55:09
Owner: Jeremy Julian
SUMMARY KEYWORDS
robot, robotics, people, technology, company, talk, product, automation, guest, restaurant, bit, hospitality, table, automate, world, hear, big, jobs, customer, call
SPEAKERS
Corwin (73%), Jeremy (27%), Intro (<1%)
I
Intro
0:02
This is the restaurant technology guys podcast, helping you run your restaurant better
JJ
Jeremy Julian
0:13
Welcome back to the restaurant technology guys podcast. I thank you guys for joining us as I, as I say each and every episode, I know you guys have lots of choices as to where to spend your time and spend your energy. So I appreciate you guys spending a little bit of time with us. Today I am joined by a pretty cool guest. And I’m I’m really excited to dig into the conversation because it’s been one of the areas of lots of growth within the restaurant industry. And I’m excited to have Corwin share a little bit about his story and kind of what his company is doing. But, Corwin before, before we get into what, what you get to do for a living, why don’t you tell the audience a little bit about yourself? Where did you come from, and, you know, a little little of the backstory, and then we can talk a little bit about what United robotics is doing.
CC
Corwin Carson
0:58
Sure. Sounds great. Thank you, Jeremy. And it’s fun. It’s fun to get to start at the beginning, not just the career but so a short background. So I’m originally a Midwest kid from from Wisconsin. Your parents both went to Whitefish Bay, which is outside of Milwaukee and went to the University of Wisconsin. And then eventually life brought us to Atlanta, Georgia, and grew up there in Atlanta for most of my most of my earlier days. And then went to the University of Georgia Go Dawgs. So just in case, some dogs fans out there,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
1:32
say my one of our sales reps that one of our sales reps is a huge GA guy. And so you guys have had a last little college football has been good to you guys last couple of years. So you keep going. Sorry about that.
CC
Corwin Carson
1:41
No, you’re good. It’s exciting times you’ll maybe normally I wouldn’t do that. But But these these last couple years, it’s our time, right. And I lived the pain and some of the other years. So the great things in life, right?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
1:55
Yep. know for sure. So sorry, I’ll let you finish beyond the the University of Georgia. No problem.
CC
Corwin Carson
2:00
So I My degree is in economics as I studied economics and business in college. And one little intro to our story here actually, all through college, I worked in at a hotel or for a hotel company. So actually worked in the hospitality space from early years and did everything from you know, Bellman to front office management to sales, food and beverage director, you know, a lot of roles within within that really hospitality and food service phase at kind of a, let’s call it a young career state. So it was interesting, and it taught me a lot about industry. So full circle, after a number of of moves, and kind of progressive roles within a few organizations over my career, I would say all within the robotics and automation space. So my entire career, right after that hospitality industry, has been in the robotics and automation space, and eventually brought me to beautiful Southern California that I’ve done my best to cling on to and life and enjoy the blue sky as much as I can.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
3:05
I love it. I love it. So remind me again, I know you just said it once you get your degree in and then how did that transition into robotics? Because that, that sounded like a pretty pretty far stretch there. But I’m always intrigued about how people, I was just I just posted a podcast this week of a guy that was that studied, you know, like medieval art and wrote a technology piece to like, you know, to to automate kitchens. And I’m like, how do you get from from from one to the other? So, you know, remind me again, what you got your degree? And then how did that transition into robotics before you founded founded United robotics?
CC
Corwin Carson
3:38
Sure. So it’s actually an interesting story, just in the sense that when I was in school, in college, as many of us around my age, there really wasn’t much of a push for STEM. Right? So science was still there. Medicine, I think was there. But there was a big push into things like, you know, becoming a lawyer or commercial real estate or the banking and finance industry. But there really wasn’t a lot of a lot of kind of energy, I would say into that stem space, which will probably come up again, in our conversation just from, you know, the next generation and the use of robotics and the adoption of technology. You know, these all have become sort of macro trends in our world. But yeah, so although my father was an engineer, both undergrad and a master’s in engineering work for Kimberly Clark and Procter and Gamble with two pretty famous, you know, consumer goods companies in the United States. And mother’s a PhD of science, so very engineering based family, but at the time, the world was just sort of pushing towards that business side in a different way. So school wise, didn’t go down that path, ironically, at the right at the point of graduation, went to a career fair talk to a dozen companies and what really attracted me was a company called Keyence corporation that is pretty famous. At this point. They’re Japanese company, you know, automated technology company. And really that just the the technology that they had the innovation that existed within their product portfolio was was really truly tremendous to me. And the this is another important trend we’ll talk about the desire to problem solve was really clear within what they needed their their people to do their, their their team to do. So ironically kind of stepped right back into this, you know, this engineering sort of a world at a young age and have been here ever since.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
5:30
I love it. I love it. So why don’t we Why don’t we take the leap forward into what is united robotics? For those that aren’t familiar with what you guys do? Why don’t we talk a little bit about the company, and then we’ll kind of talk about the marrying of restaurants and robotics, and where you see it at today and kind of kind of where it’s going.
