The AI obsession is real, and while the debate rages on around where AI is genuinely helping and where it’s fallen short, other human-replacement questions have on occasion shown up in our inbox and on social media posts. Here’s an interesting one:
Will robots replace bartenders and waitresses?
Timothy S.
In some small ways they already have.
Royal Caribbean cruisers, along with Las Vegas visitors, are among those that may have seen a robotic bartending system where the thirsty among us use a touchscreen to place orders, and then a pair of robotic bartenders fulfill those orders in the order they were placed. (Curious where to see this in Las Vegas? There’s two Tipsy Robot locations as of this writing.)
There’s often more than a bit of showmanship involved in the presentation of these robotic bartenders, with the bottles hanging overhead and screens showcasing who’s up for their drinks and who’s next. For novelty that certainly can add to the fun.
That said, the systems can’t generally keep up with the pace of more talented bartenders out there, and the machinery (and the drinks that come from it) are generally going to be expensive. But then, drinks in general tend to be pretty expensive.
But this isn’t the only place where human labor has been swapped for machinery over the years. There was a bit of a to-do a number of years back when MGM replaced their back of house bartenders for drink service with machinery. Complaints abound from patrons cited weaker and smaller drinks to slower service, but like many things the grumbling was pretty temporary.
In that case, the machinery was tucked behind the scenes, and not something directly in front of casino visitors, so perhaps the lack of visibility in those positions made it easier to lose track of after the initial news died down. At some casinos, the waitresses now go through a door and behind a wall to operate a machine.
Finally, we’ve seen those robots bussing food and tables in recent years, albeit slowly, and then the delivery robots for apps like Door Dash, so we imagine that the continued service electrification will continue in various ways.
Of course, the experience will be everything – a robotic bartender might be a fun novelty on a cruise ship or in a casino shopping area, but the moment the robots are working through 30 drinks and you have to wait a half hour might change your tune. Similarly, many of the robots working in food environments seem to be very cautious by design, so they keep stopping anytime anyone moves within what feels like 3 miles of their current location.
So, like other areas where robotics have become a part of the workforce, we wouldn’t be surprised to see more of this over time, supporting a smaller team of staff that guide them and continue to provide the true human interactions and customer service. We don’t think it’ll provide any relief to cocktail prices, however, or any improvement in the quality of alcohol in comped drinks, presuming a casino can offer them to begin with.
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