Build fresh sandwiches, wraps and salads from deformable ingredients
FFG's Fresh Food Solutions unit produces sandwiches, wraps, salads and similar grab-and-go items at scale for retail and foodservice partners like Starbucks and Aramark. Assembly involves separating, lifting and layering highly deformable materials - bread slices, tortillas, leafy greens, sliced proteins and cheeses - then closing, folding or topping the product. These objects tear, stick, bunch and vary continuously in thickness and floppiness, sitting upstream of wrapping and packaging on high-throughput lines that are chronically labor-constrained. It is hard for a robot because each pick requires sensing whether a single floppy layer (not two stuck together) has been grasped, controlling compliant force so the item is neither dropped nor torn, and placing it accurately on a stack. No FFG-specific automation signal was found, so this is inferred from the company's stated product mix. 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.
What the task is
RESEARCHED · our reconstructionFFG's Fresh Food Solutions unit produces sandwiches, wraps, salads and similar grab-and-go items at scale for retail and foodservice partners like Starbucks and Aramark. Assembly involves separating, lifting and layering highly deformable materials - bread slices, tortillas, leafy greens, sliced proteins and cheeses - then closing, folding or topping the product. These objects tear, stick, bunch and vary continuously in thickness and floppiness, sitting upstream of wrapping and packaging on high-throughput lines that are chronically labor-constrained. It is hard for a robot because each pick requires sensing whether a single floppy layer (not two stuck together) has been grasped, controlling compliant force so the item is neither dropped nor torn, and placing it accurately on a stack. No FFG-specific automation signal was found, so this is inferred from the company's stated product mix.
Is this the actual task and sequence? What are the real tolerances, cycle rate, and reject criteria, and which steps are today's manual bottleneck? Answering these is what turns this from a researched signal into a validated use case.