Technology has gotten so advanced that robot employment is not a distant thought that you entertain, but a thought that we will all need to start considering. This brings up many thoughts and concerns for the restaurant industry. Will the dining experience utterly change? Will the future of dining entirely evolve? Will all jobs be replaced with robots? Will the warmth and care of hospitality be eradicated?
Fully automated restaurants are already here. Eatsa, a “new kind of food experience” with four locations in Los Angeles, has changed the fast food experience. With barely any human communication, customers are able to order from iPads, grab their food from electronic food retrieval windows, and leave. The entire experience gets you in and out, happily, in no time. It is undeniably fast and reaches a new level of efficiency unattainable by human staff. It works, incredibly well actually, for “fast food” joints where speed and convenience is crucial, but what about for full-service restaurants?
The human interaction or what we call “service” at full-service restaurants, especially in fine-dining settings, affects the dining experience immensely. Did the host greet the customer hospitably? Was the waiter/waitress nice or rude? Did they anticipate the customers’ needs? Did they go above and beyond expectations? These collective interactions, from the moment the guest walks into the restaurant, forms first impressions and determines whether you’ve gained a loyal customer or lost them forever in the deep sea of consumers. In this case, it might be hard to replace service staff with cold-hearted robots.
Whether you are a fast food or fine-dining restaurant, kitchen staff do not interact with customers so the introduction of robot chefs and kitchen staff may become more popular. There has been a lot of innovation in this space, ranging from the BratWurst Bot that flips sausages, to the Momentum Machine burger flipping prototype that cranks out 400 hundred burgers an hour, all the way to the first robot chef that consists of two arms emulating human cooking motions. Other examples include Zume, the robot pizzeria where humans and robots work together to make the perfect pie, the noodle slicing machine in China, and the sushi robots that can make 4,000 pieces of sushi an hour. Robots don’t need to get paid, don’t have to take restroom breaks, won’t come in late, won’t get distracted, and won’t get sick. They also don’t sue!
It has been debated whether robots will take over all jobs. However, we’ve seen through history that while technology has replaced certain tasks (i.e. with the invention of tractors, the spinning jenny and breakthrough in the automotive industry and many more), people were able to find new jobs. This natural evolution proves that there is no reason to panic and we will eventually find a way to make it work.
Robots were created to make life more efficient for humans. They were made to work in harmony with humans to ensure a truly optimal operation and workflow. Robots can take on the more monotonous tasks, while humans can take on the creative aspects. It is almost like the invention of the dough mixer machine, we add in the ingredients, the flour, water, yeast, while the machine does the beating and kneading.
Technology gives us the opportunity to focus on the human experience. While it handles the tedious aspects of running a restaurant, we are freed up to focus on the personal interactions. Restaurants need to leverage the appropriate technology that allows them to deliver an exceptional hospitality experience to their customers. Operators need to understand and be taught what kind of technology is most beneficial for their establishment. The love and warmth with which restaurants provide their customers is something that can never be replaced with technology, but rather can be enhanced by working together with technology to deliver the best experience possible.
This is the approach we take at SALIDO, giving restaurants a technology solution that makes them more efficient so they can spend more time on delighting their customers.
