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Attack of the Doner-bots

A disturbing piece of news that ran in Sunday’s Hurriyet Daily News just caught our eye. It turns out a fiendish company in Germany has come up with a robotic device that slices döner, potentially putting an untold number of dönerci’s (those would be human döner slicers) out of work. The reason for the robot? Ahmet Kalyoncu, European sales manager for the machine’s manufacturer, the German Doner Robotu, explains:
“Döner kebab slicers, when they are cutting the meat, get very sweaty because they are close to the grill,” Kalyoncu says in the article. “We take that problem out, so it’s better in the end for the customer.” (You can read the article here [1].)

Personally, we’ve never encountered a sweat-tainted döner. Further reading makes it clear that it’s really not about hygiene but about breaking into what turns out to be the multi-billion Euro German döner market.

The robot may be able to make some inroads in Germany, but we dare the device’s manufacturer to try and bring it to Turkey, where — thanks to those sweaty dönerci’s and their endless knife sharpening and constant turning of the spit —  döner remains the slow food of fast food. May it never change.

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