What tends to get talked about a lot are robotics, artificial intelligence, and there's

no question all of these things are happening, right?

You look at Chipotle or sweet green and how they're automating their process for building

their bulls and their products.

That's all coming down the pipe, but the challenge, I think, for a lot of restaurants is,

and the McDonald's CEO acknowledges last year is that none of it is necessarily reducing

new labor.

I'm Mary Long, and that's David Henkis, senior principal at Technomic and an expert on

the food and beverage industry.

I caught up with Henkis to talk about innovation in fast food kitchens, the publicity game that

more food companies are playing, and the tech that is and isn't working for restaurants.

When most people hear the term research and development are in D, they probably think

of tech companies.

But there's a lot of, shall we say, hidden innovation that goes into making a fast food

product.

Could you take us behind the curtain of a fast food test kitchen?

What does it take to bring a fast food product from concept to market?

Sure, yeah, no, it's a fairly complex process, and I should note that it's typically a fairly

long process as well, right?

And a lot of it depends on the chain and what they're doing, but they tend to look at

platforms, right?

And so when we talk about innovation, typically it doesn't happen in a vacuum, and the R&D team

...