The Timbre Group in Singapore is experimenting with using drones as servers in restaurants.
It’s a drone world, and the unmanned aircraft is no longer just being used by the military — the food and beverage sector in some parts of Asia is starting to use the flying machines to deliver products to customers.
A restaurant group in Singapore is taking its well-oiled machine of a business to the next level by using drones to deliver orders to guests, replacing wait staff with aerial robots.
The Timbre Group — a food and entertainment company in Singapore — recently partnered with drone manufacturer Infinium Robotics to use flying aircraft to take food and drinks from the kitchen and bar areas to restaurant patrons at five of its venues.
The reason for such high-tech transition, in large part, has to do with a labor shortage in the country.
“Singapore has faced an acute manpower shortage, due to tighter immigration and foreign worker policies. The fertility rate is also below its replacement rate of 2.1, which means the indigenous population will fall over time, resulting in less workers in the future, if the immigration policy remains tight,” a company spokesman said in an email.
Therefore, the company saw a need to improve the “manpower situation.”
“As the [food and beverage] industry is one of the most labor-intensive industries, we decided that that was where we would start to introduce autonomous robots to improve productivity,” the company stated.
Timbre introduced the drones to one of its venues earlier this year, launching a big media event where the unmanned aircraft took flight, buzzing across the restaurant to deliver purchases to customer. A drone can hold up to four pounds of weight, which equals a large plate of food or a couple of pints of beer.
The drone flies high enough so that it doesn’t bop people in the head, and it has screens around the flying blades so restaurant goers don’t get hurt.
U.S. POTENTIAL
“It’s pretty amazing,” said Chris Bigelow, president of The Bigelow Companies, a food serving consulting business based in Kansas City, Mo. “I give them credit for trying.”
Bigelow is unsure how his clients in the United States would embrace the idea of using drones to replace servers, but he found the idea amusing. He also said that kids would love seeing drones fly around venues and restaurants. But, he also has concerns.
“I guess the cynic in me would see everyone grabbing that drone and trying to take it home with them,” he said. When it comes to big-event venues, such as sports games at stadiums, drones potentially could be used to deliver hot dogs to people down the rows.
“It’s no different than passing the food down,” Bigelow said. “I think it’s interesting. It’s probably not that much different than the whole conveyer belt thing with sushi. The more I look at it, the more I’m intrigued.”
The Singapore Expo Convention and Exhibition Centre is well aware of the Timbre Group using drones for food and beverage service, but it currently has no plans to purchase the unmanned aerial vehicles.
Infinium Robotics designs all kinds of drones, and the Singapore-based tech company saw a need to introduce its product to the restaurant sector. The company calls the creation Infinium Serve.
“Such futuristic technology is certainly a boon to labor-constrained societies like in Singapore where skilled waiting staff are hard to come by,” the company said in a press release. Infinium CEO Woon Junyang said with the mundane task of delivery from kitchen to the dining area substituted by his robots, and waiters could focus on actual food service and interacting with customers.”
REDUCING STAFF SIZE
While robots don’t completely replace wait staff, they do shrink the number of servers at Timbre Group’s venues by half. For example, rather than having six servers work a shift, the company instead slashes the food runners and deploys drones to deliver the food.
A server stands by the table and takes the food or beverage off the drone and hand delivers it to the customer. The restaurant has mini drone tables throughout the venue that they land on. Their flight patterns are preprogrammed. The idea is that the guest will have a better dining experience — not to mention they get to watch drones fly across the venue, which is entertaining in itself.
“With Infinium Serve robots, waiters will be able to devote time and attention to interact with the customer. The robots will bring the food from the kitchen to the dining area and waiters will just need to wait for the food to ‘arrive in style’ before taking the food from the robots and serving it to the customers at the table,” Junyang said in a statement. “This is achieved without the waiters leaving the dining area at all, thereby increasing the interaction time between the waiters and the customers. The waiters will also always remain in sight of the customers, to be ready to attend to customers’ every need — no more ‘disappearing’ into the kitchen to collect the food.”
Infinium has only worked with Timbre Group, but it’s looking to expand, said Jennifer Tennant, PR manager for Ming, KH & Associates, the company that’s representing Infinium Robotics.
There are glitches in the process to be worked out. Although Timbre Group has purchased the drones, they have not been fully deployed for service, said Seow Yee, a representative from Timbre, who spoke on behalf of Timbre Group’s managing director, Edward Chia.
“They will only be operationally ready by the end of this year,” Yee said in an email. “So far, we have received encouraging responses from the public in general since the news broke.”
Although no one really knows how successful replacing human service with drones will be in the future, one thing is clear — it’s being tested and an influx of unmanned aerial vehicles is a ripe market.
The goal for the Timbre Group and Infinium Robotics is to tap into the market and make it work to both companies’ advantage.
“This will result in an enhanced dining experience which will eventually lead to increased sales and revenue for the restaurants as well as heightened morale of the staff,” Junyang said in a statement.
Interviewed for this story: Seow Yee sy.low@timbregroup.asia; Jennifer Tennant, 03-2330 1550; Chris Bigelow, (816) 985-5326; Stephanie Ngooi, +65 64032168.