Cat-themed robot serves sushi at the Waterloo buffet

WATERLOO –

A Waterloo restaurant is using a cat-themed robot to solve its latest staff shortage.

It’s programmed to house and serve tables at 168 Sushi Buffet in Waterloo and does it all with an automatic smile.

“We are getting busier and busier and it is very, very difficult to get new employees due to COVID,” said Lina Cui, the owner of the restaurant.

She bought the “Bella Bot” to alleviate her personnel problems, by having it take over the repetitive tasks that employees perform throughout the day.

“All of our floor runners have to serve thousands of dishes every day, so it helps them a lot,” Cui said. “The only downside to the robot is that we need people to operate it manually.”

The restaurant has few employees and if Cui can’t hire anyone soon, he said he plans to invest in one or two COVID-19 compliant robot servers that “save a lot of face-to-face interactions between staff and customers.”

Cui said that each “Bella Bot” costs between $ 20,000 and $ 40,000 and works in a similar way to autonomous cars, thanks to a system of cameras and sensors that constantly scan the environment.

Some customers say the robot is neat, but they prefer human interaction.

“I’m a little older so it gives me the creeps. Like ‘hey, how are you?’ and you say ‘uhh, fine I guess,’ “said Wes Hagen, who was tended to by the robot during his lunch break.

Client Jessica Goodwin said, “If it helps people, then that’s great, but I don’t want it to take people’s jobs away.”

Cui said the bot isn’t meant to replace workers, but Christine Neill, an economics professor at Wilfrid Laurier University, said it’s a sign of positive technological progress.

“If we can have fewer people working and still produce the same amount of stuff, that’s good,” Neill said. “There will be other jobs, but people are skeptical about it because it’s really hard to see that happen in real time.”

James Rilett, vice president of Downtown Canada with Restaurants Canada, said that while the industry hasn’t embraced much of the automation, this could be a starting point.

“We have about 200,000 job openings across the country. We can’t necessarily get those people back, so we are finding other avenues,” Rilett said.