The First Automated Restaurant In The World Opens In Germany

NUREMBERG,Germany - The first sit-down restaurant in the world that doesn't have waiters opened earlier this month in Nuremberg,Germany. They've been replaced with a fully automated ordering and table service system.

Michael Mack, who got his start operating a profitable iron foundry in Nuremberg, has reinvented the way guests are served food and drinks and infused the culinary world with a bit of the Jetsons.

At the bistro 's Baggers, the waiter of old has been shown the door,and it's uncertain he'll actually be missed. Instead of the classic, apron and tie-wearing waiter, each table has been connected by metal rails to the kitchen. Dishes like "organic beef in buttermilk" and "sausage en croute" glide along the rails to customers, propelled by gravity.

For the magic to work at all, Mack had to install the kitchen directly beneath the roof of the multistory restaurant. Customers order their meals using a touch-screen system that is placed at each table, and the entire restaurant is networked via a computer system.

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Customers' orders are registered upstairs in the kitchen and a computer in the cellar keeps track of supply stocks. The system also calculates the likely delivery times for drinks and meals at every table and keeps customers informed.

Michael Mack believes there is a global market for his new invention. His gravity feed rail system is patented in Germany and he is seeking protection for the invention internationally so that he can license it to restaurants abroad.

"Billions of euros in personnel costs could be saved using this system.We don't need service at the table," Mack said.

The bizarre mechanism certainly lures a large number of curious people to the drab, out of the way Nuremberg industrial park where it is located. Whether or not the guests will take to the restaurant is unclear.

"We prefer a nice friendly waiter to this cold stainless steel system you can't talk to," one visitor complained recently in a posting on the Internet forum Restaurant-Kritik.de.

A comment from another observer demonstrates the automated service system can trigger other unsavory associations too: The spiraling rails remind her of the automated feeding system used to feed pigs on large farms. http://www.restaurant-kritik.de/88343/ http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,501086,00.html