Project Open Hand 是旧金山 Tenderloin 区的一个非营利组织，成立于 1985 年，最初为回应 AIDS 危机而设，现在也为心脏病、糖尿病与慢性肾病等患者准备与包装营养餐。由于志工短缺，该组织在一栋 4 层楼建筑内引入 Chef Robotics 的机械手臂，只做摆盘、不负责烹饪或切菜。CEO Paul Hepfer 表示，这项租用机器人的订阅费是值得的，因为非营利机构不应只以匮乏心态运作，而应寻找创新与品质提升的方法。
在运作量上，人工志工原本每小时可完成约 500 份餐盒，机器人顺畅时可再额外组装约 200 份，等于把产能提高到约 700 份/小时。现场共有 2 台机器人，每天只运作数小时，沿著输送带与少量志工一起作业；其他志工则负责切菜、烹调或出货。机械臂可透过不同配件处理约 70 种食材，但偶尔会把马铃薯沙拉等食物洒得到处都是，因此仍需一名人力志工清理托盘。
Chef Robotics 的执行长 Rajat Bhageria 认为，机械手臂把原本受食材熟度与手感影响的物理问题，转化为可扩展的软体路径问题，因此更容易复制到大规模餐食生产。尽管机器人不能取代志工，Hepfer 仍希望这项 AI/机器人实验能吸引旧金山的科技资本与新创公司关注，补上疫情后流失的企业志工；而一位曾在 1990 年代受助、如今回来协助餐线的 Joseph Sobiesiak 则说，机器人一开始让人怀疑，但现在确实让流程更快、做得更好。
Project Open Hand, a nonprofit founded in 1985 in San Francisco’s Tenderloin, has begun using robotic meal-prep from Chef Robotics to address a shortage of volunteers. Originally created in response to the AIDS crisis, the group now prepares medically tailored meals for people with conditions including heart disease, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. The robots do not cook or chop; they plate food at scale, and CEO Paul Hepfer says the subscription cost is worthwhile because nonprofits should pursue innovation and quality improvements, not only scarcity.
On throughput, human volunteers had been filling about 500 meals per hour, while the robots can add roughly 200 more when things run smoothly, lifting capacity to about 700 meals per hour. There are 2 robots, active only a few hours per day on a conveyor-belt line alongside a handful of volunteers, while others handle chopping, cooking, and shipping. The robotic arms can be fitted to handle around 70 ingredients, but they are still imperfect: they sometimes spill food, so one volunteer wipes trays clean before sealing, and stray frozen corn gets swept up afterward.
Chef Robotics CEO Rajat Bhageria says the arms turn a physical handling challenge into a software-path problem, making the process more scalable. The robots are not replacing volunteers, but Hepfer hopes the tech-forward experiment will attract attention from San Francisco’s AI-rich business community and help replenish the corporate volunteering that weakened after the pandemic. Joseph Sobiesiak, who once received services from Project Open Hand in the early 1990s and now helps run the line, says he was skeptical at first, but the system is now clearly faster and working better than before.