There is a Freshii at the bottom of our office building that is staffed by exactly one human. This human’s main job is to prepare food orders and then distribute those food orders to the humans waiting for lunch.
If you’d like to place an order, well that is done through an iPad-like device on the counter and a video feed of someone that is seemingly located very far away from the bottom of our office building. You just tell the person on the screen what you’d like and they ring it through.
And if you’d like to add a drink to your order, simply grab it yourself, hold it up to the iPad, and then boom. There’s very little room for chitchatting. This is an important lunch transaction.
Virtual humans are not a new thing. Some, though not many, residential buildings use them in place of in-person concierges. I don’t know exactly how much money this saves, but I would imagine that it’s meaningful. You can now leverage one human across multiple buildings.
So I think there’s no question that the world is heading in this direction. That is, less rather than more human interaction. But clearly this is all about utility. It’s about delivering you a healthy lunch bowl as quickly and efficiently as possible.
If you’re instead looking to sit by yourself at a bar and learn something from the bartender, or you’re looking for a truly remarkable hospitality experience — well those are different things all together.
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