Restaurants before the metaverse, robotization and the effects of war

Will you be able to enjoy a restaurant experience in the metaverse? Will robots cook and serve in the absence of qualified personnel? How will they overcome, when they began to recover from the pandemic, the increases in the prices of raw materials and energy due to the invasion of Ukraine?

These are some of the issues addressed over three days by more than 500 speakers who try to draw the future of the sector at the Hospitality Innovation Planet (HIP) congress, which ended this Wednesday in Madrid.

Robotization

Eva Ballarín, director of Hospitality 4.0 Congress (HIP’s hard core), points out in her conclusions about the congress that “robotization must be well understood, not as a substitution of human value, because we are the people’s industry and here is our great value, but to do complementary work”.

At HIP, fully robotic kitchens are presented in which dishes to take home are prepared, promoted by the company Remy Robotics in Spain and France, and the sector is open to this help. Silvia Soriano, cook and owner of Taberna Mercedes (Soria, northern Spain), reasons that it should be “as soon as possible” due to “the lack of qualified personnel and the standardization they achieve”.

Aitor Oyarbide, director and room manager of Casa Amàlia (Barcelona, ​​southeastern Spain) agrees because while the robots take care of the most routine and cumbersome tasks, the staff “will improve customer service; everything is advantages”.

Metaverse, cryptocurrencies and NFT

These emerging technologies can help restaurants, says Marius Robles, director of Food by Robots: “In the metaverse they can recreate their space, their dishes, their menus, teach how they cook and make experiences that can be monetized.”

Regarding NFTs (Non Fungible Token), he considers that there is “more risk of a bubble” although there are already those who use them as a means of financing “in the form of evolved crowdfunding”. “They can also be taken to the field of limited edition recipes or offer unique experiences,” adds who also anticipates that cryptocurrencies will reach the sector.

“I don’t know where these emerging technologies are going in restaurants, but if we don’t know about them, we won’t be able to find out. We have to understand what they are and not get in line, be pioneers in being able to have them because it will give us competitiveness”, defends Ballarín.

Lack of staff and increased costs

The shortage of workers suffered by the hospitality industry as a result of the fact that many of them left for other sectors during the pandemic closures could be alleviated by being “appetizing” for young talent and betting on training to “be more competitive”, according to the director. Hospitality 4.0 Congress.

It also warns of the “impact that geopolitical changes” have on the hotel industry, which is suffering from an increase in the prices of raw materials and energy due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

“You have to create a new purchasing engineering”, advises who also warns of the repercussion that the increase in the cost of gasoline will have on the growing business of home delivery and recommends looking for alternatives.

Like the one proposed by Le Casier Français, some machines with temperatures between 2 and 15 degrees in which producers or restaurants can leave their ingredients, dishes or complete menus so that customers can pick them up, an option that “works very well in rural areas , because they have become an option for farmers and in hospitals, universities and companies”, details Maxime Bera.