Chipotle unveils ‘Chippy’ robot that makes tortilla chips

Yahoo Finance's Brian Sozzi and Jared Blikre discuss a new robot being tested by Chipotle.

Video Transcript

JARED BLIKRE: Welcome back, and time now for Sozzi's Takes. And as you just saw on your screen, it's regarding the rise of the robots. A new chef is joining the ranks of Chipotle cooks, Chippy. The robot may be frying tortilla chips at a location near you. The rollout is the latest gambit by restaurants looking to trim their costs amid surging inflation. Sozzi, your thoughts, your take?

BRIAN SOZZI: You got that right there, Jared. Chippy, Chippy, chips, Chippy. Yeah, well, anyway, this is a new robot that Chipotle announced this morning. They have linked up with a company called Miso Robotics to launch Chippy at their Irvine, California. And you can see an actual human chef cutting limes inside of Chipotle. And there is Chippy, the magical robot here, that will make Chipotle's chips inside of its test facilities in Irvine, California.

Now Chippy is going to find his way into a new Southern California Chipotle restaurant, unclear the precise location. But I would venture taking a trip out to that location just to see Chippy and get his autograph. But overall, this is another example of fast food chains trying to find ways to address the worker shortage. Now, ultimately, the big brother of Chippy is, in fact, Flippy. Flippy, who started working with White Castle a couple of years ago. Flippy is now in, I believe, about 300 White Castle locations, actually flipping burgers and putting fries into the fry bin.

And then, of course, next to it, you have distant uncle. That is over at Domino's, and that robot is called the Nuro. And that is an autonomous delivery vehicle that is driving to certain restaurants in Houston to deliver hot pizzas. But again, Chippy coming to Chipotle. This is news you could use, Jared, only here on Yahoo Finance.

JARED BLIKRE: Oh, yeah, I know. And let's go to the YFi Interactive, lots of moves here this morning in the quick service restaurant. We're going to talk about Starbucks in a little bit. Of course, we're talking about Chipotle right now. You can see it's up about 4% today, but I just want to show what's happened in the recent past. So let's take a one-year look. We're going to take a one-year look, and we can see kind of a bifurcated market here, Brian.

We got PZZA-- that would be Papa John's-- at the top. That's up 15%, and let's get a one-year chart on that. You can see giving back a lot of gains, as many stocks have. But the losses to the downside, Shake Shack down 45%. Yum China-- that's a Chinese stock-- that's down 30%. Jack in the Box, 20%. Starbucks down 20%.

So really interesting to chart these price movements here. Chipotle, by the way, up 5% over that time period. And if you go back a little farther, this is still a stock that is firmly, firmly in a very long-term uptrend here. So while the-- well, I guess the last three, four or five, six months have been a little bit painful here, Brian. You know, what are your thoughts?

BRIAN SOZZI: Well, two final things here. One, of course, Chippy is the true no days off employee. You don't need-- Chippy does not need a day off unless his arm falls off. And then last but not least, what's unclear is to me is if, you know, new interim CEO of Starbucks Howard Schultz will introduce Sippy. I mean, why not just keep this whole thing rolling?

JARED BLIKRE: Brian, I thought-- because I was reading the chat earlier. And Sippy and Chippy, I thought you were making all this stuff up. I got to ask you, what do you think is next in terms of robot names? What's the future of robot names?

BRIAN SOZZI: I think Sippy. I think Sippy at Starbucks would make a lot of sense. Why not bring a robot in there and make those $8 to $9 drinks? Really boost those profit margins.