CC
Corwin Carson
5:46
Sure. So United robotics group. You know, although we may be new to most people’s ears, we’re actually sort of have a long history from a founding perspective, especially with our sister company, which I’ll talk about for a moment. And then our size, and our scale is actually quite significant. So, so I am the CEO of United robotics Group, Inc. So we are united robotics group, Americas Inc. And we are actually a subsidiary of the United robotics group. GmbH. So United robotics group was formed in 2019, by a gentleman named Thomas Han, who is the original founder of the company. Thomas Han, also is the the CEO and founder of a company called Han automation. Han is a what what I would most people call a traditional system integrator, which we actually will probably talk about a little bit more as we get into the, you know, how how far robotics come we’re kind of what’s changed, you know, over the last, say, two decades, I’ve been in this space. So 30 years ago, Thomas founded Han automation. So, United robotics group, as a whole really is a little bit more of I would almost call like an innovation arm compared to the traditional system integrator, which again, I can explain more. And hopefully, we’ll have some follow up questions on that. But what we are today is sort of a collection, I guess, I would say, in the center, an umbrella company of nine robotic startups, so and one of which is even an acquisition only about about a month ago, a company called Robotnik. But we so we have we have acquired these nine robotic companies. And their strengths are across both verticals. And I would say sort of disciplines. So we have companies that are, you know, really software based companies, and some of that is going to be more customer less custom. And then we have hardware focused companies that have developed different products for different verticals, and then even a strong services arm as well. And then even across that you have different verticals that we can talk about a little bit, one of which that we’re very focused on is the I would actually say broadly the public or the social sector, which certainly includes a focus on hospitality.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
7:59
Yeah, that was gonna be where I wanted to drive the conversation. So I guess before we jump into where, why and where restaurants, defined robotics for people, because for some, that conjures up our two, D two, and C, three Po from 1977, Star Wars, like, you know, to the Terminator two everywhere in between. And so, you know, I’d love for you to define even how you guys define robotics? Because I think, I think there’s a lot of people that have created their own definitions. But I’d love to have you talk through how do you guys even internally talk about robotics? And what is robotics? For those that are uneducated, then we can talk about the marrying of robotics and how you guys are trying to influence the restaurant industry and help people out?
CC
Corwin Carson
8:42
Sure. Big Questions. So yeah, it
JJ
Jeremy Julian
8:45
is it is, but I think it’s, but I think our audience wants to hear for people that are in that space, when you even talk about hospitality. For some, that means hotels, and for others, that means, you know, cruise ships, and for others that might mean a restaurant. Sure, for somebody that’s in the robotics space. Again, I have my own definition. And I, you know, would be happy to share with you where I’ve seen it play. But I think that, that having you define it will help people get their head around these things. Because a lot of times when when I talk to listeners, they haven’t even heard of these things, or they may have experienced it on on, you know, one way, one way or another. They read about it in the in the news, but they don’t really understand what it is, because they’ve just been uneducated. So why don’t you educate us a little bit on that, and we can talk through it. So I apologize for throwing big questions at you. But I think it’s I think it’s good to educate our audience and make sure that everybody’s on the right spot,
CC
Corwin Carson
9:32
no problem, I will do my best. And you actually you may hear me use both the word automation and robotics in a similar fashion. And, and I’ve had some intriguing conversations of you know, so what sort of what’s the difference between automation and actually a robot? And even I would say, to probably most listeners, and most of us in the world, the word you know, robot, it means a lot more right and how As a meeting we have, we have some images of what that looks like, whether it be from from from Star Wars or not, we still have an idea of what a robot is. Yep. And just to start on the other side, you know, automation, say for example, a moving conveyor, right? Probably everyone has seen that even at the grocery store, you have a checkout lane a moving conveyor, it has a little sensor on it to tell when product is at the end of it, right? There are some there are some in the world that would argue that that is a robot, right? A very simple robot, a single axis of motion, robot, but But nonetheless, it is performing a task in an automated fashion to assist, you know, to assist people in what they’re trying to do. And in this case, it’s the cashier trying to help you check out and trying to get home with their groceries to feed their family. So. So I’ll start there with just a little bit of background. That’s interesting. And I think one of the smartest things that I heard about robotics, is that the robot, just to go back to the Star Wars example, is it it actually, in today’s definition, I think starts to define interaction with a human in a sense. And Jeremy, I’ll talk a little bit about the word cobia, or ko biotics, which is, is actually really sort of a branded name for our company. But the cobia segment is something that, that we’ve been working on. And to explain that a little bit, I’ll back up. So we, we talked about three generations of robots in the world, the first generation, and this was, you know, even in my early careers, this is mainly, you know, what I focused on was company that was companies that were deploying robots. And if you think about that, this is not our duty to or, you know, there are no personalities, they, they’re very dangerous, I mean by design, right, because they can lift heavy payloads, they can work in really tough environments, you know, they’re designed to, in a way to do tasks completely individually from people. And quite frequently for jobs that people cannot do, which is a topic we’ll probably touch on a little bit as we go. But we so we refer to that as a first generation generation of robots, or I would just say traditional robotics in the sense, okay. And then the second generation is a word that people may have heard called a collaborative robot, and or for short, what’s called a co bot. And the collaborative robot was, was born from the industrial robots. But really one of the the kind of original visionaries of this space is a gentleman named Rodney Brooks that started a company called Rethink Robotics, which is actually part of our profile today. But his his invention, his vision, the team’s invention, was a product called Baxter, which was a very large, dual armed collaborative robot. And this, this actually fascinated me when I saw it released, because it was designed to work with people, you’re around people close to people. And theoretically, at some phase, you would actually even interact people with people. But most of the applications were, you know, let’s just say people close, or at least, it wasn’t nearly as dangerous as a traditional robot so that hence the word collaborative robot. And then what we’re working on this third generation that this cobia is, and it’s just, I guess, it’s just semantics. But, you know, we say that it truly works for people. So by design, as we as we enter this third phase of robotics here, the concept is that it is a helper, truly a helper to people and something that people should be directing what your what it will do for us to circle back to your original question, maybe that’s the actual definition of of a robot in a sense, back to you know, RTD to especially that, that, you know, what a robot that was constantly just trying to solve problems and help his what his owners are is I’m not sure what the right word. Yeah, how
JJ
Jeremy Julian
14:00
would you define that, but whatever it is, is everybody’s, I shouldn’t say everybody, but most people have seen that and kind of get it. I mean, and so talk to me a little bit about food service. So, you know, I think there’s a lot of applications I know, I mean, even 20 years ago, I had had somebody that was working for us, her brother was generating, he was working in the manufacturing industry, and he was designing computer models to fill bags of salsa, or whatever it might be. And they were, you know, it was a lot of this automation, you know, hearken back to I Love Lucy and the Chocolate Factory where the chunks have gone all over the place and, and whatnot. But but those are robots. I mean, they’re to your point, they’re doing tasks that are gonna get done more efficiently through automation and through technology to do that. Food service restaurants serving people, you talked about the public sector, how how was united robotics group like, talk to me a little bit about that transition? And where do you guys really think you guys are making some unique inroads to helping you know we can talk about the why here in a few minutes, but talk to me a little bit about where are you guys dipping your toe in the water in restaurants and how are you You guys working towards trying to solve some of those things with this, you know, co biotics idea and this whole idea that they can work alongside of humans to create a better guest experience and to create a better restaurant?
