When it comes to robots, we often think of bulky machines in large factories. However, with the ability to work better with humans, we can now envision a future where robot chefs/waiters/barista in restaurants and in the F&B industry. With Techman cobot, that dream has come true at Crown Coffee, Singapore! 

About Robot Barista

Crown Coffee is a local coffee shop in Singapore with four branches. As Crown Coffee expanded its business, CEO Keith Tan realized that finding long-term and suitable employees was a major challenge. A common feature in the service industry is the high rate of employee turnover, the employees do not work for a long time, making businesses waste a lot of time, effort, and costs for recruiting and training employees.

In addition, despite having their own recipes, Crown Coffee also faces the problem of beverage quality between working shifts and between branches. 

A new model for the food and beverage industry of the future 

In 2019, Keith decided to take an extremely impressive strategic move: deploying TM Robots in the store to replace humans to make customers more satisfied. 

Crown Coffee currently operates a robot barista that prepares and serves coffee. More than just serving coffee, TM Robot also demonstrates making coffee, interacting and serving coffee to customers. Crown Coffee customers were extremely excited and lined up to witness the rhythmic movements of the robot during the preparation and serving process.

Not only that, the robot can easily perform repetitive brewing steps that help keep the quality of their coffee consistent. Cobot is also capable of working tirelessly continuously, regardless of weekdays or holidays, so Crown Coffee no longer has to worry about recruitment, training and personnel management, thereby saving a lot of money, time and cost for the business. 

TM Robot also helps Keith realize the idea of a coffee shop operating 24/24 without humans. “We decided to use the Techman TM5 robot with integrated machine vision. Even though there are other robots that able to integrate an external camera, it will certainly increase our workload. With TM5, it saves us a lot of time and cost.” Keith said.

“Another extremely impressive feature of the TM5 is the intuitive user interface. Easy to understand graphics and using functional icons, we can program by just drag and drop these icons to build a streamlined workflow for the robot, very intuitive and easy to use. I have no previous experience of operating a robot but I can understand and use the software very quickly. Those are the reasons why we chose TM Robot in the first place.” This also allows Keith and his staff to utilize their spare time to communicate more with customers. 

Besides attracting more customers, Crown Coffee also attracted interest from other businesses, such as hotels, co-working spaces, airports, and more. So by assigning repetitive tasks to robots, humans can now handle more valuable tasks. Robotic technology is not intended to replace humans, but rather to assist us and work collaboratively with humans.  

A whole new paradigm for the coffee industry

TM Robot has extended Crown Coffee's vision of operating a coffee shop where you can combine data with automation with the entire user experience. Keith is also planning to take the automation elements of his business to the next level, building a comprehensive management system in his cafe. This new ecosystem will include IoT devices, AI and cameras with facial recognition technology, connecting all points from their ordering system to the back-end management system.

This will help store managers monitor product production status through all devices such as robotic arms and coffee machines, and know customer preferences or satisfaction with data. data from the POS system. By implementing the TM Robot, Crown Coffee is now automating its business and leading a whole new business model for the F&B industry.