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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Robotics

Breville’s New Espresso Machine Is Almost Like A Home Robot Barista

It’s no secret that robots are changing the way the food and beverage industry is creating food, serving its customers, designing products and automating tasks that used to belong to people. Startups like Cafe X are actually staffed with fully robotic baristas who will make you a delightful (and fast) cup of coffee with no real human involvement.

But it’s not just Silicon Valley startups getting in the mix – companies like Breville are thinking about how to automate tasks and deliver appliances that give consumers quality without leaving the house. Enter Breville’s newest invention, the Oracle Touch, which is the closest you can probably get to hiring a barista to come to your house and make you the perfect espresso-based beverage. The Oracle Touch has – you guessed it – a touchscreen and a bunch of advanced technology inside that gives it the ability to create a drink from scratch without much human input at all.

The Oracle will grind the beans, tamp down the ground espresso, infuse and pour a shot and steam your milk of choice to the exact desired standards (without anyone having to hold the wand or container.) In a market where fancy espresso machines usually require some know-how and Keurig-type machines make brewing coffee with a button-push super simple, it makes sense for Breville to try and create the best of both worlds.

The machine, of course, isn’t cheap and not meant to be a hugely mainstream device. But Wired reviewer and food writer Joe Ray has a lot of great things to say about the Oracle, including:

“The Oracle cleverly straddles a line, offering an impressive amount of customization and hands-on time, while automating enough that you’d have to try hard to make a bad drink…for those who are able to plunk down $2,500 on an espresso maker, Breville has created an outstanding machine.”

I took first balked at the price, but when considering my $4.50 a day soy latte habit, I spend about half the cost of a Breville automated espresso machine in a year on barista-created beverages. And I have to leave my house to get them.

Does this type of technology mean we’ll see the downfall of the traditional coffeehouse? Not likely. Robotics and automation are certainly disrupting many areas of the food service industry, but coffee shops still offer a product and an atmosphere that many people can’t or don’t want to replicate at home. While the price points of home automated espresso machines might come down over time, the more likely impact will be to baristas themselves as automation and advancements in robotics are coming close to replacing the job of grinding, measuring, stamping, steaming and combining ingredients to create the perfect caffeinated beverage.

Robot or Cobot? Companies Taking Varying Paths As Food Robots Reach Viability

Flying in the face of the claim of being “the best first job in America,” burger chains and other fast food eateries are on the brink of replacing young workers with machines. Labor costs (especially the fight for a higher minimum wage) and shrinking profits are driving changes. Specifically, the strategic move is to deploy self-service kiosks and burger-flipping robots at such places as Wendy’s and McDonalds. Both of these fast food outlet have announced some tech-driven strategies aimed at improving the bottom line.

Drawing the most attention in this area is Miso Robotics’ “Flippy,” a kitchen assistant equipped with a camera, sensor and AI software. It can cook a hamburger to a perfect temperature by flipping it at predetermined intervals. The machine is built to place the hamburger on a bun and even work collaboratively with human workers. The human worker can pitch in by adding toppings and wrapping the food for service.

Miso Robotics joins other companies such as Chowbotics. This company, by creating a robot (the size of a dorm refrigerator), can make a salad, eliminating the need for salad bars and often inaccurate hand-made greenery orders. Wanting to own the entire process, San Francisco’s Momentum Machines is in the process of opening its own retail location featuring its robotic technology that can crank out 400 custom burgers an hour.

Flippy is scheduled to be implemented in 2018 by CaliBurger, a chain with locations in California, Washington State, Washington D.C., Canada, Mexico, China, Kuwait, Malaysia and other spots around the world. The first implementation of Flippy with be at a CaliBurger outlet in Los Angeles.

“We take into account all of our customers’ needs for everything from food safety to maximum uptime,” Miso Robotics CEO David Zito told CNBC. “Today our software allows robots to work at a grill, doing some of the nasty and dangerous work that people don’t want to do all day. But these systems can be adapted so that robots can work, say, standing in front of a fryer or chopping onions. These are all areas of high turnover, especially for quick service restaurants.”

If you marry robotic technology, cloud computing, and keen market awareness, the result is Zume Pizza, a San Francisco startup rewriting the rules in food delivery. In a recent Smart Kitchen Show podcast, Zume’s co-founder Julia Collins explained some of the “secret sauce” that separates her company from other tech-enabled food delivery players.