CC
Corwin Carson
15:12
Sure. And I mean, I think that’s the perfect question because there are, almost divide that into two answers. You know, one is the, let’s call it the mundane, lower value, repetitive. Some call it I like it the dull, dirty, dangerous jobs that are within the hospitality space as well. And just one example of that, as you think about, you know, slips trips and falls, I think there’s a spec that 25,000 slips trips and falls happen every day in the US in the, we’ll call it the greater hospitality space, you know, food service, hospitality, space. It’s a lot, right. And as you can imagine, most of those happen while people are in motion, right. So, so this is, you know, sort of one end of the spectrum. And then the other end is the guest experience. And the more time I spent in this industry, it’s, it’s amazing to hear the most passionate people in this space. This is this is what they talk about, and focus on, this is everything to them, right. I wish I could remember what I was watching. But I just heard an amazing story of, you know, let’s call him a Michelin rated chef that overheard a table talking about how badly they wanted a New York style hot dog. And or maybe it was Cago. Either one sounds good, depending on everyone’s preference, but, but the chef actually left, got a hot dog, cut it into four pieces, brought it back to the table, and the guests couldn’t be happier. And the point was, at that moment, it wasn’t about the food, but it was about the experience. So you know, so as we as we continue to deploy robotics into this space and look into this space, this is what we are focused on. And what we believe that are the adopters of technology like this are focused on is that you let’s utilize automation and robotics, right. And again, there’s sometimes there’s a sensitivity to the word robot. But automation is a little more comforting in a way to people. And we’ll talk a little bit more about that. But so let’s get let’s let automation focus on those, quote, lower value tasks, while we allow people to focus on on people on the human experience right on each other. And this is what most of all, this is what I’ve seen, actually, I’ve seen in almost every industry as you, you know, continue to to implement automation, but but maybe most in this hospitality space.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
17:34
Well, and so let’s talk about some of those. You said dull, dirty, dangerous jobs. I mean, you know, I remember, I was probably 10 years ago, I went into a drive thru at a McDonald’s, and they had a robot that was filling my drinks, it was the weirdest thing that I did. And it was so cool. But it was at the drive thru it pulled a cup out of the sling, put ice in it to the perfect amount and then filled my diet coke or whatever the heck, I was drinking at the time into that? Would that be something that you guys would consider? And again, I’m picking that, you know, a lot of the pizza places of the conveyor belt pizza stuff, you know, talk to me a little bit about what kinds of things are you guys seeing that you guys can automate? Because it’s, it’s to me, I am blown away, when I see these things. I love seeing these things, not for any other reason, then that is dirty, that’s dull, that’s dangerous. It’s dumb work, that we’re using humans to do it because we had no other way to do it. Let’s train those humans to now interact with the guests and create a better guest experience to your point earlier, while we take those things. So talk to me a little bit about what are some of the use cases tell me more about the use cases specifically? What are you guys doing? And then, you know, I guess just what do you guys do? And tell me tell me some of the areas as a cooking is a cleaning? Is it prep? You know, talk to me a little bit about all of that.
