Restaurants are turning to technology for everything from answering the phone to stretching pizza dough, but after spending time at the California Restaurant Show, I came away with a somewhat surprising takeaway: most of the technology isn’t really about replacing people.
It’s about making the people who are already there more productive.
That was a theme I heard repeatedly from people at the show, including Ray Villaman with the California Restaurant Association and Paul Pedrow with the California Restaurant Show. Restaurants are dealing with rising labor costs and the constant challenge of finding and keeping good employees, so owners are looking for technology that can handle repetitive tasks and make their existing teams more efficient.
Bear Robotics is tackling one of those jobs with robots that can help run food between the kitchen and tables. Derrick Harmon from Bear Robotics told me the goal is to let restaurant employees spend less time going back and forth and more time focused on customers.
Loman AI is going after another pain point: the phone. Its AI can answer calls, take orders and handle reservations so restaurants don’t miss potential business during busy periods. Ricky Walsh from Loman AI pointed out that even a few missed calls a day can add up over the course of a month.
Pizza is getting plenty of technology too. Peter de Jong from Fiero Group showed me equipment designed to automate parts of the pizza-making process, including a robot that stretches dough and an oven capable of producing up to 200 pizzas an hour. The idea is to make a consistent product without relying as heavily on finding and retaining workers with specialized skills.
One of the more interesting ideas I saw came from Focal. Raj Tilwa showed me the company’s smart electric patio heaters, which let customers control the heat around their own table from a phone or turn it off completely. No more one-size-fits-all patio heater blasting everyone nearby.
And Next Robot is also working on restaurant automation. Nguyen Bui summed up the broader idea well: robots still need people to operate them, develop recipes and decide how they fit into a restaurant’s workflow.
That’s what stuck with me after walking the show floor. Companies like Bear Robotics, Loman AI, Fiero Group, Focal and Next Robot aren’t necessarily trying to remove people from restaurants. They’re trying to take some of the repetitive work off their plates so employees can spend more time on the food and the customers.