The process, Collins said, is what she calls a “co-bot” culture where tasks are divided between robots and humans where repetitive and dangerous tasks such as making perfectly shaped dough balls and taking a pie in and out of an 800-degree oven are handled by robots. The more artisanal parts of the process are tackled by humans.

Zume’s delivery service stand alone in the market by deploying carefully designed pizza wagons that take partially cooked pizzas and, using predictive analytics, provides a movable storefront where pies can be sent to areas based on demand and data-driven factors such as holidays. The concept is a logistics marvel that breaks the mold of needing to open multiple storefronts to serve a wide geographic area.

Doing an 180 from its campaign touting its role in lives of first-time workers, McDonald’s is using technology to cut down on the number of counter staff it employs. McDonald’s claims its new service-service, touchscreen ordering kiosks—which it will add to 2,500 of its restaurants—won’t eliminate cashier jobs but instead move those workers to more customer-service positions such as concierges.

“MCD is cultivating a digital platform through mobile ordering and Experience of the Future (EOTF), an in-store technological overhaul most conspicuous through kiosk ordering and table delivery,” Andrew Charles of analyst firm Cowen told Wall Street Investors.

The new technology will cost each franchisee between $150,000 and $700,000 with the parent company picking up an undisclosed part of the tab.

Podcast: Robot (and Big Data) Pizza: A Conversation With Zume Pizza’s Julia Collins

In today’s podcast, I talk with Zume Pizza cofounder Julia Collins.

If you’ve read an article about Zume Pizza, chances are it focused on the how the company is using robotics to make pizza more efficiently.

But here’s the thing: while robot-assisted pizza production IS interesting, it is NOT what’s the most intriguing part about Zume Pizza’s business. No, what makes Zume Pizza revolutionary is it’s the application of data analysis combined with what the company calls an “elastic” pizza delivery network that pushes final cook and delivery to where the most demand.

In a sense, the company is applying cloud computing concepts to pizza creation, bringing the ability to scale fast to meet demand with highly efficient resources.

This makes sense for a whole bunch of reasons. Traditional retail fast food involves hundreds of thousands – even sometimes millions of dollars – in fixed cost associated with each (to use a telecom term) “point of presence”, but once the store is built you’re stuck in one place. Why not move to meet demand where it’s at, when it’s at?

That is exactly what Zume is doing with a network of mobile pizza trucks that do final-cook in smart ovens and through a fleet of scooters that bring the pizza to the consumer’s home.

Enjoy the podcast.

I Ate At Eatsa. Now I’m Convinced It’s The Future of Fast Casual Dining

Like most everyone, one of the reasons I love going to New York City is the food.

And after all, why not? The variety is endless, and every meal brings a chance to eat somewhere (and something) amazing. In just one three-day trip to the Big Apple this week, I got to eat  dinner at America’s best pasta restaurant, have lunch in the middle of Grand Central Station, and grab breakfast at one of the city’s best cafes with longtime former editor of Food and Wine, Dana Cowin.*

But the meal I got most excited about was a $10 Bento Bowl I had at eatsa. That’s because while I’d written a bunch about the quinoa-centric, tech-heavy restaurant startup, I’d yet to eat there, so I was intrigued to see what it was like to eat with a completely automated the front-of-house experience.

I ate @eatsarestaurant this week. Here’s a quick video recap of the experience.

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Here’s a quick recap of my experience:

The Walk-In Experience:  When I walked into the Madison Avenue eatsa, it was moderately crowded. At 3:30 in the afternoon it was late for lunch, so I’d expect even bigger crowds during lunch hour.

This location was loud. Of course, everything seems to be bustling in the middle of Manhattan, but this eatsa location was definitely louder than most fast food or fast casual restaurants I’ve been to, in no small part due to the loud music playing over the speakers.

I also noticed an eatsa employee in the lobby. I found this interesting because I wasn’t sure if anyone ever saw an employee when dining at eatsa.

The Order Experience: The order experience is straightforward. Before I could peruse the menu on one of the 8 or kiosks, I was asked to swipe a credit card. I was then given a choice of pre-made bowls or the option to build my own custom bowl.

Ordering food at eatsa

I found the menu simple and easy to understand. Once I chose a Chef’s bowl, I added a beverage and paid. The total price for my bowl was under ten bucks.

