Background
T’s Chinese restaurant is a family-owned and operated restaurant, while it is also a truly “paddock to plate” restaurant in Tasmania. Nearly all their ingredients are from their own farm, from seasonal vegetables, to angus beef, Berkshire pork and Dorper lamb. They aim to provide top quality food with organic produce and ingredients.
Because they are based in a small town called Sheffield, it’s always hard to staff the restaurant even before Covid, and now it’s even worse. That’s the main reason they decided to bring the robot to the business.
Implementation
For deployment, we studied the structure of the restaurant. T’s has a significant walking distance between kitchen, dining and takeaway areas, so we decided the best place to deploy the robot is right in the kitchen – to distribute food directly from central to remote areas as a time saver solution for all the services.
We then spent a considerable amount of time drawing restaurant map in detail and adjusting every single table’s arrival point very precisely. After inputting the map into the robot, we did some test runs, and worked with the owners to make sure every setting is acceptable and practicable. We also provided detailed run-down training for the owners. At the end of day, we stayed in the restaurant for a few more hours during their normal trading hours, observing and adjusting the final settings to make it battle-tested. It was a long day of work for our technician, Travel + Setup + Observation&adjustment, a total of 17 hours.
Result
The robot now makes their restaurant process much simpler. When there is a takeaway, the kitchen can prepare the food, and let Bellabot deliver directly to the front counter. The front counter then hands out the takeaway to customers without having to walk back to the kitchen to pick it up.
For dine-in customers, Bellabot can directly carry food to the required tables, and all the customers are surprised to see the bot and pick up their food easily by following Bella’s instructions. Bella also becomes an eye-catching attraction amongst customers. She created such a great atmosphere when she’s appearing, delivering and singing happy birthday song to customers.
The restaurant owners are also very pleased with Bella’s dish return function, which is able to speed up the table turnover time by carrying large loads of dirty dishes back to the kitchen.
In conclusion, the owners are very satisfied with the implementation results. They optimized the workflow and found a reliable worker to do the job. Bella fits in straight away without many adjustments to the restaurant’s existing processes.
Image source: https://www.theadvocate.com.au/story/7589641/sheffield-restaurant-employs-north-wests-first-robot-waiter/