Din Tai Fung CEOs Say Using Robots in the Kitchen Would Kill Quality

Din Tai Fung thinks robots aren’t good enough to make their iconic pork soup dumplings.

The Taiwanese chain’s North America CEO, Aaron Yang, said Din Tai Fung’s xiao long baos, which are known for being pleated at the top with exactly 18 folds, are “very, very delicate.” Yang, 33, leads the company alongside his brother, Albert Yang, 32.

And they make a lot of them — Din Tai Fung sells an average of 10,000 handmade xiao long baos every day at each of its North American outlets, the chain told BI. It has over 173 outlets in 13 countries, including the US, Canada, and the UK.

“The way we make the skins, they’re paper thin yet strong enough to hold the soup inside,” said Yang.

“We are just very uncompromising about quality,” he said. “We’ve seen machines make soup dumplings, and you’re definitely sacrificing heavily on the quality.”

Yang said their compromise with automation in the kitchen was to deploy it in areas where “it doesn’t affect quality,” like having a little robot helping the staff run to deliver orders.

“In New York, our kitchen is pretty far away from the takeout area. So we actually have a little robot that runs back and forth delivering the finished takeout bags from the kitchen to the front,” he said.

Before the robot was deployed, one person walked back and forth in the restaurant throughout the day.

The human touch

Din Tai Fung’s take on automation is in line with that of other chains like Chipotle and Shake Shack, which have both largely kept machines out of the kitchen for the time being.

“We still believe the best way to Chipotle is down the line with a team member, highly customized, great variety, big, beautiful burritos and bowls down the line,” Chipotle’s CEO, Scott Boatwright, said on an episode of Yahoo Finance’s “Opening Bid” podcast that aired in December.

Boatwright added that human interaction is “a core equity of the Chipotle brand.”

Chipotle di, tap a robot called”Autocado” in July 2023 to cut, core, and peel avocados, reducing the amount of time needed for the task by half.

Shake Shack’s CEO, Danny Meyer, said in a December episode of “Opening Bid” that he did not plan to increase automation in his chain.

“I think when it comes to making the product, there’s something about the human touch, smashing that burger, seasoning the burger, flipping the burger, knowing exactly when it is time to come off, where not any two burgers at Shake Shack taste exactly the same,” Meyer said.

Starbucks is taking a similar approach, leaving the crafting of drinks to their baristas but rolling out an AI tool that helps baristas remember drink recipes.