机械化餐厅和自动化农场的新卖点：没人能碰你的午餐！

冠状病毒的爆发重新引起了人们对食品安全的关注和担忧，这似乎给了一些机器人制作食品的公司们一个新的机会。在疫情发生之前，这些公司虽然收到投资者的青睐，但由于高昂的成本和消费者对机器人的不信任等原因，在市场上的表现一直不如人意。然而疫情爆发后，“无人接触”的食品成为了一个对消费者极有吸引力的卖点。农业公司Plenty Inc.就是一个例子，它的芝麻菜、甘蓝和微菜等作物，是在一个全靠机器人运作的室内农场中生产的，从种植到收获，都不会经过人手，这也意味着受病毒污染的机会更少。Plenty的CEO马特·巴纳德(Matt Barnard)说：”人们想要知道他们的食物是安全的。我们的目标就是让吃食物的人成为第一个接触过食物的人。“在疫情爆发的情形下，人们对“无人接触”食品更感兴趣并不只是一个猜想。巴纳德表示，Plenty目前的出货量比疫情爆发前要高出了30%。除了Plenty外，一些大公司也将“无人接触”作为了产品卖点，比如必胜客在其网站上宣传“...披萨在离开烤箱后，会自动划入盒子里，所以出炉后的唯一接触它的人，就是你自己！“。对于那些不愿订购食物或离开房子的人来说，一种名为Stockwell的机器人自动售货机则是一个很好的选择。在那些安装了Stockwell的公寓楼里，自居家令开始生效起，每个用户的平均月使用量都出现了飙升。

Before the pandemic, robot-prepared food companies were a hit with investors, but ambitious sales goals didn’t materialize. Many much-hyped robotic food companies couldn’t realize the cost savings needed to justify their research and development and equipment, even if they were able to hire fewer humans. The robots also just weren’t very appealing. Who wants an android to season their pizza? But Covid-19 concerns have hit food preparation particularly hard, upending restaurants’ typical calculus. Now, the coronavirus has given those companies a new hook for human-free preparation. Vertical agriculture company Plenty Inc. has an unusual selling point: Its crops of arugula, kale and microgreens are grown in an indoor farm run by robots. That hasn’t always been a winning proposition. But now, with coronavirus heightening food safety concerns, Plenty has a fresh angle. From planting through harvest, its vegetables don’t encounter human hands, meaning fewer chances for virus contamination. “What people seem to be wanting is they want to know their food is safe,” said Chief Executive Officer Matt Barnard. Plenty, which is backed by SoftBank Group Corp, sells packaged greens indoors and on automated vertical planters. “Our goal is for the person eating the food to be the first one who has touched it,” he said. Even at large companies, hands-off assembly processes have become a focus of advertising. On its website under the section Covid-19 Updates, Pizza Hut notes: “Your pizza leaves our 400+ degree oven and slides hands free into the box so the only person who touches it after it comes out of the oven, is you.”  source

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