Squeezing 2,000 lemons per day was a pain for Chick-fil-A staff, so the company enlisted an army of robots to do it, reported Bloomberg.

“In a plant north of Los Angeles, machines now squeeze as many as 1.6 million pounds of the fruit with hardly any human help. The facility, larger than the average Costco store at roughly 190,000 square feet, then ships bags of juice to Chick-fil-A locations, where workers add water and sugar to whip up the chain’s trademark lemonade. … Squeezing lemons was a tedious task that added up to 10,000 hours of work a day across all locations and resulted in many injured fingers,” wrote Bloomberg.

Workers now unburdened from lemon squeezing can dedicate more time to food preparation and interacting with diners, the QSR said.

According to Bloomberg, driverless forklifts unload the lemon bins onto a conveyer belt, where the lemons are washed and travel over rollers that extract their oils, which are “processed on site and sold to the fragrance and cosmetics industry—a whole new revenue stream for Chick-fil-A. Virtually all of the lemon gets used, up from about 40% when employees did the squeezing.”

In the final steps, “Mechanical jaws press two film sheets together to form bags that get piped with juice. … A conveyor belt then brings the bag through an X-ray machine that detects any unwanted foreign objects.” The juice is pasteurized and has a shelf life of more than 40 days.

Recently, Chipotle Mexican Grill revealed its new Autocado machine, an avocado processing cobotic (collaborative robot) prototype that cuts, cores and peels avocados before they are hand mashed to create guacamole. The machine is currently operating at Chipotle's Huntington Beach, California, location.

“These cobotic devices could help us build a stronger operational engine that delivers a great experience for our team members and our guests while maintaining Chipotle’s high culinary standards,” said Curt Garner, chief customer and technology officer. “Optimizing our use of these systems and incorporating crew and customer feedback are the next steps in the stage-gate process before determining their broader pilot plans.”