You will have already seen them in restaurants: waist-high machines that may greet guests, cause them to their tables, deliver food and drinks and ferry dirty dishes to the kitchen. Some have cat-like faces and even purr while you scratch their heads.
But are robot waiters the long run? It’s a matter the restaurant industry is increasingly attempting to answer.
Many think robot waiters are the answer to the industry’s labor shortages. Sales of them have been growing rapidly lately, with tens of 1000’s now gliding through dining rooms worldwide.
“There’s little question in my mind that that is where the world goes,” said Dennis Reynolds, dean of the Hilton College of Global Hospitality Leadership on the University of Houston. The varsity’s restaurant began using a robot in December, and Reynolds says it has eased the workload for human staff and made service more efficient.
But others say robot waiters aren’t far more than a gimmick which have an extended approach to go before they’ll replace humans. They will’t take orders, and lots of restaurants have steps, outdoor patios and other physical challenges they’ll’t adapt to.
“Restaurants are pretty chaotic places, so it’s very hard to insert automation in a way that is absolutely productive,” said Craig Le Clair, a vice chairman with the consulting company Forrester who studies automation.
Still, robots are proliferating. Redwood City, California-based Bear Robotics introduced its Servi robot in 2021 and expects to have 10,000 deployed by the top of this yr in 44 U.S. states and overseas. Shenzen, China-based Pudu Robotics, which was founded in 2016, has deployed greater than 56,000 robots worldwide.
“Every restaurant chain is looking toward as much automation as possible,” said Phil Zheng of Richtech Robotics, an Austin-based maker of robot servers. “Persons are going to see these in every single place in the subsequent yr or two.”
Li Zhai was having trouble finding staff for Noodle Topia, his Madison Heights, Michigan, restaurant, in the summertime of 2021, so he bought a BellaBot from Pudu Robotics. The robot was so successful he added two more; now, one robot leads diners to their seats while one other delivers bowls of steaming noodles to tables. Employees pile dirty dishes onto a 3rd robot to shuttle back to the kitchen.
Now, Zhai only needs three people to do the identical volume of business that 5 – 6 people used to handle. They usually save him money. A robot costs around $15,000, he said, but an individual costs $5,000 to $6,000 per 30 days.
Zhai said the robots give human servers more time to mingle with customers, which increases suggestions. And customers often post videos of the robots on social media that entice others to go to.
“Besides saving labor, the robots generate business,” he said.
Interactions with human servers can vary. Betzy Giron Reynosa, who works with a BellaBot at The Sushi Factory in West Melbourne, Florida, said the robot is usually a pain.
“You possibly can’t really tell it to maneuver or anything,” she said. She has also had customers who don’t need to interact with it.
But overall the robot is a plus, she said. It saves her trips backwards and forwards to the kitchen and offers her more time with customers.
Labor shortages accelerated the adoption of robots globally, Le Clair said. Within the U.S., the restaurant industry employed 15 million people at the top of last yr, but that was still 400,000 fewer than before the pandemic, based on the National Restaurant Association. In a recent survey, 62% of restaurant operators told the association they don’t have enough employees to satisfy customer demand.
Pandemic-era concerns about hygiene and adoption of latest technology like QR code menus also laid the bottom for robots, said Karthik Namasivayam, director of The School of Hospitality Business at Michigan State University’s Broad College of Business.
“Once an operator begins to know and work with one technology, other technologies turn out to be less daunting and will probably be far more readily accepted as we go forward,” he said.
Namasivayam notes that public acceptance of robot servers is already high in Asia. Pizza Hut has robot servers in 1,000 restaurants in China, for instance.
The U.S. was slower to adopt robots, but some chains are actually testing them. Chick-fil-A is trying them at multiple U.S. locations, and says it’s found that the robots give human employees more time to refresh drinks, clear tables and greet guests.
Marcus Merritt was surprised to see a robot server at a Chick-fil-A in Atlanta recently. The robot didn’t appear to be replacing staff, he said; he counted 13 employees in the shop, and employees told him the robot helps service move a bit faster. He was delighted that the robot told him to have an amazing day and expects he’ll see more robots when he goes out to eat.
“I feel technology is a component of our normal on a regular basis now. Everybody has a mobile phone, everybody uses some type of computer,” said Merritt, who owns a marketing business. “It’s a natural progression.”
But not all chains have had success with robots.
Chili’s introduced a robot server named Rita in 2020 and expanded the test to 61 U.S. restaurants before abruptly halting it last August. The chain found that Rita moved too slowly and got in the best way of human servers. And 58% of guests surveyed said Rita didn’t improve their overall experience.
Haidilao, a hot pot chain in China, began using robots a yr ago to deliver food to diners’ tables. But managers at several outlets said the robots haven’t proved as reliable or cost-effective as human servers.
Wang Long, the manager of a Beijing outlet, said his two robots have each have broken down.
“We only used them at times,” Wang said. “It’s a type of concept thing and the machine can never replace humans.”
Eventually, Namasivayam expects that a certain percentage of restaurants — perhaps 30% — will proceed to have human servers and be considered more luxurious, while the remainder will lean more heavily on robots within the kitchen and in dining rooms. Economics are on the side of robots, he said; the price of human labor will proceed to rise, but technology costs will fall.
But that’s not a future everyone desires to see. Saru Jayaraman, who advocates for higher pay for restaurant employees as president of One Fair Wage, said restaurants could easily solve their labor shortages if they only paid employees more.
“Humans don’t go to a full-service restaurant to be served by technology,” she said. “They go for the experience of themselves and the people they care about being served by a human.”
