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| A robot serves lunch boxes at the 62nd Franchise Startup Fair held at COEX in Seoul, in this 2021 file photo. Yonhap |
By Kim Jae-heun
A 34-year-old owner of a French restaurant surnamed Lee recently purchased and installed tablets on all the restaurant's tables, enabling customers to browse the menu and place orders without a waiter.
"It cost between only 200,000 won ($152.10) and 300,000 won to purchase one low-budget tablet, which I think well covers the work of one human server all day long. I don't have to worry about hiring staff. Robots are also the new trend among restaurant owners," Lee said. "Employees are not always punctual ― sometimes they come late, sometimes they don't even show up. Robots, on the other hand, don't have any problems like that."
There are already various devices, machines and robots replacing human workers in restaurants and cafes such as menu-ordering tablets, self-ordering kiosks and server robots. Some major franchise restaurants, like VIPS, even have food preparation robots that cook noodles for multiple customers at once.
As business operation costs increase and robots become more and more commercialized, restaurant owners' preference to rent or purchase automated solutions is growing. It costs only 1 million won to rent a server robot and 14 tablets for a month. With the minimum wage set at 9,620 won per hour, 1 million won only gets a restaurant owner a part-timer for four days a week for one month.
As a benefit to restaurant owners, robots chefs guarantee food quality consistency in addition to relieving owners of labor costs and management of human resources.
U.S. market research firm Research Nester predicted the global restaurant robot market to grow 16.1 percent annually from $86 million in 2019 to $320 million in 2028.
But still there are mixed opinions about fully replacing human staff with robots at restaurants here.
"For old people like me, it is not easy to place an order at a self-ordering kiosk or with a tablet," said an 89-year-old woman surnamed Kim living in Anyang, Gyeonggi Province. "I can't ask the tablet about the food on the menu."
Young customers in their 20s to 40s mostly gave positive feedback.
"The good thing with robots is they don't make mistakes with orders I place. I think they are a good alternative so humans can avoid physically demanding jobs," a 32-year-old office worker surnamed Kim said.
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