When the food is served by the ones who don’t eat: Robo Waitress in India



Every coin has two sides, and I am interested in…
The mere thought of your food being served by a robo-waiter might sound bizarre yet interesting to a large number of people. But this bizzare thought has turned into reality, in the very popular city Chennai of Tamil Nadu in India.
1. In November 2017, two friends Venkatesh Rajendran, an ex-restaurateur and Karthik Kannan, an ex-architect started India’s first robot-themed restaurant under the name ‘Robot’, which is still owned and managed by both of them.
2. The building of the restaurant ‘Robot’ used to be an eatery named ‘Momo’, run and managed by Venkatesh Rajendran. He later on renovated the building and it became the beginning of ‘Robot’.
3. After seeing robots being used in Chinese eateries, Kannan got interested in the idea and pitched it to Rajendran who was also fascinated.
4. Kannan went to China and took training for 15 days in Chinese factories to become familiar with the functioning of robots. Subsequently, he bought four robots from the same factories.
5. The 4 robots are named Gia, Sana, Alice, and Aticca. The cost of each robot is approximately 10 lakhs and they can speak Hindi, English and Tamil languages.
6. All the tables have a tablet on them for placing orders. As soon as the customers places the order, the information gets fed into the master tab and the robots take the food from the kitchen to the customer.
7. The robots are operated and their movements are controlled by human waiters using an app. The restaurant has long magnet strips on the floor to guide the robots.
8. As per the manager of the restaurant, the robots are followed by waiters because many customers stop the robots to take pictures and the food gets cold. But if the customers are cooperative, they just let the robots serve food to customers on their own.
9. According to Kannan, the younger generation picks their food themselves from the robot’s tray but the older generation still prefers that their food is served to them by someone else.
10. The four robots move simultaneously around the restaurant. Three robots serve food to the customers and the fourth robot is there so that the customers can click selfies with it.
11. Talking about his future plans, Kannan said that they are planning to take up the authorised sole distributorship of Chinese robots across India, and they are in talks with the Chinese factories about the same.
While the restaurant ‘Robot’ is first of its kind in India, the idea has been implemented in some other restaurants of India as well. ‘The Yellow House’ in Jaipur being one such example.
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Every coin has two sides, and I am interested in both when it comes to cinema. Having a constant affair with memes and curious about a lot of things ranging from the age-old folk tales to the browsing history of the class toppers. If Tsundoku is an art, I am one of the artists.