Food Delivery Robots Have Taken Over Local Restaurants?

When it comes to food delivery robots, the first thing you think of may be high-end hotels and smart restaurants.

But in fact, unexpectedly, food delivery robots have taken over local restaurants.

If you don’t believe me, you can open Weibo and search for keywords—then, you will find that food delivery robots, once regarded as synonymous with technology, are landing around at a speed visible to the naked eye.

From the Northeast local restaurant near home to the small farm restaurant in the third-tier cities, and then to various popular fast-food restaurants, it is becoming a daily routine for food delivery robots to apply for jobs.

Even on social media, netizens continue to post moments of being served by food delivery robots. They help serve food in restaurants, deliver food in hotels, and guide customers in shopping malls. In just a few years, robots have grown from The mascot of the online celebrity store has transformed into a real worker.

01. Become a worker at the end of ten years

Initially, when food delivery robots first entered the public eye, they mostly existed as a beautiful landscape.

In 2010, a self-service hot pot restaurant in Jinan took the lead in launching robot food delivery, and because of this, it became a well-known local Internet celebrity restaurant.

In the following years, a number of robot restaurants have sprung up to varying degrees across the country.

However, the robots at that time existed more as a marketing gimmick than their practical value—most of the first-generation food delivery robots needed to attach magnetic strip guide rails to the ceiling to guide the robot to deliver food on a preset map. meal.

This also means that the food delivery robot is difficult to avoid flexibly and is not very practical. Even, those fixed track designs also make the restaurant have to hire employees to help handle the food delivery process.

Therefore, during this period, although food delivery robots had a reputation, they had no real practical application, and most of the robot restaurants in various places were cycled between opening and closing stores.

It was not until 2016, when autonomous driving technology and human-computer interaction technology made breakthroughs, that food delivery robots really began to have a trend of being embedded in restaurant business flows.

2018 is a critical node. This year, Haidilao invested 100 million yuan to launch the world's first smart hot pot restaurant. The representative meaning behind this is that catering giants have also entered the market one after another, combining robots with catering services.

Subsequently, many chain catering giants represented by Haidilao and Xiabuxiabu began to introduce food delivery robots on a large scale.

Statistics from Mealbook show that in 2017, the market size of China's food delivery robots was only 20 million yuan, but in 2019, the market size of China's food delivery robots reached 220 million yuan.

Yes, after 2016, food delivery robots have entered the fast lane of development, and in the new crown pandemic in 2020, they stumbled and took advantage of unmanned delivery.

Of course, compared to rumors, the recognition from giants and capital may be more able to verify its popularity.

According to the data from Qichacha, in 2021, there will be more than 120 related investment and financing incidents in the service robot track, with a total financing amount of more than 10 billion yuan, and more than half of the single financing amount is 100 million yuan or more.

Specific to the top players in the field of food delivery robots, they are also players with high exposure in the market at present-Qinglang Intelligent and Purdue Technology, which have been targeted by capital. Among them, Qinglang Intelligence received US$200 million in financing led by the Softbank Vision Fund in September 2021, and Purdue Technology received two rounds of financing from Sequoia Capital and Meituan in May and September last year. 1 billion yuan in financing.

02. Food delivery robots also sink

Behind the wave of financing, food delivery robots began to work frequently.

Many catering brands, including Haidilao, Xiabu Xiabu, Xibei Youmian Village, Dezhuang Hot Pot, Xiaolongkan, Baheli, Dadong, Bianyifang, Wangshunge, etc., have sent "offers" to the food delivery robot. Even, many hotel chains have become staunch supporters of food delivery robots.

In addition to these branded restaurants in first- and second-tier cities, some food delivery robots have also appeared in the sinking market, and most of the restaurants hire these new workers in the form of renting and buying.

Up to now, consumers can already see food delivery robots in many small and medium-sized restaurants.

For example, a reporter from Shandong Business Daily randomly visited nearly 20 large, medium and small restaurants in Lixia District, Shizhong District, and Tianqiao District of Jinan City. Among them, more than 30% of the restaurants had food delivery robots, and among them, most Some of them are ordinary restaurants such as hot pot restaurants and barbecue restaurants.

Of course, most people may not be able to accurately perceive the application of food delivery robots in ordinary restaurants. A simple comparison is that on Dianping. There are also many restaurants named Northeast Farmhouse and XX Jiangnan Xiaocai.

In fact, for the same reason that large chain restaurants start food delivery robots, ordinary restaurants also need to reduce costs and increase efficiency. In the past two years, the capabilities demonstrated by food delivery robots seem to be able to achieve this.

First of all, in terms of service efficiency, in the eyes of industry insiders, the delivery efficiency of a food delivery robot is equivalent to 1.5 delivery personnel. Under normal circumstances, a food delivery robot with 4 trays can deliver 8 to 24 dishes at a time, and can deliver 200-300 trays of dishes a day. In contrast, human waiters can only deliver 150-200 trays a day. dishes.

