Cradle of Cantonese cuisine welcomes "robot restaurant complex"

>>my noodle soup and toast was already ready.

This is easy, just a matter of plating. They probably have a very limited menu (serves 95% just fine) and the rest if just perfecting the system little by little

You don't see behind the scenes, but the sacrifices of quality for speed are very apparent if you eat it all the time.

Its not just Chinese. Same applies for restaurants / local fast food places in India. They're lightning fast. If you're used to the pace of service in US, your mind will be blown when you travel to Asia.

It's the same in Vietnam. They will have like 10 people crammed into a tiny Church's Chicken = Texas Chicken kitchen, but wow are they fast.

Did a trip through a bunch of East Asian countries once, the level of attentiveness and speed from service workers there is light and day compared to the US. Waiting for a cashier to finish chit chatting before spinning up their brain cells over a few minutes trying to work the cash register buttons just doesn't happen. The implications are disturbing though. Either East Asian service workers just have so much pride and drive in their minimum wage jobs that they're willing to work at 100% focus when they're on the clock, or there are so many warm bodies ready to take their jobs that only people who can work at 100% stay hired. I bet that's a big driving factor in why so many people in Asia want to emigrate to the US. When you grow up in a sea of competition like that, a place where you can work at 70% instead of 120% and still be considered a top worker probably looks like paradise.

> if China now becomes a leader at robotics

How was this ever not going to be the case? Robotics will go wherever the manufacturing is. Where else would roboticists get practical real world experience, other than in factories? Obviously there's plenty of robotic manufacturing in America still, but there's clearly no shortage of opportunity in it for China either.

The assumption that America would have the best robotics which would force manufacturing to come back to America seems rooted in little more than wishful thinking.

You remember that whole story about the cannon launcher competition where one team tries to take the meticulous approach of calculating the trajectory arc needed to hit the target, while the other team starts shooting and readjusts as they go?

Or the one about the art class where one team meticulously plans things out and produces some unfinished shoddy work, while the other team keeps churning out bad pieces but eventually starts churning out good pieces in volume?

Well, at 1.4 billion people, China can most certainly keep churning out bad pieces and readjusting, and they will get much better, much faster than a lot of other countries would.

That it's 2020 and they still aren't seen as the leader of the world in everything has historic roots that have bred a lot of resentment in China towards the West. In particular, the meddling of US in China's affairs.

But the pendulum is swinging. Let's see what happens next.

Have you been in a working kitchen? I've only been in one (a couple of times) and it was the smallest, hottest, least ventilated place I've ever been. While it might not be a transmission vector for customers, it's _definiely_ a high risk enviroent for the staff. Particularly if they interact with wait staff who interact with customers.

To me, it looks like food preparation is a huge vector.

"Just hours after reimposing the lockdown in Gütersloh, a district with some 360,000 people in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), the state officials now reintroduced restrictions in the nearby area of Warendorf and its 278,000 residents.

[...]

after over 1,500 workers at a meat processing plant tested positive"

https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-hotspots-flare-in-europe-a...

> 2.4B RMB (USD$33.5M) Should be either USD$335M or 240M RMB, no?

Anyway, I wonder whether software development for robot can utilize open-source platform, or does it need proprietary software exclusively?

Also, how configurable these robots for different or new menu?

I’ve been around HN for a while (on a new account) and these are the HN comments I miss. Welcome back contingencies!

If you mean online-only ghost kitchens, they sure do work (even without automation). They already exist today (I believe former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has a ghost kitchen venture).

Right now, most ghost kitchens have one major shortcoming: they lack a compelling narrative. Restaurants don't just sell food -- they sell a story, a distinction. They sell a distinct style of ramen or pizza or pasta because the chef brings their culture and training to the product. Standard markup gets you margins, but a compelling story coupled with good execution adds a premium.

In this regard, pure-play ghost kitchen food feels empty and generic. There's no story or flair behind it, just a factory production line. For the "food as fuel" demographic -- this doesn't matter. Food is food, pizza or pasta is the same anywhere. For people who believe "food is culture" -- this matters a lot. I'm not going to order pizza from a generic Grubhub place named "Sam's Pizza".

One way around this is perhaps to have restaurants with pre-existing narratives to lend their name/brand and process to a ghost kitchen operation. The Filipino chicken chain Jollibees -- which has name recognition -- is trying this out, so we'll see.

There's little if any evidence to support fear of Corona transmission through food. You get corona by breathing it, not eating it. Restaurants have taken a hit because their dining areas are dangerous, not their kitchens (not to the consumer anyway, the employees are a hazard to each other.) I've been eating 7-11 hotdogs this entire time in a city that's been locked down for months; they never stopped food prep because there's really little reason to stop it.

For that matter, our world has been "post-pandemic" for longer than recorded history. It's not even the first pandemic in the modern era.

Huh. I kinda assumed they already were.

(I’m imagining instant noodles, many baked goods, and sandwiches).

The economics of this might be interesting.

Say they are only targeting to make $1 per meal.

And they’re opened for 14 hours a day, 10 am to 12 am midnight. And say they’re always operating at full capacity. And each table has a 45 minute window between turnovers, so you eat your meal in 45 minutes. So you’ve got about 18 rotations throughout your day. And assume the 600 seats are always optimally filled.

Then, 18 x $600 = $10,800/day

Then, in a year, this could theoretically become: $3.94 million/year.

You could always adjust your numbers, like if they target $2 in profit per meal, then this could theoretically be $7.9 million/year.

Then, at these rates, the initial capital outlay for these robots, might just be worthwhile. Say, you spend $1 million for the robots and machinery, then, it would take 3 months to recover that cost.

Of course, you also have to factor in other costs like the front workers, cleaners, security, and dish washers (unless they have a robot for that too).

But at least you don’t have to pay for a cook anymore. But you will have to pay for a Quality Assurance guy to watch the robots.

And most people prefer to eat during the lunch and dinner rush, so you won’t get to hit the full theoretical operating capacity, thus limiting your profits. But you can try to make more in profit per visitor instead.