--- title: "Chick-fil-A Using Advanced Squeezing Robots to Conduct Huge Lemon Party" description: "Party On, Chicken Chick-fil-A has built an armada of robots to squeeze citrus for its delectable lemonade, turning the God-fearing fast food chain's lemonade plant into a veritable lemon party. As Bloomberg reports, the chicken chain's Santa Clarita, California plant is home to driverless forklifts, gigantic mechanic lemon-grabbing arms, automated rollers, and even robotic reamers that deliver, drop, clean, and squeeze the fruits. Using these robots, Chick-fil-A not only creates the lemonade that's become its staple, but also extracts oils to sell to cosmetics and fragrance companies hungry for that coveted lemony scent. Whereas human squeezers were only able to use […]" date: "2025-01-11" modified: "2025-01-11" authors: - name: "Noor Al-Sibai" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/nooralsibai" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/chick-fil-a-lemonade-robots" categories: - "Robotics" - "Robots and Machines" tags: - "automation" - "chicken" - "lemons" - "the digest" --- # Chick-fil-A Using Advanced Squeezing Robots to Conduct Huge Lemon Party ![Chick-fil-A has an army robots to squeeze citrus for its lemonade, turning the fast food chain's lemonade plant into a veritable lemon party. ]() *Portrait Of Cross-eyed Woman Lying In Lemons With Slice In Her Mouth \Image: Getty\* ## Party On, Chicken Chick-fil-A has built an armada of robots to squeeze citrus for its delectable lemonade, turning the [God-fearing fast food chain]()'s lemonade plant into a veritable lemon party. As [*Bloomberg* reports](), the chicken chain's Santa Clarita, California plant is home to driverless forklifts, gigantic mechanic lemon-grabbing arms, automated rollers, and even robotic reamers that deliver, drop, clean, and squeeze the fruits. Using the bots, Chick-fil-A not only creates the lemonade that's become its staple beverage, but also extracts oils to sell to cosmetics and fragrance companies hungry for that [coveted lemony scent](). Whereas human squeezers were only able to use about 40 percent of the fruit, this army of robotic juicers apparently manages to use nearly the whole thing. Per figures that Chick-fil-A shared with the business publication, this automation saves up to 10,000 hours of work per day. According to one human worker who oversaw that hand job, the labor-intensive nature of that dirty work will not be missed. "Squeezing lemons was not a fun job," Kurt Cahill, a senior leader at the company who helped develop the lemonade plant, told *Bloomberg*. "Nobody liked doing it." ## Life Gives You Lemons Whereas workers used to have to [load small amounts of lemons into in-store juicers](), the Santa Clarita plant's only human intervention comes on the conveyor belts that require people to pick out the bad apples — er, lemons. After the driverless forklifts bring the fruits into the facility, they're sent through automated rollers that look like ginormous versions of the hot dog rollers seen inside convenience stores — except these ones have tiny teeth on them that extract the oils that now provide Chick-fil-A with a revenue stream that it didn't have before. Human workers on the conveyor line then collect fruit that exploded from their intensive massages before they're loaded into one of nine huge extractors, which slice and ream the lemons before they're squeezed to completion by rapidly-spinning automated mixers. The pure juice that results is mixed after the fact with pulp before being shipped off in Franzia-style bags to stores, where employees add water and sugar or Splenda to finish the job. Amid [anxiety about artificial intelligence]() and [robots replacing human workers](), the removal of this tedious task doesn't seem *all* that bad — and the videos *Bloomberg* published of these fruits dancing at their lemon party are delightful, anyway. **More on automation:** [*Amazon Robots Struggling to Keep Up With Human Workers*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've often been drawn to unpacking the narratives that underlie technological, scientific and medical progress, with a special interest in areas of conflict and ambiguity that end up setting agendas and steering the fates of both elites and the hoi polloi. I'm a committed generalist, but I often find myself returning to work involving NASA and the private space sector, the effects of AI on media and society, and the mechanics of the pharmaceutical industry, with a specific focus on the spread of GLP-1 drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy. Prior to Futurism, I worked for publications ranging from Media Matters and Truthdig to Raw Story and Bustle. I'm also the author of "Myspace Scene Queens," a 2024 title in Instar Books' acclaimed "Remember the Internet" series. My work at Futurism has been cited by outlets including the New Yorker, Slate, Nieman Lab, the Verge, the MIT Technology Review, the Sunday Times, and the Daily Beast. I grew up in North Carolina, attended the University of North Carolina at Asheville, and now live in Brooklyn, New York. In my free time, I'm an avid reader and music fan; you can probably find me at a local poetry reading, concert, underground rave, or DJ set. I'm the proud parent of an ineffable orange cat named Mee-Mow. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()