Wait and Pick Up: After checkout, my name soon appeared on a big screen above the wall of cubbies.

After ordering, my name appeared on a big screen under ‘Current Orders’

When my food was ready, the screen told me which cubby from which to pick up my meal. The total wait time was less than five minutes. When I picked my meal up, both my bowl and drink were there. However, my dining companion’s drink was missing, so he had to ask the eatsa employee to radio to the back and have them put a drink in the cubby.

How Was The Food?: You should know this: the food at eatsa is really good. I have to admit I wasn’t sure how much I would like a quinoa-centered meal, but the bento bowl I ordered was fresh, crispy and most of all, delicious. My friend Aaron Cohen ordered the hummus and falafel bowl and found it equally tasty.

Closing Thoughts

After eating at eatsa, here are my takeaways:

The whole experience was very low friction: Eating at eatsa is  just really, really easy to do. I walked in, ordered and started eating in about 5 minutes.  I think for lunch customers in busy cities or corporate dense suburbs, eatsa is perfectly optimized for quick pick-up-and-go lunches.

Price-value exceeds most restaurants. The food quality and taste are extremely high for the price. My meal was under ten bucks, lower than average when compared to pretty much any chain restaurant.

It’s not all robots…yet. In a way, I was happy to see a human employee in the lobby of eatsa. It became apparent with my friend’s missing drink why eatsa would need to have someone in the front of the house to answer questions and solve problems.

The mystery is part of the allure. Since we’re early in the robot-restaurant revolution, people are naturally curious about how the restaurant works. When I asked the young woman working up front what went on in the back of house, she said, “some people say it’s robots” with a twinkle in her eye and left it at that.

This is the future of fast food and fast casual. As CEOs from fast casual chains like Buffalo Wild Wings wring their hands about the future, eatsa is busy creating a new template that leverages automation to bring a high-quality, low-friction food experience to the consumer. While I don’t think all restaurants will automate the front-of-house like eatsa – after all, no one can replace a great maître d’ or the ambiance of a cool coffee shop with touch screen kiosk – I have no doubt that what eatsa has created is a glimpse into the future.

*Yes, that’s a humble-brag, as I’m a fan of Dana’s and you should be too (you can check her podcast here). And no, a Dana Cowin is not included with every meal at High Street on Hudson.

Podcast: Robot, Meet Chatbot

In this episode, Mike looks at Andy Rubin’s new smart home platform, Essential Home. Rubin believes he can eliminate all the friction and fragmentation consumers face today with all the various platforms by focusing on integration. He’s created a smart home platform that plans to play nice with other platforms and hopefully get us out of a seemingly endless world of smart home apps and interfaces.

Our guest in this episode is Pawel Orzechowski, the Director of Systems Software at Neato Robotics. We talk about how Neato’s robots work with the smart home, how they are working towards new features and we look at why they decided to integrate their robots with a Facebook Messenger chatbot.

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Minor Roadblocks Stand in the Way of Personal Delivery Devices

Think about how crazy your dog gets chasing a Roomba around the living room. Multiple that chaos by several hundred and you have folks on sidewalks jumping out of the way as robots that resemble oversized canister vacuum cleaners scurry along their appointed rounds making food deliveries.

At least that’s the thinking of San Francisco City Supervisor Norman Yee. As he remarked to Government Technology, “I want to keep our sidewalks safe for people,” Yee said. “Seniors, children, people with disabilities can’t maneuver quickly” (to avoid robots).

The San Francisco area is ground zero for testing of robotics delivery agents. Marble, a venture-backed startup based in San Francisco has its robots delivering meals in the Mission District and Portero Hill for those using the Yelp Eat24 app. Starship Technologies is working with DoorDash in Redwood City while Postmates ran a test in San Francisco for one day last year. On the brink of joining the autonomous delivery mix is Dispatch, a South San Francisco startup.

The future of Personal Delivery Devices—as they are called in legal circles—is wrapped up in a battle of often conflicting interests. Restaurants look at their cost-saving potential with the ability to win loyal customers with quick, efficient delivery. For some chefs, PDDs can allow such visionaries as Anthony Strong to start virtual restaurants where home delivery replaces the need to have a physical dining establishment. In addition, using a fleet of robots can allow grocery stores and restaurants to offer delivery to suburban areas considered too costly to serve.

