Eatsa, a fully automated restaurant, opens today

> there is a team of about five or six back-of-house kitchen staff (or as I like to imagine, magical elves) who are hidden from view and prepare the food. There’s also one attendant on hand to help the tech challenged.

So no, it isn't fully automated. Just the front staff. That's not nearly as interesting, and the headline is intentionally misleading.

In 1964 my parents took me to a restaurant in New York called an Automat (see http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/06/17/revisiting-the-...). It had a wall with little windowed doors that would open for a few coins. Inside were dishes of food that one could take to your own table.

Off topic aside: we were in New York to go to the 1964 World's Fair. All I remember of that was the IBM pavilion. There I wrote handwritten digits on a card (in little boxes) that a machine read and printed out. Even then I was fascinated with computers.

>As it’s all automated, be aware that the restaurant only accepts credit cards. No cash.

I understand the allure of credit cards for their target marker, but has the author not heard of vending machines, ATMs, and other automated cash handling systems already in place? Those need regular maintenance, to be fair, but considering there's a regular staff of cooks that wouldn't be a problem.

Not exactly a new concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart

So for those of us on the east coast, this is what Wawa has been doing for years now. Except now you can't mill around watching them prepare your food.

This vaguely reminds me of a "restaurant" I ended up at in an industrial area in France while staying near the airport for a flight the next day. The entire place consisted of one wall of frozen foods and another wall of microwaves. Not completely automated but pretty minimal human involvement since you had to microwave your own food.

So 'fully automated' means 'partially automated', i.e. just the order-takers are missing. Still a kitchen; still busboys; still hand-made food delivered to a cubby with your name on it.

I guess 'fully automated' means 'lousy service' now.

This is a pretty common thing -- except the glass door cubby hole thing that your food gets put in. You find in a lot of Taiwanese restaurants machines at your table for ordering, requesting things like water and utensils, etc. Yes they have people who bring these things out to you, but otherwise it doesn't sound too different. What's new here? If it was machines preparing the food the title might be more deserved.

San Francisco plans to raise its minimum wage to $15 in a couple of years. Expect to see more businesses that follow this model.

Considering the recent troubles with Listeria Blue Bell had I would be very worried if all the food was automatically prepared. I don't think we're there yet food-safety-wise; can a machine detect and clean foreign object contamination, yet? Probably not.