SAN FRANCISCO, U.S. – San Francisco-based startup Café X has opened a second location to serve robot-crafted coffee at 578 Market Street, in the City of the Golden Gate. Cafe-X is positioning the new store, located at the busy intersection of Market and 2nd Street in downtown San Francisco, as the company’s flagship location.
The coffee shop basically consists of the three order stations on the left wall, a sugar/stir station on the right wall, and a big glass enclosure in the middle where the ‘barista’ works its magic.
The robot barista consists of a Mitsubishi industrial robot arm, two espresso machines and a cubby system for handing out drinks to the customers.
As you can see in the video below, the arm busily shuffles cups between the two coffee machines and then places prepared coffee drinks at the assigned cubby for customers to pick them up.
The order flow for Cafe-X is pretty smooth. The customer selects his or her drink and the order station asks for a mobile phone number.
When your drink is ready, you get a text with a four digit code which you input into a keypad at one of pick up cubbies. From there, the robot arm picks up your drink and puts it in the right cubby location.
The store is not completely run by robots. When you enter Cafe-X, you are greeted by a friendly human, who answers questions and explains how everything works.
Michael Wolf