Early in its life cycle, autonomous delivery has met few legal challenges. San Carlos and Redwood City in California and Washington, D.C. have approved robotic delivery. Virginia and Idaho permit them at the state level, and in Wisconsin, a bill awaiting signature will permit robots to use sidewalks and crosswalks. Legislation, however, is not that straightforward with some companies using the law to keep competition at bay. For example, as a story in Recode points out, the Virginia law—drafted with the help of Starship Technologies– only permits robots under 50 pounds to be legally sanctioned; Marble’s autonomous delivery exceed that weight restriction.

While its impact can be debated, there is no debate that robots will replace workers in many sectors, including home delivery services. Given the entry level of such work, it’s likely not to be a hot button issue among labor leaders whose focus will be more on robots replacing skilled workers in manufacturing. As for robots replacing chefs—that should be a more interesting matter.

Also overlooked by many is the impact PDDs have on crowded sidewalks. As Treehugger.com puts it: “It all seems so quick and simple: design a cute little delivery AV and just let them loose onto the sidewalks. Because nobody ever asks what the pedestrians think, they don’t matter.”

“People don’t think about the negative impacts of these creative new ideas until it’s too late,” San Francisco’s Yee said. He believes for example that the Uber and Lyft cars that flood city streets cause traffic jams. “I’m trying to prevent some of the things that we did not prevent with other innovations” like ride hailing, he said.

Google Hopes Investment in AgTech Bears Fruit

Google and Apple together in an investment deal? Wait, it appears to be Google and apples—as in the fruit.

GV (formerly known as Google Ventures) is among those leading an investment round for Abundant Robotics, a Hayward, Calif.-based company whose robotic apple-picking machine has gained a lot of interest from the agricultural and financial sectors. Well into several trials, the device uses a combination of robotics and AI (in the forms of computer vision) to gently pluck apples from trees and carefully place them in bins for washing and packaging.  The $10 million Series A round will be used to commercialize the product.

Dan Steere, co-founder and CEO of Abundant Robotics says the path from prototype to the current stage—ready for commercialization within a year—is a slow and patient process. “The biggest challenge is understanding when you’re at a point with a set of technology that you can move from research to actually building a useful product, and that’s the hard part about startups; understanding when the capabilities are really ready,” Steere told AgFunder News in a recent interview. “In our case, there was a lot of foundational work and early research.  It wasn’t clear what we were trying to do would work, so there was a lot of interaction with growers though prototypes and real world testing to prove we were on the right track.”

Robotic apple picker trials continue in Washington

Steere’s team at Abundant Robotics came from SRI International, a non-profit research center, with its members bringing backgrounds in robotics and software. The initial funding to build a prototype came from The Washington Tree Fruit Research Commission which seems logical given Washington is among the leading apple-producing states in the country. Another investor in the company is BayWa, a German agricultural investment firm with interests in the New Zealand Envy Apple business.

The harvesting art of the robotics device is a refinement of previous technology-based attempts at reducing labor costs and increasing efficiencies in harvesting. What sets Abundant Robotics apart is its computer vision system which is able to identify the apple on the tree aside from the tree branches and other foliage. By carefully pinpointing the apple, there is less chance of damaging the fruit and the tree. The apple is then carefully plucked from the tree and softly put into the device’s bin.

Abundant Robotics is by no means alone in its quest to bring technology to the harvesting process. FFRobotics, an Israeli firm also is working on a similar solution which it claims can gently pick 10 times as much fruit as the average field worker. The company hopes to be in field testing by the end of the year.

Beyond fruit picking, Blue River Technology, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has smart boxes that hook on to tractors which identify the optimal location to plant, the right time to fertilize as well as the best time to harvest. Autonomous harvesting is gaining a lot of traction in Europe (perhaps even more than in the U.S.) with projects such as CROPS (Clever Robots for Crops) a Pan-European project sponsored by the EU. The goal is automation of the agricultural business and has manifested in such work as a greenhouse robotic pepper picker.

While certainly a delicate subject, the issue of replacing farm workers with robots must be addressed.

“Who knows what this administration will do or not do (related to immigration)?” said Jim McFerson, head of the Washington State Tree Fruit Research Center in Wenatchee told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. For farmers, “it’s a question of survival.”

Beyond immigration issues, there is grave concern among those farm workers whose livelihoods depend on regular work. The eventual loss of jobs for humans will be huge, said Erik Nicholson of Seattle, an official with the United Farm Workers union.

