Nevin’s Newfield Inn bar and restaurant in County Mayo hires two robot waiters to make up for staff shortages.
A County Mayo bar and restaurant has taken innovation to the next level by bringing on board two robot waiters.
With staff shortages due to lockdown and members of hospitality changing careers to work more sociable hours, pubs and restaurants all over the world had to deal with the fallout.
One County Mayo restaurant had an interesting solution to the staff shortage problem. In February, they trialled an AI (Artificial Intelligence) robot, named Bella, to act as a waiter delivering food to tables.
Following the success of the trial, they have added another robot friend alongside Bella, called Bertie.
Nevin’s Newfield Inn – first to try out Artificial Intelligence in the area
Across the span of the pandemic, many pubs and bars like Nevin’s Newfield Inn were left in the lurch when a member of staff unexpectedly caught Covid and had to isolate.
Nevin’s Newfield Inn in County Mayo had tested out a robot waiter in February of this year. With much success with customers and staff, they have decided to bring another robot on board.
They posted on their Facebook page last week that their two robot waiters Bella and Bertie have become “permanent resident(s) here with us”.
Bella and Bertie – permanent residents
With so many shortages of staff in all workplaces since the pandemic, Nevin’s Newfield Inn, between Newport and Achill Island, has hired two robot waiters to tackle the issue of staff shortages.
Talk of the restaurant’s two robot waiters has made its way all over Ireland and further afield. They said that their two new hires “are here to assist our wonderful staff delivering food to our tables”.
With an AI robot’s inability to catch Covid, and therefore no need to spend days in isolation, they make the perfect addition to the team.
The future of AI – robots replacing humans
Like something straight out of an episode of Black Mirror, the World Economic Forum estimates that 7.1 million jobs could be lost in the future due to redundancy from not just AI, but advances in technology in general.
Although this is relatively recently put into practice in Ireland, AI robots have been put in place all across the world to fulfill all sorts of Jobs.
Countries like Singapore, the US, UK, and Germany are the leading countries in AI research. However, Japan has the highest number of industrial robots in the world. There, robots assemble more robots.
