Mr. Q Crab House in Florida turns to robot waiter for help amid staff shortage
2021-06-02

[Location]: Mr. Q Crab House, Florida, USA 


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This is a serious staffing shortage issue from a lot of restaurants such as Mr. Q Crab House in the United States: Due to the outbreak of the Coronavirus and the increase in unemployment benefits, a phenomenon has appeared in the US restaurant industry: people would rather sit at home to collect unemployment benefits than willing to come back to work.


For restaurant operators, this is not a happy occasion. In the past few weeks, Mr. Q Crab House has been trying to hire staff to fill the busy weekends of the seafood restaurant, but the supply has fallen short of the demand. The staffing shortage has brought a lot of problems to the restaurant. For instance, customers often go to another restaurant when there are not enough staff to provide good customer service. Therefore, the customer traffic flow is very unstable. Recently, however, Mr. Q Crab House has brought unprecedented changes to its restaurant by bringing in several Keenon robots. The three robots have different responsibilities such as greeting customers, escorting customers to their seats and providing contactless food delivery.

 

  • Guiding robots would warmly greet customers when they enter the restaurant, and then guide the customers to their seats.

  • The food delivery robot is responsible for delivering food: After the customer orders their food, the kitchen staff puts the food on the tray of the food delivery robot. After selecting the table number, the robot immediately sets off for delivery while its built-in speaker plays relaxing music. It would accurately deliver food to the right table, ensuring no contact throughout the entire process to avoid cross-infection.


According to the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the robots can sing songs such as "Happy Birthday" and "Merry Christmas" in multiple languages and display restaurant menus on a two-sided screen that it holds over its head. Mr. Q Crab House welcomes its new robo-coworkers because, "Unlike humans, robots do not carry viruses. They cannot get fevers. They do not ask for minimum wage or take work breaks. They are, instead, relentlessly cheerful bots, never pushy, always keen to mindlessly shuttle dishes to and from the kitchen." Maleki, the restaurant's general manager, said: "For the bigger tables, they are perfect as a robot can carry an entire table’s worth of food from the kitchen, but humans would have to go back three, four times.” Humans also run the risk of sending the wrong food to customers and knocking food over. 


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In addition, Keenon robots have brought more customer traffic flow to Mr. Q Crab House. Many customers have been actively posting content about the robots on social media, which has increased the restaurant's exposure thus it has attracted more customers to the restaurant. Robots attract customers at the entrance of the restaurant, and can interact with people to increase customer engagement. Many customers come to check out the restaurant many times because they enjoy the high-tech dining experience.


Mr. Q’s Crab House has become one of the first South Florida restaurants to embrace dining-room robots for touchless, socially distanced ordering.


With the development of big data and intelligent robot technology, as well as the normalization of coping with the epidemic challenges, a restaurant’s brand power is gradually becoming more intuitive and perceptible from a relatively abstract concept. It plays an important role in supporting the operation of catering enterprises.


Keenon Robots will continue to carry out the R & D, production, and commercial landing of commercial service robots based on the actual needs of catering enterprises. Keenon Robots would also help the catering enterprises upgrade intelligently, and ensure the hygiene of delicious food to be in place.