“They are scared of losing their jobs to mechanization,” Nicholson said. “A robot is not going to rent a house, buy clothing for their kids, buy food in a grocery and reinvest that money in the local economy.”

Robot Restaurant Eatsa Makes Move Into Personalized Food

Eatsa has gotten lots of press over the past few years for two things:

One, they serve lots and lots of quinoa. This is not surprising since a) quinoa is tasty and healthy and b) the company’s ownership group also runs NorQuin, Canada’s largest producer of quinoa (talk about vertical integration).

Second and perhaps more interestingly, they’re a robot restaurant. Only, they’re not a robotic restaurant in the way you’d expect it – back of house – but instead have created a fully human-less front of house experience where the consumer orders using a touch screen and the food magically appears in a small cubby.

As if that wasn’t enough to make this startup interesting, now they’re adding a third leg to their stool of differentiation with personalized food. That’s right, with a revamped menu and updated software, the company just announced they will start to tailor meals for users based on past behavior.

Here’s how eatsa’s chairman, Dave Friedberg, explains what they are calling the first attempt to create the “world’s first truly personalized food service experience”:

Imagine having your own personal chef. Every day you tell your chef what you’re in the mood for. What you like and don’t like. Over time, your chef learns about your favorites, things you can’t stand, your preferences for sauces and spices, and even how your mood changes based on the weather or what you’re up to on a given day.

Imagine that your personal chef is downstairs from your office or down the street from your home. And your personal chef can make you an amazing meal in 90 seconds or less and do it at a price lower than any other option out there.

That’s the experience we want eatsa to deliver. Today, we are taking the first step towards that vision.

Since launching the first eatsa in September 2015, we have been asking guests what they like and don’t like, where else they eat and why. We’ve listened and we’ve learned.

Turns out, most folks love what we offer (Thank you!). But if eatsa is going to be able to give everyone something that they’ll love every day, truly deliver a personalized experience, guests have let us know that we need to expand beyond quinoa bowls.

So, based on past user behavior and responses to questions eatsa has asked their guests, eatsa will now start to offer personalized plate options. While fast-food restaurants have been touting make-it-your-way for a very long time, those methods were really just the “put in your order” way of ordering food that’s been around since, well, the beginning of restaurants. Instead, eatsa will use data from guest behavior to anticipate and pre-emptively offer up specialized meals that are tailored for the consumer.

In a way, eatsa is tapping into a broader trend towards greater personalization of food and nutrition powered by the explosion in better and bigger data over the past few years. Companies like Habit are creating personalized mealkits based on the personal biological and health profiles of consumers, while others like Innit are pushing heavily towards personalized food with their data platforms.

So while eatsa – a completely automated front-of-house restaurant – can feel somewhat impersonal in terms of user experience, they’re actually looking to become intensely personal when it comes to understanding their guest’s behavior.

I guess robots aren’t so impersonal after all.

Want to meet the leaders defining the future of food, cooking and the kitchen? Get your tickets for the Smart Kitchen Summit today.

Housewares 2017: Somabar Pushes Robo-Bartender Into Production

This week at Housewares I caught up with Somabar, a company that makes cocktail-mixing robots.

I talked to company CEO, Dylan Purcell Lowe, who told me they’ve started production of the company’s robot bartender, which won best of show for the appliance category at CES 2016.  The device, which you can preorder for $429, is now in the hands of beta testers. The company expects to start shipping new orders by fall of this year.

According to Purcell Lowe, interest in the Somabar has come from both the consumer and professional/enterprise markets. The device, which has enough capacity to serve up to 300 drinks, would work well in hotels or restaurants according says Purcell Lowe, which is why their next generation Somabar will come in two versions: one for consumer and one for the pro market.

You can check out my interview with Purcell Lowe above and watch a quick walk-through of the Somabar below via Instagram.

We checked out the Somabar robotic bartender at #ihhs2017. #futureofdrink #foodtech #robotics

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Podcast: Here Come The Robots

Is it time to get robot insurance? It just might be.

One of my predictions for the smart home in 2017 was that robots would become an ever more important part of the smart home. While we aren’t quite upon the era of fully independent humanoid robots, there is no doubt we are beginning to many more mass-market consumer robots in the form of vacuums, lawn mowers, drink makers and more.

