A Chinese Hot Pot Restaurant Has Robots Operate Its Soup Chef

A Chinese Hot Pot chain is having part of it automated as the kitchen is now unmanned. The restaurant’s most common dishes are now prepared by robotic arms instead of human staff. The system manages everything from cooking, minimizing food waste to tracking the expiration date of all the ingredients.

Haidilao, the restaurant in question, is most famous for its Szechuan hot pot. It also has good services apart from the well-cooked foods.

This project is a joined effort of the restaurant with Panasonic. The kitchen is controlled by AI and when food is ready, six other robots are there to bring it to diners.

However, machines do not take over the whole restaurant though. 150 staffs are at the serving area helping diners order and carry food around.

Haidilao hopes that they will be able to decrease the amount of human involvement in the future. According to Shao Zhidong, the restaurant’s chief information officer, they plan to keep that number of employees at 130 to 140 instead of 170. Haidilao still needs the presence of human to maintain its operation. Machines can support the logistic step, which happens before the food reaches the table, but when it does, the serving step still requires the dexterity of a human.

Diners’ personal preference can be fulfilled by the robotic kitchen and that kind of information is stored so that when they come back, Haidilao can provide quicker service.

Robots are able to keep a clean workspace, which helps Haidilao shows people that there is no rat in their kitchen as rumor suggests.

As the system can measure the hot pot’s weight to adjust the heat, the restaurant expects to save about 10% of its electricity consumption.  Before this automated kitchen is tested, each restaurant in this chain has to pay about 200,000 yuan ($30,000) for electricity per month. So cutting the cost by 10% will lead to a large rise in cash flow.

New automated restaurants will be opened in Beijing in the near future.