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| How much can a robot barista do? |
Is your favorite barista an actual human being? Ugh, you’re so outdated. Non-human coffee shop workers are what’s in now, didn’t you get the fax? So pick your new one at your nearest café for only $9999,99 and name it something fun like... Francis. Seriously, jokes and saltiness aside, this is becoming a thing! There’s a robot barista serving coffee at a coffee shop in Melbourne, and it looks like a cool work of engineering. Let’s dig into it!
Once Alike is the café and Rocky is the robot’s name that could potentially catapult Australia’s coffee culture into the future. It replicates a barista’s work in almost all accounts, grinding beans, tamping them, and pulling the espresso shots. Of course, you won’t get the human experience of actually talking to your barista… or getting your name written wrong, but it seems like you could enjoy a fantastic cup of coffee courtesy of Rocky.
In words of Liam Wilkie, one of the engineers behind the project, Rocky makes coffee as well as any barista. And the advantages? “When you’ve been in the industry so long, you realize the most important things are quality and consistency. People want their coffee the same every time they go back to a cafe that specializes in coffee. There are limitations to having a human behind the bar. We get stressed and emotional during busy periods. It’s not fun to make 1000 lattes on a Saturday – it’s really hard work,” he explains.
It makes sense. However, it’s only natural that baristas should also be worried that this becomes a threat to their jobs. They are still very superior in one thing though: Rocky takes roughly anywhere from 2 to 6 minutes to brew a cup of coffee, much slower than any experienced barista would take. Nevertheless, this is still an experimental project, so we can expect that robots in the future will be able to get every order right at a much more efficient amount of time.
Rocky is not the only one of his species
Previously, in January 2017, another robot barista also made the news at a coffee shop in San Francisco, called Café X. It was more like a robotic arm that operated an already-automated coffee maker, but it did mark the beginning of something that could potentially become a trend in the future.
Are these things even sold commercially though? Well, this year they might. A company called Bubble Lab, based in China is working on a robot barista they showed at last year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. It’s also a robotic arm, and each one of them could cost $30,000 this 2018. Quite the investment, right? It still looks slow, so we’re not sure if it’s worth it for now.
But if we’ve learned something since the beginning of the 20th century, it’s that technology advances way faster than we realize. So it’d be no surprise to see a full-fledged, self-cleaning robot barista, which brews coffee as quickly and as efficiently as any human today, soon. Would you change the personalized factor of each cup of coffee for the robotic approach?
At That Coffee Roasters, we believe coffee is not only a beverage but also an experience that depends on the way each person sees and lives coffee. We’re not against technology but think about it as food and chefs. Every chef has their craft, their value. Baristas are the same, so we believe replacing them might not be as simple as it seems. What do you think? Let us know in the comments and keep joining us every Friday to talk more about innovations in the world of specialty coffee!
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| Could technology replace baristas? |
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