Food Robots: More Than Modern Day Food Runners
Food robots, including barista kiosks like RC Coffee, food runner robots like Bear Robotics' Servi, and robot chefs such as Chowbotics' Sally, are increasingly transforming the food service industry by addressing labor shortages, enhancing efficiency, ensuring consistency, and enabling safer, tech-driven dining experiences.
With restaurants and food service venues facing labor shortages, thin margins, and increasing demand from customers for tech-driven experiences, food robots have taken the food service industry by storm.
As reported by fastcasual.com, there are a number of different types of food robots with an exceptionally broad range of purposes. From making food and drinks to delivering food to tables, food robots are actively taking on more complex tasks and helping restaurants reduce human contact to promote safe dining. In addition to the growth of traditional self-serve kiosks, food service experiences powered by automation and robotics are becoming more frequent as demand grows.
Let’s talk about a few core types of robots and some examples you may have seen:
Barista Robots
Companies like RC Coffee provide a fully unattended coffee kiosk experience. From ordering and payment to making the coffee, this automated solution prioritizes delicious, fresh, and consistent coffee brewing. Paired with a mobile app to help locate the nearest café, robot baristas like RC Coffee are taking over the streets in North America.
Food Runner Robots
One of the most well-known food robots is Servi. Created by Bear Robotics to help alleviate the burden of labor shortages, Servi can be programmed for a range of dining room functions including food running, bussing, hosting, patrol, and even birthday mode. Built at an ideal height for the modern-day table service environment, Servi has revolutionized the table waiting game and is a great addition to dining rooms looking to add an additional level of support.
Robot Chefs
From pizza to bread-making, robots have taken over the food preparation scene and are helping to improve efficiencies in the kitchen. By solving problems such as consistency, labor management, and quality control, adding robots or automation to your kitchen is definitely something to consider.
Sally by Chowbotics is a 24/7 salad-making machine that promotes a self-serve, fresh, fast dining experience that encourages contactless and cashless payment options. By allowing up to 22 separate ingredient containers, Sally supports a truly customized dining experience – all without the need for a human to physically prepare it.
Pairing your existing ecosystem with automated tools such as robots is a great way to help make your business more efficient.
If you’re looking for tools to help manage operations with less staff and help encourage sales, consider implementing self-serve kiosks and digital ordering.
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