Restaurant Serving Robot: From Automats to ABB

A restaurant serving robot is usually a rolling stand with a few trays, a screen for a face and sensors that keep it clear of chairs and feet. It carries plates from the kitchen to the table so the staff don't have to. This post follows that job from waiters with trays and the coin-operated automats of Philadelphia and New York to sushi belts and today's robot food runners. It then looks at a German restaurant in Sanford, Florida, that began leasing a BellaBot in September 2026, at SoftBank Robotics' new push into European foodservice, and at where ABB robots such as YuMi and the Flexley Mover fit in a dining room.

A serving robot carrying dishes on its tray at a restaurant in Beijing West Railway Station, 2020. Photo: N509FZ / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

How plates got to the table before robots

For most of restaurant history, a person carried every plate. Waiters took the order, walked it to the kitchen, waited at the pass and brought the food back, often with several plates balanced on one arm. A 1906 photograph in the Library of Congress shows a waiter in a dinner jacket taking an order from two men at a small table by a window, and the routine has hardly changed since. Much of a server's shift is spent walking between the same two points, the kitchen door and the tables. Machines have been trying to take over that walking for more than a century.

A waiter takes an order from two men at a restaurant table, 1906. Photo: Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

The first attempt to cut out the waiter was the automat. The Quisisana in Berlin, opened in 1895, sold food from vending machines. Horn & Hardart brought the idea to the United States on 12 June 1902, at 818 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia, with patented machines from Max Sielaff's factory in Berlin, and opened in New York in 1912. The machines at first took only nickels. Customers dropped coins in a slot, turned a knob and lifted a small glass door to take out a sandwich or a slice of pie. Staff on the other side of the wall refilled the compartments from the kitchen, so the carrying still happened, just out of sight.

A Horn & Hardart Automat in New York, photographed by Bernard Gotfryd between 1960 and 1980. Photo: Bernard Gotfryd / Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons (public domain)

Japan found another way to move food without waiters. Yoshiaki Shiraishi had trouble staffing his small sushi restaurant, and after watching beer bottles ride a conveyor at an Asahi brewery he spent five years developing a belt for plates. He opened Mawaru Genroku Sushi in Higashiosaka in 1958, the first conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Many chains now add a second express lane that sends special orders straight to the customer's seat, sometimes on a carrier shaped like a bullet train. Free-roaming robots came much later. Pudu Robotics was founded in Shenzhen in 2016, and Bear Robotics of Redwood City, California, put its Servi robot on the market in the early 2020s.

A bullet train shaped carrier on the express order lane of a conveyor belt sushi restaurant. Photo: Syced / Wikimedia Commons (CC0)

Restaurant serving robots in 2026

Hollerbach's German Restaurant in downtown Sanford, Florida, started testing Pudu's BellaBot in September 2026. The kitchen is about 150 feet from the Lodge bar, and owner Theo Hollerbach said food was going cold while bartenders left their stations to fetch it. The robot now drives a preprogrammed route from the kitchen to the bar, where the bartender lifts the plates off the trays and takes them to the guest. Hollerbach calls it his horizontal elevator, next to the vertical one that already sends food up to the rooftop bar. He is leasing the robot for a three-month trial at $600 a month, and buying it outright would cost about $16,000.

A Pudu Robotics service robot serving guests at a sushi restaurant, 2022. Photo: Marc Auledas-Noguera / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

Guests like it. Hollerbach told FOX 35 that most of them take a picture with Bella, which has a smiling digital face, ears that move and a hat they can touch. The restaurant had no dedicated food runner on that route before, so servers did the trips themselves. Suppliers are now pushing into Europe. On 30 September 2026 SoftBank Robotics said it would show its foodservice robots at EquipHotel in Paris from 2 to 5 November. The lineup includes STEAMA, a cooking robot that steams frozen noodle dishes in about 90 seconds, and Servi Q, built with Bear Robotics. Servi Q is 35 cm wide and can drive through aisles as narrow as 45 cm.

A Keenon waiter robot carrying plates of food at a restaurant in Beijing, 2020. Photo: N509FZ / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

ABB does not make a serving robot, and no ABB robot is part of the Sanford trial or the SoftBank lineup. ABB machines work nearer the stove. At BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California, an IRB 360 FlexPicker and a YuMi cobot assemble burgers, which our fast food kitchen post covers in detail. ABB's Flexley Mover AMRs, such as the P604, find their way around factories with 3D visual SLAM and need no fixed tracks, which is the same navigation problem a food runner solves between tables. The two companies are also connected by ownership plans. In October 2025 SoftBank Group agreed to buy ABB's robotics business for $5.375 billion, with closing expected in mid to late 2026.

An ABB YuMi cobot finishing a burger at BurgerBots in Los Gatos, California. Photo: ABB

Where serving robots go next

Today's food runners stop at the table and wait for a person to unload them. A mobile base like a Flexley Mover carrying a cobot such as GoFa or YuMi could, in principle, hand the plate over itself. ABB sells no such product, so this is only a possibility. An arm moving near seated guests would need certified safety functions such as SafeMove, which limits speed and keeps the arm inside set zones. The route, the reach over the table and the handover would all have to be planned and tested on a computer first, for example in RobotStudio, before anyone tried it in a busy dining room.

The ABB Flexley Mover P604, which navigates with 3D visual SLAM. Photo: ABB

At home a serving robot makes less sense. In most homes the kitchen is a few steps from the table, and the robots people actually buy, such as vacuums and lawn mowers, take on longer and duller jobs. Care is the exception. Someone who walks with a frame cannot carry a hot bowl at the same time, and a robot that brings meals to the table would help. ABB has shown a mobile YuMi concept, two arms on a wheeled base, for hospital labs. A home version would have to be much cheaper and quieter before families considered it, so for the next few years serving robots will mostly stay in restaurants and hotels.

ABB's mobile YuMi concept, a dual-arm robot on a wheeled base, in a hospital lab corridor. Photo: ABB

Cost is the first open question. A $16,000 robot that only carries plates has to save enough staff time to pay for itself, which is why Hollerbach is running a three-month trial before he decides. Dining rooms are also hard places to drive, with steps, bags on the floor, children and spilled drinks. Somebody on the team has to remap the routes whenever tables move or a new section opens, and most restaurant staff have never programmed a robot. Servers do more than carry food, too. They read the table, fix mistakes and handle complaints, and none of today's food runners can do that.

A Chinese made robot waitress carrying a tray in a café in Rapallo, Italy, 2019. Photo: Tiguliano / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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