The Daily Valet. - 10/5/23, Thursday
✔️ Rise of the Machine Meals
Thursday, October 5th Edition
By Cory Ohlendorf, Valet. Editor
So far, this newsletter is written and designed entirely by human employees.
Today’s Big Story
Rise of the Machine Meals
Would you trust a Chipotle robot to construct your salads and burrito bowls?
Robots ... they're driving cars, packing Amazon boxes and soon, they'll be making your fast casual Mexican food. Chipotle announced this week a new automated “makeline” that uses machines to build bowls and salads to customer specifications.Apparently, they can make the guts of a burrito as well, but actual breathing human employees will be needed to incorporate the robot-assembled ingredients into the tortillas, tacos and quesadillas. For now, the new system—developed in collaboration with Hyphen, a kitchen technology company—is being tested at the company's “Cultivate Center” in Irvine, California. But the company expects the technology will be live in restaurants in upcoming months, rolled out slowly starting with locations in Southern California.All Chipotle restaurants currently have two make tables to assemble orders: one in the front for customers who order in person and another in the kitchen for digital orders. The company says that roughly two-thirds of all digital orders are either burrito bowls or salads, making it incredibly efficient for the robo-makeline to assemble them.Curt Garner, Chipotle's chief customer and technology officer, said the goal is not to replace workers but to meet the rising demands of serving diners who order online in addition to those who come into the store. Digital sales last year were $3 billion, Garner told the Washington Post, about 38% of sales overall. “We're operating like two restaurants out of one,” he said.But according to Newsweek, for many restaurants that experienced the strife of labor shortages during the coronavirus pandemic, robots could be the answer to labor concerns down the line. Restaurants ranging from White Castle to Starbucks and Sweetgreen have been investing in automation to cut down on labor costs and improve order consistency and speed. In fact, Sweetgreen opened its first automated location in May and CEO Jonathan Neman already expects all of the chain's future restaurants to be automated within five years.
FYI:
According to the National Restaurant Association's 2023 State of the Industry Report, 46% of American consumers would order food prepared by automated systems.
Biden Announces Billions of Extra Student Debt Relief
Days after repayments begin, The Government is forgiving around $9 billion in Loans for more than 125,000 Americans
President Joe Biden on Wednesday touted his administration's efforts to keep addressing student debt, including an additional $9 billion in relief that the White House just announced. The relief comes on the heels of student loan payments resuming for millions of borrowers after a more than three-year pause.It's the latest push from the White House to erase some loan burdens in the wake of the Supreme Court's June ruling that invalidated the administration's plan for broad-based student loan forgiveness (which would have helped more than 40 million borrowers erase up to $20,000 each in debt). But with the latest announcement, the Biden administration has now forgiven $127 billion of student debt for roughly 3.6 million borrowers.According to CNBC, this latest round of aid will go to borrowers who've worked in public service for a decade or more; as well as borrowers enrolled in income-driven repayment plans and those with disabilities.
Meanwhile:
The Biden administration is working on another plan for broad-based student loan relief through the Higher Education Act. But that could take at least a year, and will also likely face legal challenges.
City of ... Bites?
Bedbug fears grip Paris as French minister pledges action
The gleaming city of Paris is in the midst of a battle against bedbugs, with videos of the tiny critters crawling all over metro seats and rumors swirling of the style set fleeing their fashion week hotels after the biting bugs were found. There were even reports of them surfacing at Charles de Gaulle airport, sending the fancy folk into a justified frenzy.French officials have begun mobilizing against the scourge of blood-sucking insects, but as Paris deputy mayor Emmanuel Grégoire told citizens, “No one is safe.” He called for “coordinated measures" between health authorities and other stakeholders and has asked Prime Minister Élisabeth Borne to organize a conference on the fight against the insects.However, Forbes points out that the French capital is probably not worse because of any reason pertaining to France—bed bugs are on the rise everywhere, and France is the No. 1 visited country and Paris, the most visited city in the world. Put simply, people are on the move more and social media makes us more aware. Experts say that bed bugs have resurged in cities over the past decades because of a boom in international travel and the bugs' growing resistance to pesticides after they had been nearly eradicated in the mid-20th century. Let's just hope they can get this under control before the Olympics in July.
Insider Intel:
Curbed interviewed an exterminator to find out the best way to get rid of bed bugs and how you might prevent bringing them home if you've visited some place dealing with an infestation.
Google’s Latest Offerings
From the Pixel 8 to the Pixel Watch 2, here are all the biggest announcements from Google’s product launch event
After all the speculation and leaks, Google's new devices have been officially revealed. The 'Made By Google' event introduced three impressive devices and one innovative feat of software engineering that's sure to have tech fans talking for a while.The Pixel 8 Pro was officially unveiled and it comes with quite a few upgrades. But as Gizmodo points out, once again, “Google hinges all its bets on camera performance and AI over any significant hardware improvements.” The big phone has some nice upgrades to the camera, but The Verge was more impressed by the new temperature reader that Google says you can use to accurately measure the temperature of surfaces, objects, and—soon—maybe even your body. And while the Pixel Watch 2 may not look all that different from the original Pixel Watch, it comes with some noted improvements—from 24 hours of battery life (even with always-on display turned on) to new sensors for skin temperature and continuous electrodermal activity that enable a new stress-detecting feature as well as a way to automatically record your workouts. But it's the 'Best Take' mode that really impressed me. The spiritual successor to 'Magic Eraser', it uses a series of photos to create a single blended image. Someone in the group not smiling? Didn't quite capture the fireworks in that one shot? This lets machine learning take care of it by basically automating Photoshop, instantly ... on your phone.
Enhance:
With their latest update, Google is making the ‘enhance!’ meme a reality by adding extra detail to a blurry zoomed-in image, just like in the movies.
In Other News
The former president had no legal obligation to attend his civil fraud trial.
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Morning Motto
Get still. Stay present.
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