Robotic restaurants put a new spin on fast informal
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They're not our overlords at this time. 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 sensory show that accompanies meal.
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's expanding its robotic system 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 application or an on-site kiosk. But with Eatsa's tech, you'll also manage to gather 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 accumulate your food.
It's a quick turn-around 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 turned its focus to offering automated tech as a platform to other restaurants such as Wow Bao.
A blend of artificial intelligence, personal screens, robotics and -- perhaps most crucially -- the willingness of hungry customers to skip human interaction is coming at the right moment to make Eatsa's shift possible. It's part of a slow creep of technology which transforming our activities of dining out, and even dining in, thanks to advances in delivery technical.
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 will present a vision of the future that will be replicated or enhanced. "
Robotic restaurants-Robot Restaurant Tokyo opening times
The first Eatsa-equipped Wow Bao will open in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago on Dec. 1. Using the technology, Amazing Bao plans to increase its sites in 2018. It currently has several company-owned locations, plus airport, school 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 straight away that Eatsa would be the perfect technology to incorporate into our future locations. "
Do robots are supposed to be in the kitchen?
In 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 the kitchen.
At Coffee shop X and Zume, both based in San Francisco, 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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