In Silicon Valley, a robot can make your salad

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He is Google's very first executive chef, and has previously offered his services to LinkedIn, Facebook, Dropbox and many more in Silicon Valley. After years of working in a high-tech environment, Charlie Ayers has helped cook up a technological device that complements his restaurant.

At his outlet in Palo Alto in California, salads are not served by a human, but rather a machine.

"Sally" is shaped like a box and caters to customers in Calafia Café, run by Ayers. The salad robot is developed by robotics startup Chowbotics, and made its debut at San Francisco coding academy Galvanize in April.

Sally contains 21 ingredient canisters and can make 40 salads before any refills are needed. By selecting your favorite salad on the touchscreen, the robot can prepare a seven-ingredient salad in under a minute.

Sally the salad robot is developed by robotics startup Chowbotics. /Photo via Chowbotics

Besides choosing from the menu, people can also customize their salads by combining ingredients they like.

The “robot chef” can bring greens to locations where people cannot normally find healthy foods. Instead of grabbing a candy bar at the break room, people can enjoy healthy options in the office.

“It’s the most affordable cafeteria an office can have,” said Deepak Sekar, founder and CEO of Chowbotics.

According to the startup, Sally is a mix of many sensors and technologies which enable it to dispense the exact amount of ingredients every time, despite their different shapes and sizes.

As one of the recipe creators for Sally, Ayers believes that the "robot chef" is a way for restaurants to free up operating revenue to owners. Instead of having a cook or trained labor, a server can bring out a decent salad by pushing several buttons.