Let's Talk About the Drawbacks of Unmanned Restaurants
Let China keep their automated restaurants. We don't want them here.
I like the Nielsen Norman Group, so this post is meant as no slight to them. They just happen to be the ones to publish this study on the user experience of unmanned restaurants in China. Of course, it got me thinking about how we continue to dehumanize our lives by automating the wrong things.
You can watch the 5-minute summary of the research and results if you’re interested here:
What Is an Unmanned Restaurant?
In the video, the research assistant explains what no-staff restaurant service looks like in China.
The only thing is, it’s not really no-staff service. It’s just that the customers have the perception of there being no staff. Sort of.
Here’s how it works:
Customers enter the establishment and a staff member tells them to use the automated services.
Customers sit down at their table.
One of the customers at the table scans the QR code on their smartphone.
Only one person can actually place the order. So the phone needs to get passed around so that everyone can choose what they want to eat and then they input the order on that one phone.
Depending on the restaurant, customers can customize their orders at the time of ordering. If they run into issues, a staff member will help them out.
They submit the order and pay through their phone.
The food is then delivered via delivery tracks, a conveyor belt, or a robot. It’s the customers’ responsibility to identify their order and lift it from the robotic server.
China isn’t the only place with unmanned restaurants. As the research assistant explains in the video, there are some restaurants where this has been trialed in the U.S.
Do Unmanned Restaurants Provide Any Benefits?
I went to one of these “unmanned” restaurants in Orlando last year. It’s called U & Me Revolving Hot Pot. The experience was eh.
There was one employee we interacted with throughout the evening and it was whenever we couldn’t figure out how to “do” the unmanned dining thing correctly. And to order our drinks. Because apparently robots can’t handle drinks.
I gotta say, I didn’t enjoy the experience. Anytime we asked the employee for help, she acted super annoyed. Like how dare we need or expect human assistance.
It also didn’t help that she was wearing a super thick mask and her voice sounded like molasses on top of her accent. So we constantly asked her to repeat herself.
Now, according to the NNGroup’s research assistant, there are two benefits to unmanned restaurants:
Convenience and efficiency: Since customers do all the work, wait times are reduced.
Minimal social interaction: Again, since customers do all the work, there’s no waiter to come and interrupt their experience.
I actually wonder if there’s any data on the first point. While servers who are in the weeds can certainly slow down the pace of a restaurant, I think the bigger issue is the weeds itself.
Restaurants don’t get crazy backed up because someone is so incompetent that they can’t handle two tables. It happens because the entire restaurant is drowning all at once.
If you’ve never worked in a restaurant, here’s what’s going on behind the scenes:
Guests are pouring through the doors.
Hosts are begging bussers to clear off tables.
Bartenders are backed up because customers waiting for tables have exponentially increased their workload.
Servers are waiting in line to input their orders (if they don’t have one of those ordering tablets, that is).
And the kitchen… That poor kitchen. Not only do they have to make all of that food, but the different stations have to sync up in order to get each table’s orders out at the same time.
So when the assistant claims that wait times are reduced, I don’t know how accurate that is. Perhaps for fast food joints that are accustomed to high volumes of simultaneous orders. But what about restaurants that provide sit-down service? No amount of ordering automation can prevent that type of restaurant from entering the weeds.
As for the second so-called benefit, I’ll touch on that in the next section.
The Drawbacks of Unmanned Restaurants Are Much Worse Than They Want to Talk About
The NNGroup’s assistant tackles the drawbacks of unmanned restaurants. Here are the cons she gave:
Insufficient customization: Many of these online ordering systems aren’t capable of handling extensive customization. In some cases, they can’t handle any at all.
One QR code per table: Because the table has to use a single QR code, the ordering and payment process becomes a real hassle for customers. This becomes further aggravated with larger groups of diners.
Systematic glitches: Oftentimes the ordering app isn’t synced with real-time kitchen status. So customers may order dishes that are 86’ed (out of stock), which forces a staff member to interact with them to resolve the issue.
The focus here is on the technology since that’s what NNGroup is all about — how to create better digital user experiences. So I get that. However, I don’t think this list of drawbacks goes far enough.
Here are my personal list of drawbacks and grievances with the unmanned dining concept:
Minimal Social Interaction
Sure, there are customers who don’t want to be interrupted by a server while they’re eating or talking with their dining companions. However, that’s not the only thing we lose when we automate the serving experience.
