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Robot restaurants put a new spin on fast casual

They're not our overlords just yet. At these restaurants, the robots are here to serve you.
When someone says "robot restaurant, " I first think of an LED and laser show at a Tokyo venue where remote-controlled robots dance with bikini-clad girls in a sensory show that accompanies meal.

But the reality of robot restaurants is generally much more pedestrian and low-key.

An example is Eatsa, the San Francisco-based restaurant company that takes orders through iPads and dispenses meals through automated machines. Until now, Eatsa has been using this tech to serve up quinoa bowls to health-food fans in the own restaurants. But the company announced Friday that is actually expanding its robotic platform to the fast-casual restaurant chain Wow Bao next month.

Tap on your cubby to get your food

At Chicago-based Wow Bao, you can already order your steamed buns via its application or an on-site kiosk. But with Eatsa's tech, you'll also have the ability to accumulate your meal from an LED-lit cubbyhole exhibiting your name. Text showing on the front of the cubby, one amongst a larger array, will tell you whenever your order is cooking and when you can double-tap on the box to gather your food.

It's a quick transformation for Eatsa, which only a couple weeks back announced the closing of five of its eight restaurants across the country. The company has switched its focus to offering automated tech as a platform to other restaurants such as Wow Bao.

A mixture of artificial intelligence, personal screens, robotics and -- perhaps most crucially -- the determination of hungry customers to skip human interaction is coming at the right moment to make Eatsa's shift possible. It's part of any sluggish creep of technology that is transforming our activities of dining out, and even dining in, thanks to advances in delivery technical.

Eatsa's concept might appear exotic today, but Neil Stern, senior partner at retail consulting firm McMillan Doolittle, said we can expect to see more of this kind of tech popping up. "Does it make sense to cover assembly of orders and deliver via a cubicle? " he said. "Maybe not. But Eatsa will present a vision for the future that will be duplicated or enhanced. "

Robot Restaurant Shinjuku dress code-Robotic restaurants

The first Eatsa-equipped Wow Bao will open in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago on Dec. one particular. Using the technology, Wow Bao plans to double its sites in 2018. It currently has several company-owned locations, plus airport terminal, college or university campus, hotel and stadium franchises.

"When I actually first heard about Eatsa opening in San Francisco, I jumped on a plane to come see it, " Wow Bao President Geoff Alexander said in a statement. Alexander praised the technology as both entertaining and efficient. "I knew instantly that Eatsa would be the perfect technology to integrate into our future locations. "

Do robots belong in the kitchen?
For Eatsa and soon at Wow Bao, the robotic technology is front and center in the restaurant, serving customers and providing them with an experience to go along with their takeout. In other restaurants, robots are still strictly consigned to your kitchen.

At Coffeehouse X and Zume, both based in San Francisco, automated programs make lattes and pizzas, respectively. California startup Miso Robotics has built a kitchen assistant robot called Flippy, which from early on 2018 is expected to be grilling burgers in CaliBurger restaurants.