Robot barista serves in US cafe
San Francisco’s dual infatuations: artisanal coffee and automated tech
SAN FRANCISCO — As Katy Franco waited for her morning coffee, passersby pulled out their phones and snapped photos and video of her barista.
A man in his 20s did a double take, recorded the scene on his iPhone and posted it to Instagram. Another woman drifted toward the barista and asked no one in particular: “What’s going on here?”
Franco’s barista was a robot. It’s part of an automated coffee shop called Cafe X — the latest example of the San Francisco’s dual infatuations: artisanal coffee and automated technology.
“It’s incredibly convenient,” said Franco, who has used Cafe X twice since it opened at the end of January. “And the coffee is really good too.”
Moments earlier, Franco had ordered her coffee using the Cafe X mobile app. Now a white robotic arm, the same kind used in car manufacturing facilities, was moving around a paper cup, pushing on syrup levers and brewing her a hot cup of coffee.
“I prefer this because you don’t have to wait,” said Franco, whose coffee was made in less than a minute. “It even accepts PayPal.”
Comments like Franco’s ring as validation to Henry Hu’s ears. Hu, a 23-year-old college dropout who founded Cafe X, envisioned his coffee kiosk as the answer to long waits at coffee shops: a well-made cup of coffee delivered quickly, efficiently and at a relatively low cost. A flat white at Cafe X is $2.95, compared with $3.75 at Starbucks — no tip required.
On the speed front, Cafe X can make a hot espresso beverage in less than a minute and is able to pump out 120 coffee drinks in an hour. A Cafe X kiosk can occupy as little as 50 square feet, although its footprint in San Francisco’s Metreon shopping mall is a little over 100 square feet and was most recently home to another automated tenant: a Bank of America ATM.
Encased in plexiglass, the kiosk contains two coffee machines equipped to brew Americanos, espressos, cappuccinos, lattes and flat whites. Customers can order their drink from the Cafe X mobile app or at one of two iPads mounted outside the kiosk. The entire transaction is cashless, and customers even get a notification on their phone when their coffee is ready.
“It’s similar to calling an Uber,” said Hu, who sees his kiosk as filling a void. “It’s for people who want a grab and go coffee, who want consistency.”
Tech investors have started dipping their toes in the food industry, backing the meal replacement startup Soylent, the fake meat firm Impossible Foods and specialty coffee roaster Blue Bottle, among others. Cafe X is raising cash from those who seek a confluence of the familiar (technology) and the new (food).
In addition to securing a $100,000 Thiel Fellowship last year (a grant awarded by PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel’s foundation to college dropouts who want to form their own companies), Hu has raised $5 million in venture capital to expand Cafe X to more locations. His 12-person startup built the first Cafe X kiosk in Hong Kong last year. The second kiosk — and the first in the United States — sits across from an AMC ticket counter inside the Metreon.
“People, millennials in particular, don’t want to wait in line,” said Ben Ling, an investor from Khosla Ventures, whose firm has also invested in the automated San Francisco quinoa restaurant Eatsa. “Cafe X really solves that problem of the ordering efficiency. From a user perspective, it’s vastly superior.”
Automation helps keep costs low for business owners, which in turn makes products and services more affordable for consumers, Ling said. That’s why automation — particularly in the food service and hospitality industries — seems inevitable.
Self-driving cars are already being tested on U.S. roads. Manufacturing facilities and warehouses have already automated entire professions. And while a multipurpose robot that can do everything that a waiter or chef can do is still a ways off, artificial intelligence and industrial robotics have advanced to the level where they can begin chipping away at the more menial parts of a food service job.
“Anything that has highly repetitive tasks that don’t require judgment is suitable to be automated,” Ling said.
With job loss a top issue in today’s political environment, a coffee shop that does away with baristas or a lunch spot that does away with wait staff could be a reason for outrage. But Eatsa has so far been a hit with office workers in San Francisco’s Financial District. And in its first weeks of operation, Cafe X has drawn fast-moving lines and curious crowds who snap photos and videos of the kiosk.