Secondly, in terms of cost, the price of purchasing a food delivery robot generally ranges from more than 10,000 to 30,000 yuan. Most of the food delivery in the catering industry is based on piecework wages. If it is calculated at 0.5 yuan per dish, 100 dishes a day Vegetables cost 15,000 to 16,000 yuan a year. If you use a food delivery robot, you can recover the cost in 1 to 2 years.

If rented, the price will be lower. In ordinary restaurants, the salary of a food delivery worker is around 4,000 yuan, while the rental price of a food delivery robot is mostly 2,000 to 3,000 yuan.

As far as the catering industry is concerned, as a labor-intensive industry, with the slowdown in the growth rate of human resource supply, labor costs are becoming an unbearable burden among various costs in the catering industry.

What's more serious is that for a long time, restaurant waiters have been among the top three occupations in shortage, and the labor shortage around the Spring Festival has also plagued the catering industry. Based on this, the birth of food delivery robots, to a certain extent, filled the gap left by the transformation of service personnel.

In addition, according to many research reports, the rise of food delivery robots is also related to the popularity of unmanned delivery in the post-epidemic era.

Over the past few years, the continuation of the epidemic and the difficult progress of physical businesses have made the catering industry constantly realize the importance of throttling, and the use of food delivery robots can indeed guarantee service quality while reducing labor costs. For example, some quarantine hotels reduce the risk of infection by using robots to deliver meals.

In addition, for some small and medium-sized restaurants, the introduction of one or two food delivery robots can also play a role in attracting customers.

On social media, many consumers have said that the consumption experience brought by food delivery robots is indeed novel and interesting, and many parents will come to restaurants repeatedly because their children like food delivery robots.

03. Will the passer-by disappear?

So, does this mean that food delivery robots will replace food passers-by?

From the perspective of robot manufacturing companies, the answer is of course yes, but if it is specific to the present, customers and restaurant owners may still prefer humans.

After all, in terms of the initiative of service awareness, robots are still too thin. Furthermore, manufacturing companies still have a lot to say about food delivery robots, such as after-sales operation and maintenance, and the service life of robots. Nearby after-sales service center.

Even Haidilao, which is considered a firm supporter of food delivery robots, has deployed no more than a thousand food delivery robots in stores around the world.

For most traditional catering stores, there are more concerns. On the one hand, food delivery robots do have many advantages, but their disadvantages are also prominent. For example, not all restaurants are suitable for equipped with food delivery robots, and it is impossible for a fly restaurant to occupy an area of several hundred square meters.

In addition, not all restaurants take robot moving lines into consideration at the beginning of the design. The aisle width of more than 1 meter and the extremely high levelness of the ground are enough to make most restaurants lose their minds.

At the same time, some restaurants equipped with food delivery robots came out to speak out.

For example, smart industry media Zhishi once interviewed some restaurants equipped with food delivery robots. According to the staff of the restaurant, “During the peak dining period, the crowding of people will hinder the robot’s progress and affect the delivery efficiency. Therefore, some restaurants leave the robot idle during the peak delivery period. This phenomenon is related to the research and development of robots. It runs counter to the original intention of the launch.”

In addition, some consumers are also full of resistance. Due to technical limitations, most food delivery robots have single functions, and cannot flexibly respond to the needs of customers except for welcoming guests, delivering food, and ordering food. On social media, many people believe that the experience brought by food delivery robots at this stage may be more inclined to "artificial mental retardation" than artificial intelligence.

In fact, according to data from China Industry Information Network, the current market penetration rate of commercial service robots is only 3%, of which the penetration rate of food delivery robots is less than 1%.

The implication is that the food delivery robots in the Northeast Local Restaurant are more like mascots than the food passers.

04. Worse or Better

From the launch of the first industrial robot by General Motors in 1961 to the appearance of food delivery robots in ordinary restaurants, in more than half a century, robots have stepped out of the laboratory and entered the corners of social life.

With the further penetration of intelligence, what role will robots play in the new era? Some people think that, perhaps, the era of human-computer coexistence in technological movies will not be far away from us.

In fact, as stated in a McKinsey report released last year, the post-industrial economy era will bring unprecedented skills transformation and career changes. Among them, the early application of automation will force 220 million workers to change positions and replace 516 billion working hours. For 330 million migrant workers, they may face the risk of 22-40% of their work content being replaced by automation.

From this point of view, to a large extent, the engulfment of the post of food delivery robot by food delivery robots is just the tip of the iceberg of robots occupying business. With the opening of the post-industrial economy, the situation will be more than we imagined complex.

This is not an exaggeration. Before the food delivery robot, the manufacturing industry has successfully practiced the black light factory. At that time, Foxconn laid off 60,000 employees after introducing robots.

Today, many people still firmly believe that robots are just tools, just like the transformation of physical businesses by the Internet, which liberates human beings from simple labor—but contrary to the beautiful vision, the replacement of human labor by robots has never been Half and half, but from the simple links, until the manpower is completely replaced.