How one Dallas restaurant is fighting the labor crisis: robots
The newest employees at La Duni in Dallas are quick on their feet and very polite. One even said: “I love you, you are so beautiful” after giving birth.
Meet Alexcita, Panchita and Coqueta, La Duni’s restaurant robots.
All La Duni robots have personalities. Customers “don’t really see them as machines. It’s really a tablet on wheels,” says Taco Borga, co-owner of La Duni. “Somehow, with their personality and the service they provide, they hug them like a living being.”(Elias Valverde II / employee photographer)
“Customers treat them like pets. You hug them, you talk to them, ”says Taco Borga, co-owner of the restaurant. The robots are programmed to flirt with customers, and Panchita even sings “Happy Birthday” when prompted. Borga was born in Spain and his robots speak Spanish but can be programmed to speak up to 12 languages.
While the robots are partly a stunt – a way to power the McKinney Avenue restaurant that has been selling Latin American food and bespoke cakes for 20 years – they offer significant cost savings, according to Borga. Each Borga robot costs $ 8-10 a day. They replace at least two full-time runners for food or drink and a hostess who would each pay Borga at least $ 10 an hour.
That’s hundreds of dollars a day in savings and thousands a month.
“This is more than a salvation,” says Borga. It’s a necessity: it closed four La Duni restaurants on March 16, 2020, the day the dining rooms first closed in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.
This is how the robots work
The robots are trained to do jobs “that nobody wants to do,” says Borga.
Panchita and Alexcita deliver food and drink by quietly closing the aisles of the restaurant while customers sit nearby and eat. A server continues to accompany the robot and serves the food or drinks from the shelves of the robot. But now that server can hold three times as many tables, Borga says – and make more money by tipping.
Servers “spend less time on repetitive tasks,” he says.
While two of his robots are trained to deliver food and drinks, other robots can be programmed to sweep or collect dishes. Borga’s third robot, Coqueta, is a hostess who rolls through the restaurant and accompanies guests to their tables. That leaves a human hostess at the front of the restaurant doing jobs Coqueta can’t: reassuring new customers when there is a wait, answering phones, and looking for tables that have just been cleaned and ready for new guests.
The robots are programmed by the Plano-based company American Robotech. Co-founders Jackie and Celine Chen have delivered 30 robots to companies in North Texas since early 2021 – and their focus is particularly on restaurant robots.
It goes down: Bushi Bushi, a dim sum restaurant in Addison, uses American Robotech robots. Likewise Haidilao Hot Pot in Frisco, Taqueria Los Angeles in Richardson and Layered in McKinney. Even Pizza Hut, based in Plano, tested another company’s delivery robot.
The Chen’s robots can be purchased for $ 10,800 to $ 16,800, depending on their size and skills. Monthly leases start at $ 499 per month. The robots are made in China by a company called Pudu.
Borga was most impressed with how quickly he could get, program, and use a robot. The American Robotech team built it up in an hour: that’s 40 to 80 times faster than it takes to fully train a new foodrunner or hostess.
But: will robots replace humans?
La Duni is one of hundreds of North Texas restaurants affected by a labor crisis that has exposed difficulties in the industry. Restaurant owners had to raise hourly wages to attract the shrinking workforce.
The co-owner of La Duni, Taco Borga, on the left, tells the story of a woman who saw his robots on social media and wanted to bring her children “if the robots work today”. He smiles, “I said, ‘Miss, let me explain one thing to you: the whole thing about a robot is that it works around the clock.’ … As long as we have electricity, the robots will work. “(Elias Valverde II / employee photographer)
Borga avoids a lot by using robots instead: They always show up, he says. And they are a lot cheaper.
“It had gotten so bad that we had to close sections because I didn’t have a server to process them,” says Borga. “My terrace is currently closed [for that reason],” he says.
He says robots will never completely replace the servers at La Duni. He believes that a full-service restaurant like his, which sells empanadas, cochinita pibil, and carne asada, always needs compassionate people to serve guests.
Waley Shen, American Robotech’s chief operations officer, agrees: “Robots can only help people, not replace us,” he says.
But one day customers could also order food online while sitting at a table at La Duni. Then a human waiter would make sure they are happy while a human cook prepares the food. Robots would do the intermediate tasks.
In late 2021, Borga plans to use Kiwibot robots to deliver groceries to households and businesses within 1.5 miles of McKinney Avenue restaurant. The robots would roll down the sidewalks, La Duni’s food in an insulated compartment so it would stay warm until it got to the customer.
That would be a sight, wouldn’t it? Robots whiz down the sidewalks of Knox-Henderson in Dallas.
His next big idea is to invest in a drone that will deliver coffee and food from the air – but he hasn’t spent any money on it yet.
Borga says robots are an essential next step in keeping La Duni relevant in a delivery-crazy world.
“I want to bring the product to where the people are,” says Borga. “The common thread is convenience.”
Why “revolutionary” technology is important
Borga said he believes we are in the midst of “the greatest technology revolution of my life”.
He gave up a potential computer career shortly after high school, but he held on to that love of technology when he started working in his family’s restaurants about 40 years ago.
He recalls a simple revelation back in 1980 when computers were used to print customer food orders in the kitchen. It saved servers from writing copies of the check for the same table, and it saved chefs and bartenders from the inevitable mistakes they could make by incorrectly reading a server’s handwriting.
“That was revolutionary,” he says.
A waiter removes groceries from the Panchita grocery delivery robot at La Duni in Dallas. The young customers hardly notice it.(Elias Valverde II / employee photographer)
Since then he has been fascinated by restaurant technology.
Borga bought several refrigerators in 2018 that can be opened with a customer’s credit card. He planned to use them in his store in the NorthPark Center so customers could quickly buy ice cream, cookie dough, and other goodies from La Duni – and he didn’t have to pay a human to operate the dessert station. His innovative idea was dead on arrival: “You never got warm to the idea of having automated or robotic equipment,” he says of his colleagues at NorthPark.
Then La Duni was permanently closed at the NorthPark Center at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. He never used the fridges there, and they are now in the foyer of the only remaining La Duni.
“When that perfect storm happens, you have to open your mind to anything that will help you survive,” he says.
For more food news, follow Sarah Blaskovich on Twitter @sblaskovich.
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