Robots to the rescue at short-staffed businesses

Key Takeaways

It might sound like something out of “The Jetsons,” the futuristic cartoon from the 1960s, but for counties where local businesses are short on staff during the pandemic, robots appear to be the answer, at least for some restaurants and other businesses.

Walk into almost any eatery these days during the era of COVID-19 and you may be waiting awhile to get a table or flag down a waiter. Signs in the windows say “help needed,” some restaurants close early due to staffing shortages and some eateries promise signing bonuses for new employees. It’s all part of the great staffing shortage due to the pandemic.

The numbers back it up: The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates the restaurant industry lost 4.1 million people between July and November last year.

In Collier County, Fla., Brooks Burgers purchased a $15,000 robot that works 15 hours a day and can handle three tables at a time, according to WINK-TV.

Denny’s, a national restaurant chain, has robots working at some of its locations, clearing dirty dishes and delivering food to customers. Evan Smith, manager of a Denny’s in Lackawanna County, Pa., told the Standard-Speaker that “some people think it’s replacing servers, but it’s more of a helper than a replacement.”

At Eat District in Palm Beach County, Fla., where 4,000 jobs need to be filled in the leisure and hospitality sectors, a restaurant called Eat District “hired” Bella, a robot that can greet customers, seat them and even sing “Happy Birthday,” according to WPTV-TV.

In addition to serving food and clearing tables, restaurants are also using robots in the kitchen and to clean restrooms.

Some call these kind of robots collaborative robots or “cobots,” because they are working alongside humans.

In Maricopa County, the community college is helping advance this type of robotics. “Robots have been around for years, but cobots in maybe the last five years or so have really started taking off,” Ken Hackler, program director of Automated Industrial Technology at Mesa Conmunity College, told Arizona Education News Service.

Robots have been used in a variety of ways across the country including:

• In Somerset County, Pa. to track pollution sources.
• In Brevard County, Fla. to build 3-D printed residential homes.
• In Pima County, Ariz., robots are being used in classrooms to boost STEM learning.
• In Delaware County, Pa., Robbie the robot helps workers dish out 130 meals each day at a senior living center.
• In Pennington County, S.D., the county’s special response team uses a robot for high-risk situations.