F or years, the Super Kebab takeaway in north London has – like all kebab shops employed a man with a big knife to slice doner meat off of a rotating skewer. Despite its award-winning pedigree – it was named the best takeaway in London earlier this year – manual kebab slicing has been given the elbow, supplanted by a futuristic robot arm. The Atalay doner robot, which, guided by sensors, glides up and down the tower of meat, slicing off perfect cuts of lamb to be stuffed into a pitta bread (salad remains optional).

The unusual piece of equipment – the first to be installed in a UK kebab shop, according to owner/manager Hakan Gorenli – had been shipped over from Turkey – a nation that knows its kebabs – and costs around £5,000. Gorenli says that he is pleased with his investment, adding: “I like it and am very happy with it.” He also thinks other kebab shops will follow his lead. If he is right then Atalay, the Turkish company that makes the equipment could be in for a windfall – research by the British Kebab Awards estimates that a total of 1.3m kebabs are sold across Britain every day by around 17,000 shops.

Asked if he was sad about abandoning the traditional method of doner slicing, Gorenli said that “carving doner meat is a difficult task, both hot and tiring”. Given that he and his staff – including former carvers – serve somewhere in the region of 1,000 kebabs on a typical weekend, you can understand why they have all taken to the new technology.

As for his customers, Gorenli says: “99% of my customers are happy with the robot. They like that it cuts precisely and hygienically.”