The food delivery robot has already captured the local restaurant?

When it comes to food delivery robots, you probably think of high-end hotels and smart restaurants.

But in fact, to our surprise, food delivery robots are now taking over local restaurants.

If you don't believe me, you can open Your Twitter account, search for the key words -- and you'll find that food delivery robots, once synonymous with a sense of technology, are landing in the neighborhood at the speed of the naked eye.

From local restaurants near my home in northeast China to small fry shops in third-tier cities, and then to all kinds of fast food restaurants, it is becoming everyday for food delivery robots to apply for jobs.

Even on social media, there are a lot of people sharing the moment when the food delivery robot serves them, from serving food in restaurants, delivering food in hotels to guiding customers in shopping malls. In just a few years, the robot has transformed from a mascot of an online celebrity into a real worker.

01

By the end of ten years, he had become a part-time worker

When food delivery robots first entered the public eye, they were mostly a beautiful sight.

In 2010, a self-service hot pot restaurant in Jinan was the first to offer robot food delivery and became a minor online celebrity in the area.

In the years since, robot restaurants have sprung up across the country to varying degrees.

But the robots were more of a marketing gimmick than a practical one -- most of the first food-delivery robots had to attach magnetic strips to the ceiling to guide them on preset maps.

That means robots are difficult to dodge and impractical, and even the fixed track design requires restaurants to hire staff to help with the delivery process.

Therefore, during this period, although the food delivery robot had a reputation, but there is no real practical application, and robot restaurants around, also mostly in the opening and closing of the store cycle.

It was not until 2016, after breakthroughs in autonomous driving technology and human-computer interaction technology, that food delivery machines began to be embedded in the business flow of restaurants.

The year 2018 is a critical juncture. This year, Haidilao invested 100 million yuan to launch the world's first smart hotpot restaurant. The representative meaning behind this is that catering giants have also entered the field and combined robots with catering services.

Subsequently, many chain catering giants, such as Haidilao and Xiabu Xiabu, began to introduce food delivery robots on a large scale.

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

Yes, food delivery robots entered the fast track of development after 2016 and stumbled to ride the wave of unmanned delivery during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

Of course, the recognition from giants and capital may be more proof of its popularity than tuyere.

According to chumcha's data, in 2021, there were more than 120 investment and financing events related to the service robot track, with a total financing amount of more than 10 billion yuan, and more than half of the single financing amount of 100 million yuan or more.

Specific to the food delivery robot field of the head players, but also the current market exposure rate of higher players - Optimus intelligence and Purdue Technology, have been targeted by the capital. Among them, Optimus intelligence in September 2021 from SoftBank vision Fund led investment of $200 million financing, Purdue Technology in May and September last year, received from Sequoia Capital, Meituan and other two rounds of a total of 1 billion yuan financing. Reeman robot's new food delivery products are also being loved by customers.

02

The food delivery robot also sinks

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

Many catering brands, including Haidilao, Xiabu Xiabu, Xibei Oat Noodle Village, Dezhuang Hotpot, Xiaolongkan, Baheli, Dadong, Bianyifang, Wangshunge and so on, have sent "offers" to food delivery robots, and many chain hotels have even become firm supporters of food delivery robots.

In addition to branded eateries in first - and second-tier cities, food delivery robots have emerged in the sinking market, and restaurants hire these new workers mostly on a rent-to-buy basis.

By now, consumers can already see robots delivering food in many small and medium-sized restaurants.

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

, of course, most people may not be accurate perception in ordinary restaurant meals robot, the application of a simple comparison is that public comments, enter room robot, jump out to the content of, in addition to such large chain restaurant haidilao, pizza hut, there are many called the northeast farm small courtyard and XX jiangnan garden restaurant.

In fact, for the same reason that big chains started food delivery robots, regular restaurants need to cut costs and be more efficient, and over the past two years, food delivery robots seem to be able to do just that.

First of all, in terms of service efficiency, in the eyes of the industry, the food delivery efficiency of a food delivery robot is equivalent to 1.5 food deliverers. Typically, a four-tiered food delivery robot can deliver between eight and 24 dishes at a time, and 200 to 300 trays a day, compared to 150 to 200 trays a day for human waiters.

