CEO, Miso Robotics
Miso is built to close that gap on both fronts. Flippy executes the fry station the same way every single time, twice as fast as a human, with zero variance based on who is working the shift. That means the food your guest gets in one location matches what they get in every other location, every time. On the operations side, Zippy is an employee revenue engine and AI shift manager that gives operators AI-powered labour forecasting, employee task management, and real-time store performance data, so managers are putting the right people in the right roles instead of just filling shifts. That is what drives service quality, and it is why operators using our platform and our products see measurable improvements in guest satisfaction scores.
The problem with most restaurant data tools is that they tell you what happened last week. By the time a manager is reading that report, the scheduling decision that hurt them last Saturday is already baked in. Zippy is built around real-time visibility so operators can make decisions that actually change outcomes, rather than just explain them after the fact. If labour is trending wrong today, you can see it and act on it now.
What makes that actionable, rather than just another dashboard, is how Zippy delivers the information. Instead of forcing managers to navigate reports and stitch data together themselves, Zippy brings a conversational AI experience to restaurant operations so an operator can simply ask what happened at a location, why a metric shifted, or how a scheduling change is tracking against sales. The answer comes to you, instead of you having to go find it.
Yes, and this is one of the outcomes of which we are proudest. Burns from the fry station are the number one workers' compensation claim in the QSR industry. Flippy eliminates that exposure entirely. That is not a small thing when you consider what fry station workers have historically dealt with: hot oil, relentless pace, repetitive strain, and a job that burns people out physically.
What we did not fully anticipate was how much employees would actually embrace working alongside Flippy. We see 90%+ employee favorability in our deployments. One of our operator partners documented a reduction in employee walking distance that cuts physical fatigue significantly, and they credit Flippy with improving retention on their team.
The future commercial kitchen is AI-powered, data-driven, and still fundamentally human. We are not building toward a kitchen with no people in it. We are building toward a kitchen where people are doing work that is safer, more skilled, and more satisfying, while the machine handles the repetitive and dangerous tasks it is better suited for.
For Miso specifically, the trajectory is toward a fully connected operation. Flippy handles the physical execution at the fry station. Zippy, our next-generation employee revenue engine and AI shift manager, handles the intelligence layer: forecasting, scheduling, performance insights, and employee engagement. As those products deepen their integration, operators gain something the industry has never had before, which is a single AI layer that sees the entire operation and helps them run it better in real time.
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