In this excellent post ‘The New Top Chef‘ Alex Tabarrok explains how “During the pandemic a pasta restaurant launched on UberEats in Paris. Cala quickly attracted a top 1% rating for it’s high quality to price ratio. Only now has it been revealed that the chef is a robot“.
This was actually a startup hidden behind the storefront, conducting a real blind experiment to prove its concept. This saves a bit on labour and also mainly on real estate as mentioned in this article: ““With three metres squared, we can serve 1.2k meals an hour,” says Richard. “A traditional McDonald’s restaurant is 125m2, and usually they can serve 550 meals an hour.”
This gives a glimpse of a future where the preparation of common food will increasingly be automated to support delivery or on-the-spot consumption, while competition between restaurants will be increasingly on fancy food and great atmosphere. The price gap between various options can be expected increase, while labour will move from burger-flipping to service and delivery.
The advent of robot-chefs is just a visible change that automatization will bring to our daily lives. Are you ready for it?
