Robot restaurants in China: Hotpot made by robots

Hotpot robot restaurants in China have arrived to take over.

Haidilao, a quality chain of Chinese restaurants, known for fresh ingredients, high quality, and service,  has furnished one of their restaurants in Beijing with an automated cold room with robotic arms and servers. The aim is operating 5000 robot restaurants worldwide. The robots are in town and they are not to be taken lightly.

Automation will help improve kitchen efficiency for menial tasks, is the explanation. Big savings another?

haidilao-robot-restaurant

Haidilao-robot-restaurant

But what is hotpot food?

Hotpot is a Chinese cooking method, prepared with a simmering pot of soup stock at the dining table, containing a variety of East Asian foods and ingredients. While the hot pot is kept simmering, ingredients are placed into the pot and are cooked at the table. Typical hot pot dishes include thinly sliced meat, leafy vegetables, mushrooms, wontons, egg dumplings, tofu, and seafood. The cooked food is typically eaten with a dipping sauce. Bon appetite!

Back to the robots for Haidilao hotpot restaurants

Haidilao has a huge market cap.  as one the largest restaurant chains after a recent IPO in Hong Kong, so it makes good sense to use the newest tech to reduce expenses for salaries for electricity and by using cameras showing the guests, that all is clean and safe. Here is what they do.

The robot kitchen secures a higher level of quality and transparency for the guests: What is in the pot is answered by viewing the screens in the restaurant.

In addition to many locations in China, Haidilao (the name is a lucky Mahjong term)  has restaurants in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan. The first US outlet opened in California in September 2013 and has spread ever since.

Yelp reviews of Haidilao here 

Now waiters are also replaced in a quest to grow to 5.000 restaurants worldwide

It was disclosed in Oct 2018 that in the hotpot restaurants, robots are replacing chefs and waiters now and in the near future on a larger scale.

hotpot china

Hotpot food China, made the traditional way

Asia’s biggest listed restaurant chain by market value is partnering with Japan’s Panasonic Corp. to open what the two companies say is the world’s first eatery with a fully automated kitchen Oct. 28 in Beijing. At the new Haidilao restaurant, robots will take orders, prepare and deliver raw meat and fresh vegetables to customers to plop into soups prepared at their tables.

Food robot restaurants as viewed by Panasonic

The robot-run kitchen was a project between Haidilao and Japanese electronics giant Panasonic, according to Haidilao. The South China Morning Post, who tasted the new way of cooking, “saw how the soup base, originally packaged separately and mixed in the pot by humans, is now prepared by robots, who can cater to individual tastes and specific requirements with machine-like precision, each and every time. Your favorite soup base recipe and a special combination of spices, various oil and key ingredients are automatically documented and uploaded into the cloud.”

So if you want to be the first mover regarding the robot food scene, Haidilao is the place to go.

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