There is a restaurant like this in Guangzhou. As soon as you enter the shop, the robot greets you and navigates and guides the way. The chefs are robots waving robotic arms. The dishes are shuttled back and forth on the ceiling, and the robots or cloud rail systems will deliver the dishes to the table. Above, guests can take it off and taste, the cocktails are made by robots... Isn't this kind of cool?

Recently, Qianxi Robot Catering Group, a subsidiary of Country Garden, announced the opening of its flagship Foodom Robot Chinese Restaurant, which has independently developed core technologies, in Guangzhou. The restaurant specializes in Shunde cuisine, and the ingredients are distributed in a centralized manner. The side dishes, cooking, and delivery are all done by robots, achieving overall system planning and intelligent management and operation.

Systematic robot restaurant launched

46 types of robots including frying robots, dessert robots, and burger robots will be exhibited at Foodom Robot Chinese Restaurant. It is reported that the core technology of catering robots of Qianxi Group is systematically independently developed. Taking cooking robots and claypot rice robots as examples, 10 Shunde chefs were invited to teach robot “apprentices” to cook at the beginning of the development. The chefs repeatedly adjusted the temperature and temperature, taste feedback, added amount, cooking time, etc., and finally input the standardized cooking process into the robot computer.

Yan Weixin, Dean of the Research Institute of Qianxi Robot Catering Group, introduced that one of the difficulties of Chinese food cooking is uniform heating. The scientific research team needs to interpret and implement a series of cooking actions with machines. "These robots have undergone rigorous data testing, and the data is used to ensure that the taste is accurately replicated. The robots cook and produce more efficiently, and the quality of the dishes is more stable."

In addition, Qianxi Robot Catering Group has independently developed a customer service system and a robot equipment dispatch system. The customer service system supports multi-channel ordering, multi-payment models, and multi-catering formats. The robot equipment scheduling system can adapt to the equipment scheduling requirements of different scenarios, including order splitting, equipment scheduling management, task scheduling algorithms, etc.

In order to meet the needs of robot restaurant operations, Qianxi Group has built a large central kitchen in Shunde, Foshan, to control the source of food ingredients, and has automated assembly lines, intelligent processing equipment, full cold chain distribution and electronic traceability to ensure that the processing process avoids pollution. After the standardized treatment, the food materials are directly stored in the cold storage after arriving at the restaurant, until the food materials enter the robot cooking equipment, and the processing and production process of the kitchen is not in contact with humans.

The prototype of Country Garden's technology industry is emerging

Guangzhou is a famous historical and cultural city in China, and its Cantonese cuisine is famous at home and abroad. Yang Guoqiang, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Country Garden Group, said: "The advanced robot restaurant is a collision and combination of inheriting Cantonese cuisine culture and technology. By using advanced technology, robots can better inherit and retain the best cooking skills of celebrity chefs." 

At the beginning of 2019, Country Garden proposed a new positioning of "a high-tech comprehensive enterprise that creates products for a better life for the world", with real estate, robots and modern agriculture. Entering the robotics field is one of Country Garden's important measures in the high-tech field. Its subsidiary Qianxi Robot Catering Group specializes in equipment research and development and restaurant operations.

According to Qiu Mi of Qianxi Robotic Catering Group, the company has been based on mastering core technology at the beginning of its establishment in May 2019. Up to now, the R&D team has more than 750 people, with a cumulative investment of over 200 million yuan, and has developed more than 70 robotic equipment. More than 300 patent applications have been submitted. As the core equipment for restaurant operations, the 46 types of robots that Foodom Robot has invested in Chinese restaurants have all achieved independent research and development in core technologies, and can achieve continuous upgrades and iterations.

Relying on the resources of Country Garden Group, Qianxi Robot Catering enjoys the inherent advantages of building a closed loop of the entire upstream and downstream industrial chain: the front-end can integrate Country Garden's accumulated advantages in modern agriculture, laying the foundation for the open source of food ingredients for robot catering, and the back-end is based on Country Garden's own community As well as hotel and education resources, it provides market space for robot catering.

Qiu Mi said that the robot restaurant will not consider the investment in research and development costs within 3 years, and hopes to win on scale in the future. "Qianxi Robot Catering plans to open more than one thousand restaurants nationwide within 2 years." Qiu Mi said.

Nowadays, around the main real estate business that continues to grow stronger, the territory of Country Garden's high-tech industry composed of Bozhilin Robotics, Modern Agriculture, Biyou and Robot Restaurant, is taking shape. Yang Guoqiang said that Country Garden is grateful for the opportunity of the times to take the initiative to assume its mission, give full play to its own advantages, and strive to become a high-tech enterprise to help China's smart manufacturing and Chinese creation.