Let me ask you: Why is it that you go out to eat? Probably so you don’t have to be the one to cook that meal first and foremost. But you also actively chose to go out rather than order in. So I’m willing to guess that the experience at a restaurant matters, too.
There’s something about a really great dining experience that sticks with you. Friendly service. Well-paced courses. Comfortable seating and atmosphere. Lively conversation going on around you. Perhaps some good music playing in the background. And you might also have a great view for people watching.
When you take away things like the servers and other staff interacting with tables or the sounds and views of the kitchen working hard on your meal, you lose something from the experience.
In the beginning, you might be entranced by the little robot people tending to you or the track your food gets delivered on, but the allure will fade with every unmanned dining experience you go to. And then what will you be left with?
Exclusivity
This isn’t exclusivity in the sense of the left’s obsession with inclusivity and identity politics. This is about what an automated restaurant does to exclude people who aren’t tech-savvy or even tech-equipped.
With the way this is set up, these restaurants will exclude people who:
Don’t own smartphones
Didn’t bring their smartphones with them
Don’t know how a QR code works
Aren’t comfortable paying for things online
Aren’t generally tech-savvy
While the concept of an unmanned restaurant will likely attract people on the younger and more tech-savvy scale, that doesn’t make this inaccessibility okay. Because once restaurateurs and franchisors get a whiff of how successful (i.e. profitable) unmanned restaurants have been for others, this concept will spread. It will be like self checkouts at retail stores.
I can’t tell you the last time I went to Target and saw more than one cash register open. And the cashier is usually bored out of their mind. Who is it that is willing to wait in line? Older people, people who’ve done like 6 months’ worth of shopping, and me. Because I refuse to use self checkouts.
If inflation continues to worsen and we enter a severe depression, many restaurateurs are going to be looking for a way to survive. And I worry that automated dining will look pretty attractive to them then if it hasn’t already.
Financial Security Risks
I was hoping I had a picture of the server robot we had at the hot pot place, but I don’t. The closest thing is this photo I pulled off the TripAdvisor page:
This little guy is the one who ushered us to our seat. I was actually sitting right where the guy with the black tee shirt is sitting.
The concept for this particular restaurant was interesting. A conveyor belt ran around our tables carrying all sorts of veggies and beans to put in the hot pot. There was also a table where we could get raw meats and seafood from. So there was nothing to order from a QR code menu. As such, there was no online ordering platform to pay through.
So this giant ass robot came on through (different from the little dude above) and played a song to let you know when it was time to pay. The only thing is that it was really loud and we couldn’t hear the song all that well. Nor could we tell that it was waiting for us since it wasn’t positioned next to the table.
Eventually, we discovered that the robot wanted us to pay. I think it had scrolling words on its face or something.
Anywho, this wasn’t some sophisticated payment processing robot. It had this big gap in the middle of it where we were supposed to place our money. We were not happy about that. It’s not like we were putting our payment methods in a secure drawer or anything like that. We were just putting it out in the open on a robot.
Eventually, a staff member stuck his head up from the other side of the divider and yelled at us to pay. There was a time limit we were allowed to sit there and I guess we were pushing it.
We yelled back that we wanted to give our cards to someone. Nope. He shook his head and pointed angrily at the robot. You better believe that I watched where that machine went and to ensure that no one snagged our cards along the way.
I can’t imagine we were the only customers with that concern.
Final Thoughts
There are a lot of things that we import from China. They’re not typically the highest quality nor are they all that trustworthy.
So why would anyone look to remodel our restaurant concepts after theirs? Is the tradeoff really worth it?
Supposedly, it’ll be more convenient and efficient with customers and they’ll enjoy not interacting with servers. I’m sure some restaurants will rake in big profits — mainly ones who already operate fast food concepts that are mostly dehumanized and automated.
But what do the rest of us get? For instance, if they’re cutting costs with fewer staff members, will the cost savings be passed down to diners who’ve been paying insane prices since C19? Or can they at least promise us better, more consistent quality of food?
The fact is, they want to turn restaurant diners into "users". The restaurant dining experience isn’t something you can just strip the humanity out of and expect people to applaud because it’s become oh so convenient. Perhaps some awful people will applaud it. But there are plenty of us who dine out because of how social and lively the experience feels.
It seems to me like we’re moving in the wrong direction with technology. As usual. Let’s hope that this concept of the unmanned restaurant stays in China and the hype around it here in the States dies out. We don’t need to cause any more harm to the restaurant industry nor do we need to dehumanize an experience that so many of us truly enjoy for the human aspect of it.