When he was 9 years old, Alex Vardakostas started working at his parents’ fast-food restaurant in southern California, where he experienced firsthand the mindless repetition of flipping burgers. “Let’s be honest, it’s not the culmination of the human spirit,” said Vardakostas, now 33. His experience led him to a career in robotics; with machines, he hoped to automate the most menial tasks, freeing people up for more creative pursuits.

On June 27, he and Steven Frehn, a mechanical engineer, will open Creator, a San Francisco burger shop where a robot preps, cooks and assembles your meal. Creator is betting that robotic efficiency and consistency, combined with techniques borrowed from Michelin-star chefs, will lead to a better burger—for the relatively affordable price of $6.

The restaurant is designed with the muted colors and clean lines of a luxury home-goods store. All the better to focus on the real stars: two 14-foot-long burger-making machines, each comprised of roughly 7,000 parts, including hundreds of sensors. Buns, tomatoes, onions, pickles, seasonings and sauces are stored in clear tubes, which sit over a copper conveyor belt on a wooden base carved into Zaha-Hadid-style swooping lines. Each machine costs under $1 million, Vardakostas said, and prepares up to 120 burgers an hour. (Vardakostas said he expects to improve the machines’ speed over time.)

Customers will order through a mobile app, with human “burger consultants” on hand to offer assistance. (Initially, these employees will also guide customers through the app, which won’t be available to download at the launch.) All burgers will be cooked medium when the restaurant opens; eventually, patrons will be able to customize their burgers’ doneness and seasoning. They’ll also have their pick of more than a dozen sauces—sunflower tahini, smoked oyster aioli, ballpark mustard—created with the oversight of local chefs Nick Balla and Tu David Phu and Pilot R + D, a culinary research and development firm.

Once an order is placed, air pressure pushes a brioche roll from La Boulangerie, a local bakery, through a tube. The robot slices, toasts and butters the bun to order, drops it onto a leaf-shaped tray and dollops it with carefully calibrated amounts of sauce. Different components slice tomatoes, pickles and onions, shred the lettuce and grate the cheese. The robot also grinds the meat—a blend of pasture-raised chuck and brisket—to order. A specialized mechanical grip packs the patty loosely —so much so that, in human hands, it would break apart before reaching the grill. The light handling keeps the grain of the meat aligned, a texture-enhancing technique borrowed from three-Michelin-star chef Heston Blumenthal. Once the patty is done—thermal sensors and an algorithm determine the temperature and the cooking time—a robotic arm drops the meat onto the bun. Patrons pick up their orders at the counter when their names appear on a screen. The process takes about five minutes.