Dive Brief:
- Chick-fil-A is testing autonomous robots in a handful of its restaurant dining rooms, the company confirmed in an email to Restaurant Dive. Business Insider first reported on the test earlier this week.
- The robots deliver food to tables with staff helping refill beverages, clean tables and provide hospitality to guests.
- Chick-fil-A has tested autonomous robots in the past, with a pilot in Austin, Texas, in 2022, and another in Santa Monica, California, a year earlier. These bots were used to deliver orders to customers close to restaurants, rather than inside the restaurant.
Dive Insight:
The fast food chain has been working to improve the guest experience without overburdening staff.
In 2019, Chick-fil-A launched mobile ordering for dine-in guests so they could skip the line and order from a table using the app. Earlier this year, it added geofencing to its app to improve speed of service. The restaurant chain also has adopted the ability to see wait times for orders placed for pickup, curbside and dine-in.
According to Business Insider, at least two robot servers were spotted at Texas restaurants. In one instance captured in a video on LinkedIn, a bot named Wall-E approached a customer’s table and said, “Howdy, please place your table number in the basket.”
These robots appear to be from Bear Robotics, which linked to Business Insider’s article on its website. Last year, Bear Robotics secured an additional $81 million in financing. Its Servi model, also known as Wall-E, can hold two trays, has a payload of 66 pounds and has an eight- to 12-hour battery life, the company claims.
Although several casual chains have tested robot servers, the technology is rarer in the fast food space. Bots have been used at Chili’s, Kura Sushi, Denny’s, California Pizza Kitchen and even independent restaurants. One operator of a small town restaurant in Oregon deployed a robot server after it said it failed to find enough front-of-house staff.
