Robot restaurants-Robot Restaurant in Tokyo's Shinjuku kabukicho district

Robotic restaurants put a new spin on fast everyday

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They're not our conspirators just yet. At these restaurants, the robots are here to serve you.
When someone says "robot restaurant, " I first think of an LED and laser show at a Tokyo venue where remote-controlled robots dance with bikini-clad girls in a physical show that accompanies dinner.

But the reality of robot restaurants is generally much more pedestrian and low-key.

One of these is Eatsa, the San Francisco-based restaurant company that takes orders through iPads and dispenses meals through automated machines. Until now, Eatsa has been using this tech to serve up quinoa bowls to health-food fans in its own restaurants. But the company announced Friday that it can expanding its robotic program to the fast-casual restaurant chain Wow Bao next month.

Tap on your cubby to get your food

At Chicago-based Wow Bao, you can already order your steamed buns via its software or an on-site kiosk. Good results . Eatsa's tech, you'll also manage to accumulate your meal from an LED-lit cubbyhole exhibiting your name. Text showing up on the front of the cubby, one among a larger array, will tell you once your order is cooking and once you can double-tap on the box to acquire the food.

It's a quick turnaround for Eatsa, which only a couple weeks in the past announced the closing of five of its seven restaurants across the country. The company has now changed its focus to offering automated tech as a platform to other restaurants such as Wow Bao.

A mixture of artificial intelligence, personal screens, robotics and -- perhaps most crucially -- the willingness of hungry customers to skip human interaction is coming at the moment to make Eatsa's shift possible. It's part of a sluggish creep of technology which transforming our activities of dining out, and even dining in, thanks to advances in delivery tech.

Eatsa's concept might appear exotic today, but Neil Stern, senior partner at retail consulting firm McMillan Doolittle, said we can expect to see more of this kind of tech popping up. "Does it seem sensible to cover assembly of orders and deliver via an office? " he said. "Maybe not. But Eatsa does present a vision for the future that will be replicated or enhanced. "

Robot restaurants-Robot Restaurant in Tokyo's Shinjuku kabukicho district

The first Eatsa-equipped Wow Bao will open in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago on Dec. one particular. Using the technology, Incredible Bao plans to twin its sites in 2018. It currently has several company-owned locations, plus airport terminal, school campus, hotel and stadium franchises.

"When We first heard about Eatsa opening in San Francisco, I jumped on a plane to come see it, " Wow Bao President Geoff Alexander said in a statement. Alexander praised the technology as both entertaining and successful. "I knew straight away that Eatsa would be the perfect technology to include into our future locations. "

Do robots fit in in the kitchen?
In Eatsa and soon at Wow Bao, the robotic technology is front and center in the restaurant, serving customers and providing associated with an experience to go along with their takeout. In other restaurants, robots are still strictly consigned to your kitchen.

At Coffeehouse X and Zume, both based in S . fransisco, robots make lattes and pizza, respectively. California startup Miso Robotics has built a kitchen assistant robot called Flippy, which from early 2018 is expected to be grilling burgers in CaliBurger restaurants.


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