CC
Corwin Carson
18:53
Sure. So let me pick out
JJ
Jeremy Julian
19:00
a lot of these, these
CC
Corwin Carson
19:01
are great questions. Jeremy. I’ll start by saying that as technology advances, we want to marry the use cases or the applications that the technology can do your with the value that it brings to an organization and and to to the time that it would free up for a person to focus on a customer’s get guest experience guest experience. So and I only say that because we talked about I guess I like to just talk frequently about the eyes and the hands of an automated system. Right? These are incredibly difficult, difficult things to even think to replicate. I mean, in the last five years, I would say we’ve started to really see progress in 3d vision and, you know, really dexterous grippers, and that could lead to things like truly like bussing tables itself, cleaning off tables, you know, actually making food some of these, you know, really complicated tasks that that are all So high value from from a human perspective, just because we are so good at some of these things. The other side of that, again, is back to the kind of dull, dirty, dangerous, repetitive motions that could be automated today. So the example that you brought the the automated drink filling, this is this has been, you know, around for a few years here, but also is still in a very innovative phase for how, you know, how, like, what could your throughput be? How many can you produce over X amount of time, what’s the footprint that it could be? You know, so there’s still a lot of innovation, even to an area like that, that’s been that’s been focused on for a while. And this is, you know, this is where the wink comes in, you know, perhaps there’s something that we’re working on in that area, and we’d love to talk to your audience about if they’d like more information. So that’s certainly one area. And I will say, although we don’t play in the kitchen much today, in the product that we’ve released so far, there are some really neat companies like miso robotics, I’ll give them a free a free plug there, you know, they’ve done really neat things with the flippy robot, you know, for for the industry, I think probably a lot of your, your audience may have seen press releases on that. So that’s kind of the back of the house side. So right now, for us, we’re focused on the front of the house with our mobile robot solution. And actually what what we do call kind of the first serving cobia, which is, which is a phrase AI that we could talk more about as well, but essentially what we call this third generation of robotics that is designed to work for people. So this is what we’re working on right now from kind of a main product release. And you know, the very simple sense for this product is it is a, it is a material handling assistant for, for servers in the industry, right. So this could be bringing the food to the tables, this can be helping to bus the tables back to the kitchen, we see fun examples, like even setting the tables where of course you can load it up with all the everything you need to set up 100 tops, you’ve got catering examples, where we’re actually you know, passing food, there are all kinds of applications like that. But but the short story is it’s a it’s sort of a an assistant, you know, we’re augmenting staff a runner for the staff to use as they please.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
22:14
I love it. I love it. There’s, there’s, there’s been a couple of brands that I’ve gone to, partially to test technology like you guys are creating, there’s two that I’ve been to most recently. And my experience was very, very positive. And I’d love to talk through a little bit of it, it happened to be an all you can eat Japanese place, just south of me. And so it was all you can in Japanese place. And I was ordering from a server but my sushi plates or my ramen plates or whatever, were showing up via robot, and the robot would would cruise through the restaurant, it would bring me this plate of sushi, my son and I went and had dinner there for his birthday. And talk to me a little bit about is that what you guys are trying is that one of the use cases that you see people using. And then another place is pizza place. And they sat me with the robot. And because I’m the host of the show, I like to go check out this new stuff. So talk to me a little bit about the use case for bringing food to the table, just food, you know, food delivery, it’s one of the biggest sticking points in almost every kitchen is from the time the food gets prepped to the time that it gets to the guest. That time window is very, very critical to ensuring guest satisfaction and back to the guests experience. Is that something that you guys are actively working on and talk to me a little bit about what you guys have had to solve for. Because not all meals are created equal. Not all service experiences are created equal. Not all, you know, I mean, in this place that happened to be small plates of sushi, so it was a little bit easier, because they could load up two or three of them onto the robot or five or six of them into the robot. Whereas other places might be big plates and, you know, thinking about a Cheesecake Factory, they might have huge plates that might not be able to be in or maybe they can’t I don’t know, talk to me a little bit about that. That use case because I see that as a huge opportunity for people if they haven’t considered it to, to at least dip their toe in the water. But But I don’t know, maybe, maybe maybe you can educate our audience as to what does that look like from a restaurant perspective? And what does that look like from a guest? Guest experience perspective?
CC
Corwin Carson
24:03
Sure. So so first of all, Jeremy, it is. It is a key application, I would say right. So this is perhaps the or one of the most common for a mobile robot like this for an indoor delivery robot. And I’ll start on the front of the house. And just for some fun comments back to you that we’ve heard from customers is that things like empty drinks have gone away tremendously. Yelp reviews have gone up, average tips per table have gone up. Average term per table has decreased. So not only is the business making more money, actually their staff is making more money which is good just from the academic side. But then also the guests are saying yes, you’re happier, better experience. Right? And you know, it’s interesting if you can actually search Yelp and look at all the collective reviews and There’s some interesting trends and some of this was your sort of COVID related last few years of, of our lives have been challenging. There’s no question about that. But but the guests experience has actually declined. And you see things like, took too long to get food, you know, too much time during churros empty.
CC
Corwin Carson
25:18
Yes. Right. And which a lot of times again, there’s a revenue side to that along with the the guest experience on both from a happy customer returns to, I would have loved to have a, we’ll call it another beer. You know, if, if that goes down to you, we’re talking about a lot, a lot of lost revenue there. So there’s, there’s really, I think, really clear benefits from from the front of the house staff, or the kind of the front side, the the back of the house or the let’s just say the process of supporting those workers, those servers, there are a ton of challenges, like you mentioned, and if I could put them into a one big bucket, what I would say is that the environment that they are operating in, it was not designed for robotics, right? It was designed for people and people are we are unbelievably flexible, incredibly dynamic, right? Like, if you think about us, as you know, technology, it’s unbelievable. Again, we all the technology in the world still can’t cannot replicate what we’re doing right now moving our hands talking, you know, our body moves, quote, autonomously without us even having to think about what we want it to do. Right. So. So that that pose is probably one of the biggest challenges is and actually what I would almost in turn bucket that into is the word adoption. And so I think the reality is that, what we’ve seen is that the more like you could imagine, on board, you know, a team is with, with utilizing this technology to to make the customer experience better to drive revenue to decrease costs to, you know, to really have a better guest experience overall. The desire to utilize technology, and that is actually a really critical point maybe the most, right, because No, I would agree. Yeah, and some of the things like you mentioned, like, let’s say that there’s more than one robot full of plates, probably one person wasn’t going to be able to carry that either. But a person plus a robot could write, or, you know, or if you’re really busy. And this is a second use case, but you look at the busing side of it. It’s a very similar story, right to be able to clear the table and turn it quickly. Just support support the team so I, I think that yes, there are challenges. No technology never it’s never perfect. Or at least I haven’t you know, I haven’t ever found that either with any device you know, for sorry, to sorry, Windows, but I’m just waiting for my computer to decide to update while we’re on our
JJ
Jeremy Julian
27:50
inevitable it will, right?
