What are robot chefs cooking up for South Korea’s struggling school kitchens?

A noodle-cooking robot developed by commercial kitchen appliances company Dipo automatically places noodles into a boiler, takes them out and serves them in a bowl. PHOTO: THE KOREA HERALD
At a middle school in Daejeon on April 7, a special lunch menu, including rice with seaweed soup and a slice of cake, was served to celebrate the birthdays of students born that month.

But students were left disappointed when they looked down at their lunch trays — the seaweed soup had no seaweed.

"I didn't mind too much because there were other side dishes. Still, it felt odd not having seaweed soup in the birthday lunch. You know, it's kind of a tradition in Korea," said the seventh grader, who wished to remain anonymous.

Behind the missing seaweed was a dispute between the school and cafeteria workers. The kitchen staff decided to leave the seaweed out entirely after the school's nutritionist failed to supply it already cut that day, school officials said.

At first glance, the incident might seem like an overreaction to a minor workplace misunderstanding. But when you consider that just eight workers are responsible for preparing meals for 890 students every school day, uncut seaweed is anything but trivial.

Similar disputes have arisen in the past at the school over labour-intensive dishes, such as those requiring large quantities of eggs to be cracked, or grapes that need to be washed before serving.

Hell's kitchen
Preparing school lunches in South Korea is highly labour-intensive, as the meals often resemble home-cooked dishes. A typical lunch includes rice, soup and two to three side dishes, all made from fresh ingredients such as meat and vegetables.

Even a single dish can involve numerous steps and techniques — including soaking, shredding, trimming, blanching, pan-frying and seasoning — often requiring staff to juggle multiple tasks simultaneously. Many schools also serve fresh fruit, some of which require thorough washing before being served. All of this must be completed under strict time constraints to meet scheduled lunch periods, followed by the equally demanding task of cleaning up and preparing for the next day's meal.

This high-pressure environment has exposed serious structural vulnerabilities in school kitchen operations nationwide.

Schools with large student populations face chronic staffing shortages due to the demanding workload, which shifts the strain to the remaining workers and heightens the risk of injuries.

Last year, the Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education aimed to hire 213 cafeteria workers for schools in the Gangnam and Songpa districts but received only 28 applications.

School kitchen workers say inadequate compensation for their physically demanding and hazardous work is a key factor in their chronic staffing shortages, high turnover and strikes — all of which destabilize meal services.

At one elementary school in Suwon, Gyeonggi Province, a cafeteria workers' strike left students with only plain white rice and dried seaweed for lunch.

"School lunches weren't provided for about two weeks. At first, they gave the students substitutes like bread, milk and fruit, but the menu worsened over time," Seon, a 38-year-old mother whose son is in the second grade, told The Korea Herald.

"As the same meals kept repeating, some moms pooled money to order sandwiches and other food. When the strike lasted longer than expected, we had no choice but to pack lunches ourselves," she added.

Can cooking robots be a solution?
The issue is not confined to schools.

In South Korea, communal meal services, or "geupsik," are a deeply embedded part of daily life, extending beyond schools to military barracks, where able-bodied men are typically required to serve for at least 18 months, and to the workplace. These catering services are common in public libraries, in government offices and at large construction sites.

In search of a breakthrough, South Korea is placing its hopes on advances in cooking robotics.

While still in the trial phase, some schools have begun using machines to handle specific tasks and ease the burden on human staff.

At Soonggok Middle School in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul, four cooking robots have handled frying, stir-frying and preparing soups and stews since 2023.

The city of Incheon has recently announced plans to invest over 700 million won ($504,000) to install cooking robot systems at three schools: Nonhyeon Middle School, Bugwang High School and Garim High School.

Where there is potential demand, businesses are investing. Today's cooking robots can do far more than just basic frying or boiling.

At the annual Food Service Fair that was held in Seoul from late April to early May, an advanced automated stirrer showcased the use of camera-based imaging technology to precisely monitor surface temperatures and the cooking status of ingredients, automatically adjusting the heat when needed.

Developed by local foodtech startup People's League, the automatic stirrer follows recipes that users have programmed into the system and automatically stops when a person approaches based on its built-in lidar sensor that uses laser light to measure the distance to nearby objects.

More than 300 companies from various sectors, including food, ingredients and automation, participated in the exhibition, introducing their products to professionals in the food service and dining industries, from school nutritionists to franchise operators.

At one of the demonstration booths in the automation equipment section, a robot arm lifted a container from a rack and carried it to a fryer. It heated the oil automatically and cooked the food based on temperature and time settings preprogrammed on a display screen.

The frying robot, built by robotics startup itcobot, finished the process by shaking the container — like a flick of the wrist — to remove excess oil.

Some local experts are optimistic about the role of kitchen automation in improving worker safety.

"Mass catering is, by its nature, physically demanding work, and increasing wages alone isn't enough to address the current labour shortage," said Ham Sun-ok, a professor of food and nutrition at Yonsei University.

"Automation reduces the need for workers to perform dangerous tasks such as working near hot oil or steam and lifting heavy items, lowering the risk of burns, cuts and slips that are common in busy kitchen environments. If robots handle simple, repetitive work, kitchen staff can focus on more supervisory roles."

However, unionized school kitchen workers may not be so excited.

The Public Education Workers' Union, under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, in a statement in March said increasing wages and improving working conditions for human workers should take priority over the introduction of their robot replacements.

"The cooking robots currently being introduced are not capable of performing even a single cooking task properly without human assistance. There are limits to their ability to improve productivity or reduce workplace accidents, and they could even introduce new safety hazards," the union said.