How much does a service robot cost for a restaurant?

The question always comes first, and it deserves a straight answer. A dining-room delivery robot, the one that brings dishes out and takes plates back, costs around €7,500 before tax to buy for a compact three-tray model, and up to about twelve thousand euros for the highest-capacity models. On a lease, expect between €200 and €400 a month over three years, maintenance included. The exact quote depends on the model and your dining room, and we only produce it after seeing it.

But the purchase price is the wrong question. The right one: how many hours of service does the robot free up, and what are those hours worth to you?

What the price includes

A service robot delivered to a restaurant is not a box left at the door. The price normally includes:

• Mapping the dining room. The robot learns your floor plan, your numbered tables, the position of the pass and the dish pit. It takes half a day.
• Installation and commissioning with your teams, service after service, until the route runs smoothly.
• Staff training: calling the robot, loading trays, sending it back, and knowing what to do when it stops in front of a badly placed chair.
• Maintenance and updates for the duration of the contract, with a replacement robot in case of a long breakdown.

If a quote does not spell out these four points, ask for them. That is where the difference lies between a robot that works and a robot that decorates.

Buy or lease?

Buying suits an establishment that runs all year, with a stable dining room and a service that will not move. The robot pays off over three to five years, and maintenance is contracted separately.

Leasing suits every other case: strong seasonality, a dining room that changes, a wish to test before committing cash. It spreads the cost into a monthly charge, includes maintenance, and lets you switch models if capacity is no longer enough. It is also the formula we recommend for a first robot, because it leaves room to be wrong.

The calculation that matters: an 80-cover service

Take a restaurant with 80 covers per service, two services a day, six days a week. Three waiters on the floor. During a service, each makes dozens of trips between the pass and the tables, and as many to the dish pit.

A delivery robot carries up to four trays and forty kilos per run, for fifteen to eighteen hours on one charge. In practice it absorbs most of the delivery and clearing trips. The waiters stay at the tables: taking orders, advising, upselling, taking payment. Those are the moments that make the revenue and the online reviews, not the walk down the corridor.

In concrete terms, what restaurateurs see takes two forms:

• With the same headcount, service is faster and absorbs the rush without hiring an extra. Tables turn better, the average ticket goes up because the waiter has time to suggest a dessert.
• With the same service, the establishment copes with one waiter fewer on quiet slots, or stops looking for an extra it cannot find. In a sector where recruitment is the first difficulty cited, that is often the decisive argument.

To do your own calculation, take the fully loaded cost of one hour of floor service, multiply by the number of extra hours you will no longer do or cannot find, over a month. Compare with the robot's monthly payment. In most dining rooms of this size, the robot is paid for by the extra hours it avoids, before even counting the rise in the average ticket.

What makes a project fail

Three causes come up again and again. A dining room with steps, aisles under sixty centimetres or an uneven floor: the robot can sometimes adapt, but you need to know beforehand. A team that was not involved in the choice, and leaves the robot in a corner. A robot picked from a catalogue rather than from a real measurement of flows: too small, it disappoints; too big, it gets in the way.

That is why we always start with an on-site audit: floor plan, aisle measurements, observation of a service. Only then comes the quote, with the right model, and a trial in real conditions before signing.

To go further, see our range of service robots and the page on restaurants and hotels.