Companies have been trying out automatons to serve food in restaurants, make home deliveries or do chores in stores, partly in hopes of easing the worker shortage. But some of those consumer-facing robots aren’t passing probation.
“While we gained valuable insights into how to better serve this market, we concluded our current approach was not meeting our very high thresholds for continued investment,” a DoorDash spokesman said. The human servers were happy to have a robot to help them bus plates, he said, but Patty didn’t speed things up enough to turn over considerably more tables.
And Wakefern Food Corp’s ShopRite, a regional grocery chain, uses Tally robots in 20 of its stores and plans to roll out more of them in the coming months. Chili’s had hoped the Ritas would lighten the load on wait staff, but found the robots were too slow to keep up with service, a Brinker spokeswoman said.Juan Higueros, co-founder and chief operating officer of Rita maker Bear Robotics Inc, said the company was surprised Chili’s put the technology on pause as research indicated it was largely well-received by staff, adding that one Chili’s employee this week posted a TikTok video of workers saying comedic goodbyes to their robot buddy.
Their success in public settings has been largely limited to high-margin businesses in contained, predictable spaces – delivering room service at luxury hotels or mixing cocktails in bars, for example – where robots are often novelties for which companies can charge extra, he said. McDonald’s is investing in bots at the software level, however, testing automated voice recognition that can fill in for human order-takers at its drive-throughs.Despite any corporate enthusiasm for robots – with their limitless work hours, no sick days, bathroom breaks or grousing – customers aren’t necessarily happy to see one when they are expecting a person.
Rachel’s Kitchen staff primarily use Servi to share the load when bringing food and drink to a big table or multiple tables, Roxarzade said. Some people have also raised concerns that delivery robots could block wheelchair access on sidewalks or otherwise get in the way of humans, leading local authorities to limit or prohibit their use.The prohibition will remain in effect until Ontario’s Transportation Ministry establishes a pilot program to research the effects of robots and the City Council decides whether it wants to opt in, a spokeswoman said.