Osaka hosted the 16th edition of the Hoteres Japan trade show this summer, and robot service took center stage. Chinese manufacturer Pudu Robotics and its Japanese subsidiary Ozax showed off their best-known models to restaurant operators wrestling with a familiar problem: finding enough staff.
The most visible example is Skylark, Japan’s largest family restaurant operator. Across its Gusto chain and its Shabuyo hot-pot restaurants, the group now runs around 3,000 BellaBots in more than 2,000 locations. The cat-faced robots carry food to tables of up to four people and clear the dishes once the meal is done.
Skylark has put numbers on the payoff. In a Tokyo trial, staff cut their walking during peak hours in half. A survey across eight pilot restaurants found 67% of customers approved, many of them charmed by watching a purring robot weave between the tables.
What’s new this summer is that the trend has spread beyond the big family chains. Trade outlet SeafoodSource reports that conveyor-belt sushi operators are taking a close look too: wide aisles, flat floors, and predictable traffic make these restaurants close to ideal terrain for a delivery robot.
Picture a sushi counter a few years from now where humans and wheeled machines share the same aisles. One open question: will regulars at a kaiten-zushi spot, where the conveyor belt already does most of the work, see much point in a robot waiter on top of it?