Robot restaurants put a new spin on fast casual
They're not our conspirtors just yet. At these restaurants, the robots are here to serve you.
Once 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 meal.
But the reality of robot restaurants is generally far more pedestrian and low-class.
An 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 the 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 obtain your food
At Chicago-based Wow Bao, you can already order your steamed buns via its software or an on-site kiosk. But with Eatsa's tech, you'll also have the ability to gather your meal from an LED-lit cubbyhole displaying your name. Text showing up on the front of the cubby, one among a larger array, will tell you whenever your order is cooking so when you can double-tap on the box to acquire your meal.
It's a quick transformation for Eatsa, which only a couple weeks in the past announced the closing of five of its eight restaurants across the country. The company has switched 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 willingness of hungry customers to skip human interaction is coming at the moment to make Eatsa's shift possible. It's part of a slow creep of technology which transforming our encounters of dining out, and even dining in, thanks to advances in delivery technology.
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 make sense to conceal assembly of orders and deliver via a cubicle? " he said. "Maybe not. But Eatsa does indeed present a vision for the future that will be duplicated or enhanced. "
Automatic robot restaurants-Robot Restaurant hours
"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 effective. "I knew instantly that Eatsa would be the perfect technology to integrate into our future locations. "
Do robots fit in in the kitchen?
At 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 remain strictly consigned to your kitchen.
At Coffee shop X and Zume, both based in Bay area, programs make lattes and pizzas, respectively. California startup Miso Robotics has built a kitchen assistant robot called Flippy, which from early on 2018 is expected to be grilling burgers in CaliBurger restaurants.
