Robotic restaurants put a new spin on fast casual
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They're not our conspirtors at this time. At these restaurants, the robots are here to serve you.
When ever 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 sensory show that accompanies meal.
But the reality of robot restaurants is generally much more pedestrian and low-class.
One example 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's expanding its robotic system to the fast-casual restaurant chain Wow Bao next month.
Tap on your cubby to receive your food
At Chicago-based Wow Bao, you can already order your steamed buns via its application or an on-site kiosk. Good results . Eatsa's tech, you'll also have the ability to accumulate your meal from an LED-lit cubbyhole displaying your name. Text appearing on the front of the cubby, one among a larger array, will tell you whenever your order is cooking and when you can double-tap on the box to gather your food.
It's a quick transformation 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 turned its focus to offering automated tech as a platform to other restaurants such as Wow Bao.
A combo of unnatural intelligence, personal screens, robotics and -- perhaps most crucially -- the readiness of hungry customers to skip human interaction is coming at the right time to make Eatsa's shift possible. It's part of any gradual creep of technology that is transforming our encounters 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 sound right to conceal assembly of orders and deliver via a cubicle? " he said. "Maybe not. But Eatsa does indeed present a vision of the future that will be copied or enhanced. "
Robotic restaurants-Robot Restaurant Tokyo birthday
The first Eatsa-equipped Wow Bao will open in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago on Dec. you. Using the technology, Incredible Bao plans to twin its sites in 2018. It currently has seven company-owned locations, plus airport terminal, university campus, hotel and stadium franchises.
"When I actually 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 immediately that Eatsa would be the perfect technology to incorporate into our future locations. "
Do robots are supposed to be in the kitchen?
For Eatsa and soon at Wow Bao, the automatic technology is front and center in the restaurant, serving customers and providing them with an experience to go along with their takeout. In other restaurants, robots remain strictly consigned to your kitchen.
At Coffee shop X and Zume, both based in San Francisco, programs make lattes and pizzas, 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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