China’s Country Garden Opens Worlds First Robot Restaurant Complex

Country Garden, a property developer in China, said that its subsidiary Qianxi Robot Catering Group (Qianxi Group) opened a restaurant complex operated completely by robots. Located in Shunde, a city in Guangdong province, the restaurant eliminates most human-to-human contact and may be a blueprint into how restaurants can ‘covid-proof’ their operations in the future. The restaurant complex is 2,000 m2 (22,000 sq. feet), and has 20 robot systems equipped to serve a variety of dishes, including Chinese food, fast food, clay-pot rice and hot pot. The menu has 200 items, but they are available within 20 seconds of ordering and the restaurant can handle 600 diners at once. In the past, restaurants mainly used robots to greet guests or carry orders back to the table but still relied on human chefs. The new restaurant complex removes humans completely from the food production and preparation stages with robots taking over all the tasks.