CHANDLER, Ariz. — She's fast, she's accurate, can handle every table in the restaurant ... and she's never gone home.
Because this perfect, tireless server is a robot.
Kur-B is a bright yellow robotic serving tray on wheels. Conveyor belt sushi chain Kura Sushi started rolling them out before the pandemic but has since put them in every U.S. location.
“It does make the service job a lot easier, so that they're not running around just serving drinks," manager Christy Nguyen said. "Most of their time before was serving drinks, collecting the drinks and all of that.”
Customers at Kura order their drinks from a tablet mounted above the tables. the sushi rolls by on a conveyor belt, and Kur-B comes along shortly after with the drink order on one of the trays.
While Kura rolled the robots out as an extra set of hands in a restaurant that automates most of its activity, other restaurants are using them to help with staffing shortages.
Chili's restaurants have deployed Rita the Robot in 50 locations around the country, including three in northeastern Arizona.
Those robots help deliver food, bring customers to their seats and even sing Happy Birthday.
Other restaurants across the country have employed robots to help bus tables and also deliver food.
“It's fun, everyone gets a kick out of them," Nguyen said.
The robots obviously have limitations that keep them from replacing human workers. For starters, Kur-B doesn't have hands, so it depends on humans to fill the drinks and put them on the trays. But when faced with a shortage of workers, they're a welcome help.
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