Robot Restaurant Shinjuku station-Robotic restaurants

Robotic restaurants put a new spin on fast informal

They're not our conspirtors at this time. At these restaurants, the robots are here to serve you.
Once 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 provide up quinoa bowls to health-food fans in its own restaurants. But the company announced Friday that it's expanding its robotic system to the fast-casual restaurant chain Wow Bao next month.

Tap on your cubby to obtain your food

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

It's a quick turn-around for Eatsa, which only a couple weeks in the past announced the closing of five of its seven restaurants across the country. The company has now changed its focus to offering automated tech as a platform to other restaurants such as Wow Bao.

A mixture of man-made intelligence, personal screens, robotics and -- perhaps most crucially -- the readiness of hungry customers to skip human interaction is coming at the right moment to make Eatsa's shift possible. It's part of a sluggish creep of technology that's 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 seem sensible to conceal assembly of orders and deliver via an office? " he said. "Maybe not. But Eatsa does indeed present a vision of the future that will be duplicated or enhanced. "

Robot Restaurant Shinjuku station-Robotic restaurants

The first Eatsa-equipped Wow Bao will open in the Gold Coast neighborhood of Chicago on Dec. 1. Using the technology, Wow Bao plans to twin its sites in 2018. It currently has eight company-owned locations, plus air-port, 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 successful. "I knew immediately that Eatsa would be the perfect technology to include into our future locations. "

Do robots belong in the kitchen?
At Eatsa and soon at Wow Bao, the automatic 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 continue to be strictly consigned to the kitchen.

At Coffee shop X and Zume, both based in Bay area, robots make lattes and pizzas, respectively. California startup Miso Robotics has built a kitchen assistant robot called Flippy, which from early 2018 is expected to be grilling burgers in CaliBurger restaurants.