Next-Gen Dining: Staffer tries two Kansas City restaurants with robot servers that assist their human servers

Emerging slowly from the kitchen, weaving its way through dozens of tables with the manager at its side, Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop’s robot “Servi” approached our table with my order of Pad Thai — creepily emulating a human server.

In a restaurant crowded with customers, the toddler-sized metal beeping robot stuck out like a sore thumb. However, robot servers are more common than you might think. 

Due to a shortage of workers in the food industry after Covid, robots have started to replace human waiters in restaurants like Magic Noodle, on 159th Street and Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop  in the Crossroads. The mechanical workers serve food, bus tables or provide assistance to customers. When my friend mentioned a robot restaurant in Overland Park, I knew I needed to try it.

The first robot restaurant I visited was Magic Noodle, a Chinese noodle restaurant that introduced their automated worker “Bellabot” when they opened in April of 2021.

On the way to my booth, I passed the kitchen and saw human expert chefs lovingly stretching and kneading homemade noodle dough — making it ironic when the aluminum robot server arrived at my table.

Magic Noodle’s robot is a white, toddler-sized cat. Bella has four tiers that are large enough for multiple dishes on each level. At first glance I was startled by the large rolling cat. But as Bella continued to wheel around the restaurant, my eyes began to adjust to the abnormal rob-o-cat. The robot cat’s main feature is the touch screen that reveals Bella’s face — a small black nose and two big black cat eyes that blink.

Bella is only used to carry and deliver appetizer dishes, so I ordered the $6 edamame and $7 crab rangoon appetizers. As the workers typed A6 — my table number — into her touchscreen, Bella smoothly wheeled over to my booth, paused so I could grab the food and beeped, “Thank you, goodbye,” before returning to the kitchen for her next order. While the robot’s high-pitched voice startled me at first, I was used to the monotone voice of human waiters and I eventually got used to the sound playing throughout the restaurant. 

The heavily salted edamame and tangy crab rangoons were mouth-watering, but getting my food delivered by Bella the robot cat topped off my experience at Magic Noodle.

After meeting Bella, my expectations were high as I entered Lulu’s Thai Noodle Shop. Lulu’s has employed their robot “Servi”  for nine months since they adopted it last July to help smoothly run their restaurant. Unlike Magic Noodle, Lulu’s robot wasn’t in action the second I walked in.

Servi was far slower than Bella and notorious for getting trapped behind tables and chairs in the shop, so the workers only brought it out when the restaurant really needed an extra set of hands  — or in Servi’s case, wheels. After ordering my $17 Pad Thai and $10 pork potstickers, I talked to the manager with a request of seeing their robot. 15 minutes later, Servi rolled out of the kitchen with my meal — clearly not as seamlessly integrated into the restaurant since I had to request it and it wasn’t a cute cat. 

Servi had two circular tiers, the top one containing the Pad Thai and potstickers, as well as a built-in bin at the bottom to store dirty dishes when busing tables. The robot was mainly blue, red and white, to match Lulu’s logo that was on the bus bin at the bottom of the robot. Without features like Bella’s big blinking eyes or black nose, Servi seemed stark and emotionless. 

Once I grabbed my food from the robot and tried it, the subtle spice in the Pad Thai and the crispy pan fried potstickers made me realize that food is better served from a robot. Even with or without an expressive face and blinking eyes, the whole idea of a robot delivering my food made the restaurant experience more enjoyable.