In this podcast I talk to iRobot’s head VP of technology Chris Jones about the current state of consumer robotics, how he sees robots becoming an important part of the smart home, and where he sees things going over the next few years.

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Meet Cafe X, The Robot Coffee Shop In A Box

Here at the Spoon, we’ve written about how an increasing number of startups are applying robotics to back-of-house production of food such as pizza and burgers, while others are exploring how automation could remake the consumer-facing part of restaurants.

But in today’s coffee shops, both the front and back of house are in one space, which means it was probably inevitable that any attempt to bring robotics to the coffee cafe would look something like Cafe X.

The startup, which has just opened robotic coffee shops in both San Francisco and Hong Kong, is creating what looks like a robot coffee shop in a box. In a Cafe X cafe, a robotic arm in a see-through cage takes orders from consumer-facing kiosks. Once an order is placed, the robotic arm moves cups around to various coffee machines and eventually delivers them to small delivery windows for the consumer once the coffee order is done.

While this presentation of robotic coffee delivery seems like something you might expect to see at Disneyland’s Tomorrowland, it actually could be more efficient than the old fashioned, Starbucks model of making coffee. However, not only do you have to wonder what type of cost savings are derived from utilizing an expensive Mitsubishi robot arm, but since the robot arm mostly shuffles cups around to the different coffee machines, would a more efficient long-term design actually just eliminate the robot arm altogether and integrate automated cup dispensers directly into the coffee machines?

Maybe, but it certainly wouldn’t look as cool, would it?

You can see the Cafe X in action below in a video from Techcrunch.

Cafe X opens a robotic coffee shop in SF

Can Tech Completely Automate The Restaurant Front Of House?

While we’ve seen a bunch of news lately about how food robots and automation are gaining momentum in the restaurant world, much of the action has been around ‘back of house’ operations and delivery, where robots and automation can specialize in completing repetitive tasks like making burgers at a lower cost than humans.

But the reality is, front of house is just as susceptible to automation. One of the most obvious places for tech is at the dining table itself, where companies like Ziosk are working to make servers more efficient and, in many cases, help restaurants reduce overall server headcount. Ziosk’s touch screens, which allow consumers to order, ask for refills and pay, are on tables everywhere from Red Robin to Chili’s to Olive Garden. In fact, the company indicated that their kiosks touch 50 million consumers in 3,000 restaurants in the US.

Fast food is even more susceptible to automation. Companies like Panera, Wendy’s and McDonalds are rolling out self-order kiosks nationwide, making fast food one of the fastest growing categories in what some predict will be a $73 billion self-serve kiosk market in 2020.

And then there are those restaurants creating entirely new restaurant concepts which take the front-of-house beyond just the kiosk and make them entirely human-less.

One of these is Eatsa, a San Fransisco based chain that has created a restaurant concept where the entire order and serve flow are done with automation. And if you think Eatsa’s quinoa meals are prepackaged boxes made somewhere off-site, you’re wrong: humans work to fulfill orders, only consumers never get to see them behind the wall of futuristic cubbies where the custom-ordered meals magically appear.

You can see how it all works in the video from Techcrunch below:

Eatsa's High Tech Quinoa To-Go

But do consumers want humans eliminated entirely in the front of house? Are restaurants going to eventually all become Eatsa-like order and pickup joints with nary a worker in sight?

My guess is human-less front of house operations will eat up a small but growing percentage of the overall restaurant mix, particularly in fast-food and casual dining markets where consumers often want to eat fast and affordably. But the biggest impact will be on specific functions. Much like Amazon has re-thought the grocery store in a modern context to use technology to automate a task (checkout), we’ll see restaurant chains starting to focus on those front of house tasks that can be reduced or eliminated with tech (like ordering).

I expect automation to have a much smaller impact in fine dining’s front of house operations. That’s because consumers are willing – and often times expect – to pay more for the experience, and that experience is usually highly dependent on the service of humans.

The ultimate question is how far will automation go and what does it mean for both restaurants and consumers? On the restaurant side, it’s clear a balance must be struck between increased efficiency and creating a compelling user experience.  If consumers see added benefit through expedited ordering and payment through tech like Ziosk, then why not?

But if going to restaurants becomes the equivalent of going to food ATMs, there’s a chance eating out will lose some of its appeal. Unless of course you frequent one of these many robot-restaurants popping up in China.

Then you may want your meal served by a robot waiter.