Secondly, from the cost, usually buy a room robots from 10000 to 30000 yuan, the price of food and beverage industry room dishes are mostly piece rate, if be $0.5 per dish, a day, 100 dishes, the cost of a year from 15000 to 16000 yuan, if use the pass-through robot, can recover the cost of 1 to 2 years.

If we rent, the price will be lower. In ordinary restaurants, the salary of a food Courier is about 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 supply of human resources, the human cost is becoming an unbearable burden among the costs of the catering industry.

To make matters worse, restaurant waiters have long been among the top three jobs in short supply, and the shortage of workers around the Spring Festival has also plagued the catering industry. Based on this, the birth of food delivery robots, to a certain extent, to supplement 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.

In recent years, the continuous outbreak of the epidemic and the difficult progress of the real business have made the catering industry constantly realize the importance of reducing costs, and the adoption of food delivery robots can indeed reduce labor costs and ensure service quality. For example, some isolated hotels have reduced the risk of infection by using robots to deliver food.

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

On social media, many consumers have said that the dining experience brought by the food delivery robot is novel and interesting, and many parents will come back to the restaurant again and again because their children like the robot.

03

Will the waiter disappear?

So, does this mean that food delivery robots will replace waiters?

In the eyes of robot companies, the answer is certainly yes, but when it comes to the moment, customers and restaurateurs may prefer humans.

After all, robots are still too thin in terms of service-minded mobility. In addition, there are many things about the food delivery robot that manufacturers have not announced, such as after-sales operation and maintenance, and the service life of the robot, which are all real problems. Unlike mobile phones, they can be sent to the nearby after-sales service center anytime and anywhere.

Even Haidilao, considered a staunch supporter of robot food delivery, has only a few thousand robots deployed in its stores around the world.

For most traditional restaurants, there are more concerns. On the one hand, food delivery robots do have many advantages, but the disadvantages are also very prominent, for example, not all restaurants are suitable for equipped with food delivery robots, fly restaurants can not cover hundreds of square meters.

In this besides, also not be all dining-room at the beginning of the design robot moves line to bring into consideration, the corridor width of 1 meter above and extremely high ground flatness, enough to let most dining-room break idea.

At the same time, there are some restaurants equipped with food delivery robots.

For example, intelligent industry media Zhidong has interviewed some restaurants equipped with food delivery robots. According to a staff member of the restaurant, "During peak hours, the crowded situation will cause obstacles for the robot to move, thus affecting the efficiency of food delivery, so some restaurants leave the robot idle during peak hours, which is the opposite of the original purpose of the robot's development and launch."

In addition, some consumers are also full of resistance. Limited by technology, most food delivery machines have a single function and cannot flexibly respond to guests' needs in addition to welcoming guests, delivering food and ordering food. On social media, many people have suggested that the current food delivery robot experience is more "artificial retarded" than artificial intelligence.

In fact, the current penetration rate of commercial service robots is only 3 percent, and that of food delivery robots is less than 1 percent, according to the China Industry Information Network.

In other words, the food delivery robots at dongbei Local Restaurant are more like mascots than waiters.

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, robots have stepped out of the laboratory and entered the corners of social life in more than half a century.

With the further penetration of intelligence, what role will the robot play in the new era? Some people think that perhaps, the era of co-existence of human and machine in scientific movies will not be far away.

Indeed, as a McKinsey report published last year argues, the post-industrial economy will bring skills transformation and career change on an unprecedented scale. Of these, the early adoption of automation will force 220 million workers to change jobs and cause 516 billion hours to be displaced, while for 330 million migrant workers, 22-40% of their work will be at risk of automation.

From this perspective, the robot food delivery job is in large part just the tip of the iceberg of the robot occupation of business, as the post-industrial economy begins, the situation will be more complicated than we think.

This is no exaggeration. Before food delivery robots, the manufacturing industry had successfully experimented with black-light factories. At the time, Foxconn cut 60,000 jobs after introducing robots.

Today, many people still believe that robots are tools, like the Internet to the real business transformation, is the human from the simple labor liberation - but is the opposite of the vision that the robot of artificial replacement, has never been a half, but from a simple link began eating, until the human is entirely replace.