CC
Corwin Carson
27:53
Yes. And sometimes I want a big screen and other times I need a small compact one to go on the backpack, right? So it’s, you know, as much as we are progressing, which is amazing actually makes me think of things like the flip phones now that almost you know, try to give you both the best worlds that way but maybe what I’m trying to say is it’s important to look at what it can do for your team and to help your team see that you know, what it can do for them and how it can improve the overall business as much or more maybe than it is to kind of question what what things that can’t do. And and I say that because I’ve seen companies that automate have always been on a positive growth path you know, it’s yeah, this the word innovate is a is a perfect word for this you know, companies that innovate people that innovate their lives, you know, you when you have that sort of desire to push things forward and sometimes to take a little risk and you know, go into that slightly we’ll call it earlier adopter phase it’s a healthy mentality it’s a healthy culture. So maybe this answered the second part of your your question, but that would be that would be my biggest suggestion to to companies to users restaurants, hotels, amusement parks, cruise ships, you know, you mentioned a lot of them earlier is really dig into this technology and I think the truth is it can find a way to help your your guests experience it can find a way to even deliver ROI it can find a way to wow your guests because guests are you know, they love technology as well they really do and they certainly are looking for that great experience. So maybe that’s the that answer there is to lean in a little bit at this point even though admittingly no technology will solve all our problems with one go.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
29:39
I thank you for saying that because I say that all the time. technology for technology’s sake does nothing but technology truly to solve business problems is the reason to do it. paints a picture for me because I’ve watched you know, companies like yours and others that have gotten into this robot, you know, delivery mechanism. I know a And I’d love for you to paint a picture for those that are on audio only, or even those that are watching us on video, there is a difference between what a robot looks like that’s delivering food to you than what seethrough po might look like. Or even when our 2d Two might look like and so can you paint a picture for, for our audience as to what what is it? Because I know what it is. But I’d love for you to talk through. What does that robot look like to the end user? You know, what does it look like driving around in the kitchen in the dining room? In the host stand and those areas?
CC
Corwin Carson
30:35
So another great question, Jeremy, you’re well prepared today. So the Yeah, I’ll actually I’ll back up a little bit there and talk a little bit about the history of robotics again, just because when we look at those traditional robotics, these are, these are big metals, right chunks of metal with with big hydraulic cylinders on them. And you know, that there’s nothing attractive, or let’s say interactive about about this type of product at all, nor did there need to be, because it was completely behind a fence or, you know, down along, you know, manufacturing corridor warehouse space or something along those lines. You know, fast forward to today, what we’re doing in the hospitality space. And it’s completely different. Everyone is interacting with this, right, you comes right up to your table with your food, right, it drives by you in the hallway. And I think this is this is really important back to that adoption rate and two, that, really that could that the comfort that, that I believe people should should embrace, I guess about about robotics and technology is that, at least in our products, sake, and I’ve seen others as well. So this is we’re not the only ones that that have that recognize this, but it’s designed in a way to be comforting. It is it’s designed actually to interact. So you’re our product, which I’m sure hopefully your audience will check out. And we’ll give them a link at the end of the show. But you know, it has eyes that communicate intent. If you scratch its nose, it’ll actually smile and kind of giggle at you a little bit. It does talk to you when if it comes to the table to deliver an order and you’re using an ad or it says here is your order. Or if you use it in bussing mode, it asks you Do you have anything for me? And and you know, I’ll just one little kind of side exciting thing is a lot of those things that I mentioned are software based. And like it a lot of your audience has probably heard like chat GPT, you know, as we continue to have advances in technology on that software side, you know, rolling that back into the previous, you know, hardware versions is a huge part of our story. And let’s just say you know, technology in general, of course, right, our phones are always trying to update as well, or like my joke about Microsoft. So this is, this is a good thing as well, right? We want this because it actually makes our product more valuable. But to circle back there is that that interaction, I think it’s important for people to feel that this is safe. This is comforting. This is again, I would say truly trying to support people to work for people and to help them in their daily jobs. And one little piece of history I’ll share about our company is the team that makes this product is a company that was known as all the Baron there in Paris, France, they created two really famous robots. One is called now and EO and the other is called pepper. And these were both social robotics as well. These are for the public’s face, most of them are in academic now, I think, as an example, quite frequently will be in a high school or even a middle school actually this in our day to day some of them are going to elementary school, because they’re learning to code so much earlier. But so the team though that let’s just say they’re very passionate about how do people perceive these products, not just you know, does it lift up the you know, the the automotive car part or something like that, like the traditional robotic to be. And this is actually part of our CO biotics philosophy all together is to, you know, for that connecting people and robots are really creating a product that people want to utilize that works for people is really important. I’ll touch on one that’s that’s a little interesting to your question too. And then you can you can redirect as desired. But sometimes I would say the product may seem slower. It may be slower is not the right word, but more methodical than people are. So as we talked about earlier, people are unbelievable at multitasking. Well, some of us better than others, but I’m on the wrong side of that sometimes but but you know, if you look at the best in a hospitality or food service sort of industry, it’s unbelievable. The things that they can juggle in their minds with their hands with the motion of their body, and they’re quick, right? They are fast, and I think this is a reality. The and when you look at the robot, it’s okay, I could do theoretically 10 things in the time that it does five or you know, or some, some ratio like that. But I think maybe this is another one, as we sort of adjust our mentality, the important way to look at it is, wow, I could do 20 things because that robot just did five things for me. And that 20 thing is almost always the customer interaction, right? I could be that much more on this side. And while that robot did those trips back and forth to the kitchen for me, because again, that part is good, that it’s methodical actually. And sorry, one more touches, you know, you mentioned the like the sushi restaurant, you’ve probably been seeing one that has like a conveyor system before as well, right? Great example of like automation, fixed automation, right, a conveyor that’s in place, or a robot that can go from A to B flexibly. But again, that concept is is the same. So in a in a thought like that, that conveyor belt may not be the fastest thing in the world. But eventually, you know, your favorite sushi is going to come rolling right all by the table there. And, you know, hopefully, your servers are taking great care of you at other times as well, keeping those drinks full talking to you, telling you about the specials engaging with one another, right?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
