Hold the Pickles, Hold the Lettuce— One Greek is Trying to Make Hamburger Flippers Obsolete

In antiquity, the Greek island of Lemnos where Hephaestus, the god of technology, had his forge. He is responsible for all of the great engineering feats in Greek mythology – Hermes’ winged helmet and sandals, Aegis breastplate, Aphrodite’s famed girdle, Achilles’ armor, Heracles’ bronze clappers, and Helios’ chariot.

Fast forward a few thousand years and a different Lemnos Labs— a hardware technology incubator lab in San Francisco is taking inspiration from its ancient counterpart and offering support to companies like Momentum Machines that are hoping to revolutionize the food industry.

The revolutionary machine— developed by Momentum Machines (which is housed at Lemnos Labs) co-founder Alexandros Vardokostas, (perhaps a distant cousin of Hephaestus?), can do anything restaurant employees can do in a cooking or prep line, except better, according to a promise straight from the company.

“Our device isn’t meant to make employees more efficient,” said co-founder Alexandros Vardakostas. “It’s meant to completely obviate them.”

In a matter of minutes, the machine can grill a beef patty, layer it with lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, and onions, marry it with a bun. It can even hold the pickles of they’re not your fancy— or even add extra sauce.

Customization occurs through a simple user interface, allowing the button-pusher to opt out of certain ingredients and add extras of ingredients the customer likes. When it’s done doing the assembling, it even puts the burger into a bag.

Vardakostas notes that their potential customers include “hamburger restaurants of all kinds, food trucks, airports, train stations and other high traffic locations.”

The ramifications on the food industry could be massive. Instead of lines and lines of food handlers and preparers, this machine could replace them all. In addition to saving in salaries, restaurants would be able to boast a much more sterile environment as less human hands (and hairs) would be coming into contact with the food.