COVID-19 boosting taste for robot waiters, chefs

At Foodom Robot Restaurant in south China’s Foshan City, a line of robot chefs helped allay customers’ fears of COVID-19 infection.

After customers place orders on their smartphones, the chefs are activated. With one arm performing stir-frying and another adding spices, a robot completed a home-style dish within minutes. Another robot then delivered the sizzling dish to the dining table. No human waiters were involved.

The newfangled restaurant has proved popular among local foodies, even as lingering worries about novel coronavirus infections continue to impact the business of many restaurants and eateries.

Manager Xie Lixian said getting a seat is not easy these days and reservations are often necessary. During this year’s May Day holiday, the restaurant served more than 10,000 customers, with its three-day revenue topping 530,000 yuan (US$75,730).

Increasing demand for contactless service during the COVID-19 pandemic has boosted the application of restaurant robots, which are already helping China’s labor-intensive catering industry tackle mounting labor costs and improve efficiency.

“The pandemic is accelerating automation in the catering industry. For restaurants, robots are becoming a necessity, instead of the icing on the cake,” said Bi Yalei, secretary general of the Shenzhen Robotics Association.

Even before the COVID-19 outbreak, a growing number of restaurants had begun to embrace robot to save costs. A report by the China Cuisine Association shows that in 2019, labor costs in the catering industry increased by 24.4 percent, overrunning other operating costs.

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In south China’s tech hub Shenzhen, a restaurant owned by PUTIEN, a Singaporean restaurant brand, has lured with its two automatic dish-deliverers.

“Many customers come for our robots,” said manager Lai Birong. But while the machine waiters are welcomed as a novelty, Lai said they can be of real help. “The two robots can shoulder the workload of one human waiter, which can be a great help in peak dining hours.”

Zhang Tao, founder of Shenzhen-based robot producer PuduTech, said the company sold 5,000 units of dish-delivering robots last year to restaurants and hotels, including hotpot heavyweight Haidilao, Intercontinental Hotels and Sheraton. The company’s sales surged during the pandemic.

“The pandemic has sped up the existing trend of restaurant automation. The robots have become an ideal choice of restaurateurs because on one hand, they can reduce labor costs and food safety risks, and on the other, the technology has developed to the stage that it can be used in the catering industry,” Zhang said.

At Foodom, more sophisticated cooking tasks have already been delegated to robots, which can cook 200 varieties of Chinese dishes, including stir-fried vegetables, roast meat and stews. A hamburger can be made in 20 seconds and ice cream in 40 seconds.

“Robots can now free human chefs from laborious tasks like cutting ingredients into threads or strips, and they can complete the tasks more efficiently,” said Ma Huiliang, a longtime Cantonese chef who has helped design robot-cooked dishes.

Responding to fears of job losses caused by the restaurant robots, Bi said it is hardly possible to replace all humans in the long chain of catering, especially for restaurants that boast a vast variety of dishes, complicated procedures for processing ingredients and unstandardized cooking.

“After all, dining in restaurants is a highly personalized form of consumption. I believe more robots will be used in the catering industry, but it will be kept to a reasonable level,” Bi said.