36:15
And trying to drive the behavior back to your point that the guests are ultimately more satisfied. Because I live in the technology space brand that’s close to you that we did almost 10 years, over 10 years ago, it was a brand that put iPads at every table. And the early results that we got were very similar to what you guys got with some of the robotics, but it was an iPad at every table and the staff member didn’t really do much other than refilled drinks and run food to you. But they were really trying to give the the gift a choice to the guests and allow them to control their experience and all of that awesome deal there. What what some of the feedback that we got was the Oh, you’re trying to replace people’s jobs. You heard in the stories in the comments about flippy. You talked about flippy earlier. Talk to me a little bit about why robotics, isn’t there. It’s, it’s there to enhance it’s not there to replace. Because I think that that’s the misnomer. Oftentimes. I mean, I’ve been in this restaurant technology industry for over 25 years. I remember when we went from hanging tickets to bringing stuff up. And it was like this, you know, people were like, Oh, you’re gonna replace people’s jobs, and nobody’s gonna need to do this sounds like, no, it’s making things better, not necessarily making things worse, you know, delivering to the consumers expectations. So how would you combat that, as you’re talking with clients that say, Oh, no longer do I have to run the foods, and I’m not going to be able to show up and do these things. And, and I’d love for you to help our audience to understand why robotics and this CO biotics idea that you guys have can truly change the way you go about doing business and truly give them the time energy, and an opportunity to treat the customer, like a customer and get rid of those dull and dirty and, and, you know, dangerous jobs that you talked about earlier?
CC
Corwin Carson
38:03
Sure. Another great question. For sure. I think this this can be a tough one. But I think it’s something we need to all talk about, right? Because it is a real component of technology, like you mentioned, you know, going from hanging tickets to a, to a point of sale system. I mean, this is, this is automation, right? It may be it’s not a rolling robot, but it is certainly automation. And, you know, maybe I get too far off with this, but I’ll at least share my thoughts on this is that the nature of work has been changing for all of time, right. And certainly, I wasn’t alive, excellent, however, many 1000s of years ago, and, you know, so it won’t go to try try to go too far back. But it does always make me think about things like arrowheads, or the ability to create spark that creates fire. You know, these are tools that we use the wheel as a as kind of a simple example. Right? So throughout,
JJ
Jeremy Julian
39:00
we’re gonna go back to framers and tell them, they’re gonna use hammer and nails instead of a nail gun, and they’re gonna tell us to get the hell out of here.
CC
Corwin Carson
39:05
Absolutely. Absolutely. There’s some amazing videos of hanging drywall from like, the 60s 70s, where it was an incredibly manual process. And yeah, one one nail at a time. It’s amazing, right, so unbelievably skilled. And, you know, I respect it all so much. But I think I think perhaps that’s, I always think of the word embrace is that you do all change, I guess happens, right? And there’s all kinds of great quotes about that. But technology, you know, that there’s no, in a good way, you know, we haven’t been technology hasn’t stopped yet, if anything, it’s accelerated. And I think, you know, as we even talk internally as a company about, you know, our vision and our mission in the world. You know, we think a lot about driving humanity, improving humanity in improving the human experience in general, allowing humans to spend more time and all of this the backup of that is by creating robots by automating my main done extreme periences, right by, you can sort of insert, you know, a number of words there. But I think that is, ultimately the goal is technology should make all of our lives better. Now, it’s sort of an easy thing to say out loud, until maybe you’re the one who who has that feeling of perhaps, your job changing. And I was really would use the word changing, but because of technology, but I think the other side of this coin that that always comes up in these conversations, but it’s so real, because we hear it constantly is from the availability of labor perspective. I have honestly not talked to a business owner for I mean, we’re, I’m literally feel like my whole career, you know, someone has continually said, We just can’t find the people, right. And sometimes it’s, we can’t find them for third shift, or I can’t, you know, can’t find them that, that wanna work in the kitchen and the back of the house or the front of the house, or, you know, it’s everyone might have their slightly different pain. But then we hear that over and over again. And you know, unemployment rates are incredibly low. And, you know, one spec I hear in the hospitality space, the greater hospitality space is that a half million jobs go unfilled every month, I think this was the absolute like, the Bureau of Labor Statistics stat from a couple months ago. And this is, you know, I see this statistics, and then you go and talk to business owners, and it’s the same story over and over again. So I think this is real. I don’t think this is real. This is here, they say.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
41:31
It’s the same thing. The staff that’s there, they’re understaffed, always a nationally recognized brand a couple of like, a month ago, with our staff, and the restaurant was empty. But we’re there on a 40 minute wait, because they couldn’t get staff to serve people. And, and they were paying well, so it wasn’t about pay. It was just the availability of labor wasn’t there? And so how do we automate some of those tasks? If Corbin Oh, sorry, go ahead, Jeremy. I’m just gonna say though, the other thing I would throw at you is, is if you’re not considering it, and I think this is the the call to action for you guys, as other people are doing it. So if you’re not there, you’re fighting a losing battle, because you’re stubborn that you say, You know what, how many of you 10 years ago, 15 years ago, 20 years ago said, I’ll never get a smartphone, I’m gonna say on the flip phone. And how many of you have a flip phone still today, very few of you, especially the listeners to this podcast. And so if you’re one of those naysayers, it’s like, all these things are never going to work. They aren’t working every single day in restaurants and making guest experiences better to your examples that you talked about earlier. So I apologize. I didn’t mean to cut you off, I just I want our listeners to understand that if you’re not doing it, your competitors are, and you’ve got to figure out how does it fit within your brand to deliver the guests experience that you’re looking for? For sure.
