This Ahmedabad café has a robot serving ice golas!

The innovation casts the spotlight on the growing trend of robotics in food service in India

The next time you head to an eatery and want to tip the waiter, he won't be smiling after you leave a tip. For the meal you have may come to you in the hands of a robot. In a trend that's taking off from the West, automated food service robots are serving food to customers as they navigate tables and there are quite a few in India, now. In Noida, The Yellow House - Robot Restaurant served multi-cuisine fare to thrilled customers via robotic waiters (said to be the first robot restaurant in Delhi NCR) and Chennai, Coimbatore and Bengaluru got robot-themed restaurants, too.

A food truck in Ahmedabad called Robotic Cafe has got a robot to serve gola desserts to patrons (Robotic Cafe)

Dishing up cool: Aisha the robot at the food truck (Robotic Cafe )

And recently, a pop-up truck called Robotic Cafe got a robot to serve customers flavoured ice golas. Food blogger from Ahmedabad, Kartik Maheshwari captured the experience for Instagram and the post has shot to 90K likes and counting!

Technology goes sweet

Kartik recalls his visit to the place post work. “I ordered a chocolate syrup gola and the robot brought it over to me, which was so cool. The kids who were around were so excited to see this, too. I've eaten in so many places, but this was my first experience in the city of being served by a robot.”

Food blogger Kartik Maheshwari visited the cafe post work hours and found the robot serving the chilled treat (Kartik Maheshwari )

We reached out to the café owner Aakash Gajjar who dished the deets on how he switched to AI from the prep to the serving. He says. "It's a new concept here for sure. Earlier, people would prepare the ice golas manually, but there was this question of how hygienic the ice is etc. We thought, ‘Let’s invent something where the machine would prepare the gola as well as a robot who would then give it to the customers."

The toppings - sev, fruit, dried fruit, syrup and other ingredients - are added via a machine and then a five-foot robot, developed and manufactured in-house, carries it to the patrons.

Name Aisha, the robot costs a neat sum - Rs1,35,000 ! It kicked off from March 1 and so far the menu has just ice golas. "People love the robot and want to take selfies with it. We actually have a long wait time each day," he adds.