Handle and present fresh raw produce in the légumerie for prep/cutting

Elior's newer central kitchens emphasise a 'légumerie' working fresh, raw vegetables (e.g. washing, peeling, grating carrots, slicing) to maximise the transformation rate and minimise bought-in pre-prepped assembly products. The manipulation task is picking up individual fresh items of variable size, shape and firmness — root vegetables, leafy produce, fruit for purees — orienting them and presenting/feeding them to slicers, graters and peelers, or sorting/trimming damaged pieces. It sits at the front of the prep flow, upstream of cooking and portioning. It is hard for a robot because produce geometry and ripeness vary item to item, soft/ripe items bruise under excess force, and reliable grasping of slippery, wet, irregular objects is exactly what vision-only pick-and-place struggles with. Note: the bulk cutting itself is already machine-automated; the dexterous gap is the singulation, orientation and gentle handling of fragile, variable produce. We identified this through our own research; we have not confirmed the specifics with the customer directly. This page is our researched read — a starting point for that conversation.