At Chicago-based Wow Bao, you can already order your steamed buns via its app or an on-
site kiosk. But with Eatsa's tech, you'll also be able to collect your meal from an LED-lit cubbyhole displaying your name. Text appearing on the front of the cubby, one amid a larger array, will tell you when your order is cooking and when you can double-tap on the box to collect your food.
It's a quick turnaround for Eatsa, which only a couple weeks ago announced the closing of five of its seven restaurants across the country. The company has now switched its focus to offering automated tech as a platform to other restaurants such as Wow Bao.
A combination of artificial intelligence, personal screens, robotics and -- perhaps most crucially -- the willingness of hungry customers to skip human interaction is coming at the right time to make Eatsa's shift possible. It's part of a slow creep of technology that's transforming our experiences of dining out, and even dining in, thanks to advances in delivery tech.
Eatsa's concept might seem exotic today, but Neil Stern, senior partner at retail consulting firm McMillan Doolittle, said we can expect to see more of this kind of tech popping up. "Does it make sense to hide assembly of orders and deliver via a cubicle?" he said. "Maybe not. But Eatsa does present a vision of the future that will be copied or enhanced." https://www.cnet.com/news/eatsa-robot-restaurant-tech-launches-at-wow-bao/
