Will Food Delivery Robots Lay Off Service Workers?

With the repeated outbreak of the epidemic, more restaurants seem to use food delivery robots instead of waiters to deliver meals. To a large extent, food delivery robots have alleviated the problem of difficult recruitment, and can also improve the efficiency of food delivery and attract the attention of diners, which seems to be a big benefit for restaurants.

However, the waiter buddies began to worry about whether they would be replaced by robots in the future.

Why are there more and more food delivery robots?

There are two main aspects to the increase in food delivery robots: First, under the influence of the epidemic, labor has become a major negative factor in the catering industry. The difficulty of recruiting workers is only one aspect. The impact of the epidemic on the daily operations of the catering industry has also made some stores unable to bear the original labor costs.

On the other hand, under the epidemic, contactless food delivery has become more and more the focus of people's attention, and food delivery robots have well avoided the unintentional spread of the epidemic during meals.

Food delivery robots usually have multi-layer trays, and a single-layer tray can load up to 10KG. With the equipped synchronous positioning and map construction system, the positioning accuracy and Stability, to achieve stable and efficient operation in various application scenarios such as restaurants.

Compared with human waiters, food delivery robots are more efficient. Taking the closing and clearing of tables as an example, the food delivery robot can collect tableware from 4-8 tables at a time, which is three times that of manual labor.

At the same time, multi-level collaboration allows multiple machines to collaborate intelligently through the central integration hub in the same working environment, with a high degree of coordination, further improving the efficiency of meal delivery.

According to restaurant usage data, a robot can deliver more than 300 dishes on average every day, and during peak holiday seasons, it can deliver more than 400 dishes in a single day. Compared with a waiter's delivery of about 200 dishes a day, the efficiency of the food delivery robot has reached 1.5 to 2 times that of the waiter.

In addition, food delivery robots have also become the scene of some restaurants. For example, after the introduction of food delivery robots in Haidilao Hotpot, not only the efficiency of food delivery has been improved, but it has also attracted the attention of many diners, and even some diners will specially Because the food delivery robot came to experience.

In addition, at least in Haidilao, the existence of food delivery robots does not replace human services, but frees them from food delivery work, allowing them to have more time to serve other diners.

Robots replacing waiters? too early to say

Although compared with traditional service personnel, food delivery robots have good advantages in terms of efficiency, cost, and hygiene, it is still too early to replace human labor as a whole.

First of all, robot products still have the problem of environmental adaptability. In the process of food delivery, if the guests are not in their seats or the machine fails, it still needs to be combined with human operation to ensure the orderly operation of the restaurant.

In addition, during the peak meal period, the crowded situation will have a significant impact on the movement of the robot and affect the efficiency of meal delivery. Therefore, some restaurants simply idle robots during peak hours.

Secondly, due to the limitations of technology, no matter what price the food delivery robot is at, its functions are relatively simple, and it can only achieve limited functions such as welcoming guests, ordering meals, and delivering meals. If more user-friendly functions can be added in the future development process, I believe that food delivery robots will be more popular.

According to the data of 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%. It can be seen that the popularity of robots in the catering industry is still far away.

As a tool for auxiliary work, robots can undertake repetitive and basic labor, liberate service personnel from complicated labor in the past, and allow staff to undertake tasks that require communication and are more difficult to operate. This way of use may be a more suitable mode of human-machine collaboration.