CC
Corwin Carson
42:47
And, you know, you just sort of made me think about the turnover side of it as well, is if you’re in that place where you are already short staffed, and you have great people that you want to you want to hold on to. It’s it may, I think some people may hesitate to utilize technology for that. But really, as I mentioned, kind of the adoption story, the other side of that is even more important, you know, how can you empower and enable support, you know, what can you do to make those employees enjoy their job the most and, you know, keep that turnover down and keep happy employees. And then of course, we already touched on the guest side of that, there are many brilliant quotes out there that, you know, take care of your people and your people will take care of, of your customers. And, you know, I think this is this is really evident when you go into businesses, how you know, what the culture is, and what I was gonna say earlier. So we actually just had a deployment started two days ago, and yesterday I was there, this was a very prominent hotel chain and hotel Hotel Group. And we were talking with the bartender, who was also serving the tables around the restaurant, and constantly running in and out of the bar area. And of course, every time that person had to do that one side or the other, something was being neglected, right? Either the table was being neglected, or you are the people at the bar. And the answer was simply that someone had called in that day, and unfortunately, it happens quite frequently. We just don’t have enough people, right? This was, this was the world and I saw the culture of this business firsthand, wonderful people and running a great business. And just again, the reality is that they just cannot find enough people to work that second shift, especially for them. Which way that touches to another thing, hospitality industry. Some of it we’re talking 24/7 sort of operations, right. I mean, even even the two shifts, you know, it can be challenging to get into the evenings. And this is challenging for people’s lives as well. But do you have a family at home? Or are you have to work two jobs or any of these things, you know, this this, this is challenging times?
JJ
Jeremy Julian
44:53
Well, and the pandemic has only accelerated it, as we talked about earlier, and so it’s accelerated. We’ve lost a lot of jobs and I think all of our lives listeners know that. So I know we’re getting close to time. What does engagement look like? What did people need to be considering when they engage with your team and say, I need to solve this problem? I heard Corwin talk, I got to have this. What you know, talk to me a little bit about where do they go? What does the journey look like, from zero to having robots do everything in the restaurant not having any staff? I know, that’s not the case. But you know, I say it in jest. But at the end of the day, you know, people need to consider this, what is the journey look like? And how do they engage with your team? And how do they how do they take the next step?
CC
Corwin Carson
45:34
Sure. And as I mentioned, we’ll share link where they can fill out the contact form, and of course, we would reach out to them right away. But the process in general, you know, step one, I always say that there, there needs to be a good discovery phase. So our team would come out, of course, we can introduce our technology, but most importantly, we want to learn and understand your business. What are those challenges you’re facing? You know, what, what meals are the busiest for you? What your Where do you have the greatest labor shortage? You know, perhaps where do you have some, some people that are heading towards retirement, and you’re, at least you’re on the fortunate end of knowing that that’s coming, which I think is, we didn’t touch on it, but certainly something that a lot of businesses are facing, but it’s really to, you know, understand that, that need that the customer has, and you know, whereas step two, you know, thinking about the solution side of it, you know, how can we apply the, the technology that exists today, to to help support those problems, and I use the word solution and technology broadly, because, of course, we have a restaurant robot, and that is, that is a something where we are going to market with and as an important part of our portfolio, but quite frequently, that solution may be beyond that as well, right? We mean, we may need to work with a partner for you to, you know, integrate with a POS to, you know, be able to call the the the robot back to the kitchen when the orders ready from a kitchen management system or something along those lines. So it’s, you know, after that discovery, you know, you have a little bit of that architecting, the solution. And then let’s say that all goes well, the third phase, I use the word adoption, you know, a number of times and the word deployment, right, we want to work with the customer very closely on the deployment training phase, as well. So we have a solution, we’ve identified a good a good business case, a good value to the to the company. And then we want to just make sure that it’s adopted, and the process there ranges from training, multiple shifts, multiple people, managers, from that side of the coin, all the way to just as an example, we give daily reports of the usage of the product. Were there any issues? Did you lose your wireless signal? Did you have a blocked robot for some reason, you know, we constantly track that. So we can provide that feedback back to the business as well, to see, hey, look, you know, if we were able to work through some of these issues here or use it a little bit longer, which I do want to talk about as a service in a moment, but you actually are essentially reducing the cost of that robot by, you know, the longer you use it, right, or the greater distance to travel. So that’s even a spec we provide to people, because that’s a huge part of that value is, wow, that drove that robot drove three miles last night, right. And this is, this is tremendous. So I would break it down into kind of those three areas. And real quickly, I’ll touch on that adoption side, just in one key area for our company, I mentioned our roots with all the bear and you’re producing a lot of social and public robotics, to robotics that are designed for use in the public and for interaction. We have we’ve done everything we can and we won’t stop because this is software, creating a product that is as easy to use as possible. I, you mentioned your job for me, even though I’m an economics degree. And here I am in the robotics world, I fully consider myself an expert user. And that’s not some big compliment. To me, it’s because the product was designed so well to be able to, you know, if you can use a smartphone, if you can use apps, you can use this product. And it’s amazing. Yes, and I think that’s huge for that adoption side, because we want we want everyone to be able to use it for them again, for them to feel empowered, you know, to utilize technology and their daily operation because ultimately, your team is who you want using this and that’s how you will retain people. That’s how you provide the best customer experience and all of the things that we’ve been talking about. Well, and
JJ
Jeremy Julian
49:25
I’m going to ask you to end on on you know, one last point Corwin which is the whole idea of this is gonna cost me a million dollars and I can’t afford this. You know, I know that that’s a an argument we get from our audience when they you know, when they hear about new and new and awesome technology. They’re like, that’s great. But that’s for the big boys. I can’t do this. dispel that myth that says these things pay for themselves. Very, very quickly. Talk to me a little bit about how you guys get it economic enough that it makes sense for them when they adopt these tools.
