Staffing has become one of the main challenges facing restaurants in the past year. An industry-wide labor shortage has contributed to several issues, including considerably longer wait times and lower guests online review ratings.
Due to this, a lot of restaurant owners have become inventive and started using robotic food runners. These cutting-edge technologies not only handle labor shortages, they assist in front of house staff by taking steps to the kitchen, to ensuring a better guest engagement. Even if the feedback on this new technology has been much divided, it’s worth taking a deeper look if your restaurant is having trouble managing the floor.
A robotic food runner is exactly what it sounds like: a machine that delivers food to diners. The majority of the time, these robots don’t accept orders, but they do carry food to guests and help buss tables. Naturally, they aren't self-sufficient; restaurant workers are still required to input orders, direct the robot, and transfer old dishes onto the robot.
Serving clients is just the tip of the iceberg. A service robot stands out from the crowd and gives diners something unique and exciting to focus on, which is crucial for marketing any restaurant business. Diners take pictures with their delivery robot in addition to the meals served and those pictures might be used to spread the news and promote your restaurant without cost.
Giving your guests something to share on social media is an exceptionally effective marketing strategy that you can use without investing any money in a planned advertising effort. The more people submit and interact with your content, the more positively people will see your brand.
There is very little value for humans to haul plates and cups around.
Take a look at the graphs below, a full month of operational data shared by one restaurant, two locations. They have 20 tables in one location and 37 in the other. The restaurant is using two delivery robots at each site.
The powerhouse for restaurants.
The Perfect Host and Entertainment Robot
Imagine a robot-host that greets your customers, requests the party-size and names, manages the queue at the entrance, and calling guests when their table is ready.
Or a humanoid robot that can roll over to a table and sing “Happy Birthday” when the time is right, for a perfect, memorable, and sharable experience for your guests, posting it on their social media and tagging your restaurant.
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One official from a top restaurant robotics business noted that the use of restaurant automation is so advanced "We are not in the "we hope it works" stage, we are confident that it functions. The growing stage is where we are. Future has arrived."
The process of preparing and cooking meals with robots is currently one of their most popular applications. Major retailers and other service providers have either used or tested robots to perform a variety of kitchen jobs like preparing salads, flipping burgers, and making smoothies. It's improbable that robotic chefs will never completely replace their human counterparts in the kitchen. But sooner than you might imagine, you could be having your supper prepared by a robot if these early adopters succeed.