"You'd have to be born without a sense of wonder to resist the pull of the glass enclosure housing the BurgerBot at the rear of the dining room at Breaking Dawn Brunch in Los Gatos. It's built to slice onions, tomatoes and lettuce and dispense condiments and pickles to top burgers coming on a conveyor belt from the kitchen."
"Owner Elizabeth Truong spent seven years developing the mechanical wonder, though she said "everyone thought I was nuts." Then she opened Breaking Dawn in 2024 as proof automation can work collaboratively with human chefs. "I wanted to solve a problem in the industry," she told San José Spotlight. "Chefs stay chefs and bartenders stay bartenders. But prep work, which most people don't want to do, sees the highest turnover in restaurants. I wanted to take away the monotony.""
"Truong knows that monotony firsthand, having spent hours slicing daikon and carrots at her first restaurant job at age 15. She then spent 23 years selling Vietnamese sandwiches at Lee's Restaurant. "When you start from the bottom up, you are a far different boss," she said. "You respect every aspect of the job. I wanted to create an environment that I would have wanted to work in.""
Elizabeth Truong spent seven years developing a mechanical BurgerBot that slices vegetables and dispenses condiments and pickles onto burgers traveling on a conveyor belt. Breaking Dawn Brunch opened in Los Gatos in 2024 to demonstrate collaborative automation alongside human chefs. The BurgerBot targets repetitive prep tasks that drive high turnover, aiming to keep chefs and bartenders focused on higher-skill roles. Commercial robots lacked the necessary "brain," prompting a bespoke solution focused on burgers as a stable, standardized food. Truong drew on decades of restaurant experience and aimed to create a more respectful, less monotonous workplace environment.
Read at San Jose Spotlight
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