The Globe and Mail reports in its Saturday edition that faced with widespread labour shortages exacerbated by the lingering stigma around "burger-flipping," chains are moving aggressively to automate as many aspects of the ordering and meal-preparation process as possible. The Globe's Gus Carlson writes that Chipotle, the Colorado-based Tex-Mex chain, announced recently that over the course of this year, it would use robotic technology to fill some on-line orders. Chipotle boasts a robot named Chippy to make its signature tortilla chips. Designed and built by Hyphen, the collaborative robot -- or co-botic -- system is being tested at the Chipotle Cultivate Center in California. White Castle is experimenting with a Miso Robotics robot called Flippy to flip burgers. Its success in tests in a Chicago outlet in 2020 spawned Flippy 2 that is being rolled out to the chain's 350 locations around the United States. Steve Ells, Chipotle's founding chief executive officer, is re-entering the business with a new meat-free sandwich-shop concept called Kernel, which is designed around robotic automation. Big chains such as McDonald's, Sonic and Checkers have been shifting to more mechanical processes over the past few years.