‘They talked me into opening up a used-food restaurant, and hell you know, you got used cars, used clothes, used furniture, why not used food, well?’ — Tom Waits
A new restaurant in Nuremberg may be the first sit-down restaurant in the world that doesn’t have waiters. Mack, a stranger to the business of dining, has opened the world’s first restaurant to feature fully automated ordering and table service. (…) Dishes like “organic beef in buttermilk” and “sausage en croute” glide along the rails to customers, propelled by gravity.
For the magic to work at all, Mack had to install the kitchen directly beneath the roof of the multistory restaurant. Customers order their meals using a touch-screen system that is placed at each table, and the entire restaurant is networked via a computer system. Customers’ orders are registered upstairs in the kitchen and a computer in the cellar keeps track of supply stocks. The system also calculates the likely delivery times for drinks and meals at every table and keeps customers informed.
The setup is more reminiscent of a post office sorting room than a traditional restaurant, which might offend some gourmets. But Mack believes there is a global market for his new invention. His gravity feed rail system is patented in Germany and he is seeking protection for the invention internationally so that he can license it to restaurants abroad.
“Billions of euros in personnel costs could be saved using this system,” Mack told SPIEGEL, saying he has no moral qualms with the job shedding effect it would have on the service sector if his invention ever caught on. “We don’t need service at the table.”