CC
Corwin Carson
50:00
Sure, and I think I’ll start with just technology in general, we I mentioned earlier that as technology improves and increases, you know, it’s it, the nature of work changes, and we begin, we continue sort of automating tasks that that people do. The fortunately, as that progresses, the cost of it quite frequently goes down. So I would, I would easily say that these are shockingly affordable the market for this is, is shockingly affordable. And which, again, you sort of have to have that intersection of ROI, the business case, he doesn’t need to be there as well, compared to just playing with cool technology. And it is it is definitely there. And we’ve kind of been able to show that quite frequently and glad to talk about that offline with any anyone that would like to, you know, talk more about your what do the real numbers look like. But fortunately, one thing I would add to that is that the robot is a service is something that we offer, and, and has entered the world, you know, maybe as a five years ago, or so people started to think about this concept and something that we fully believe in both from service to the guests or service to our customers. And then also even from like a sustainability perspective, is we want to make sure that that product doesn’t land up, end up in a landfill, you know, if the hardware becomes outdated, which inevitably due to the pace of technology will happen. So if you look at are here, I’ll give you one quote that one of our salespeople says that I actually think is really powerful and simple is that the robot from a cost perspective boils down to about $20 a day. So if you think about even utilizing this product for a few hours, right, or retaining one person who feels overworked, that, you know, is valuable to your organization, you know, something like $20 a day is, is incredibly affordable to business owners. And I
JJ
Jeremy Julian
51:54
mean, it’s an hour and an hour of labor for the most part.
CC
Corwin Carson
51:57
It certainly is. And there’s there’s no question that that value is there, again, as long as we’ve identified a good case for it, right, you know, deployed it properly and trained your your users to use it, and you’re kind of empowered your team to use it when the manager maybe it’s not there, which is always important. But yes, this is this is technology that’s ready to go. Will it do everything? Of course not. But that’s that’s not a true technology. But there is, there is true value it can bring to two organizations right now.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
52:27
I love it. I love it. So give us the website, where do they where do they learn more? Where do they go, go jump on and talk to one of your sales team members? Because I am I’m pretty certain I am pretty certain that that the the more that we have listeners hearing this story, the more that you guys are going to hear and want to know more. So talk to me a little bit about what where can they go find more about you more about the product more about what it is that you guys do?
CC
Corwin Carson
52:54
Sure. So I think the easiest way we created a landing page for you directly so it is LP like landing page LP dot United robotics group.us/podcast. So this is a landing page, we’ve got a simple form, you know, a couple a couple couple fields to fill out and that will come directly to our team here and we would reach out to you right away. Of course we have website it is united robotics group.us. For for customers here in the US. And then internationally, we have united robotics dot group as well. So any of those depending on where you are in the world, we’ll help you access right information. But again, LP dot United robotics group.us back slash podcast will take you right to us.
JJ
Jeremy Julian
53:43
I love it. I love it. Kerwin, I can’t thank you enough for continuing to drive the innovation. I often talk to guests on the show. And I go, what are my kids and my kids kids experience on a restaurant going to be? Because it’s always just amazing to me to think about the speed of automation, the speed of enhancements, and the experience that I had as a kid is different than they have now. And I can only imagine what companies like yourself and others are going to do to just continue to grow the guest experience. So thank you for, for sharing a little bit about your guest story. To our audience, guys. We know that you guys have got lots of choices out there. So thank you guys for spending, you know an hour with us each and every week when we post one of these podcasts. If you haven’t already done so while you’re checking out United robotics group online, go subscribe to the podcast. We did start just posting these also on YouTube. So if you haven’t already, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to the YouTube channel. Check us out on social media. Make sure that you guys are connected in every way so that you guys don’t miss an episode. Corwin. Thank you guys for your time and to our listeners. Make it a great day.
CC
Corwin Carson
54:48
My pleasure. Thank you Jeremy. Thanks so much.
I
Intro
54:52
Thanks for listening to the restaurant technology guys podcast. Visit restaurant technology guys.com For tips in this Insights and more to help you run your restaurant better
