Robots are helping restaurants deal with staff shortages, taking over some of the easier, but critical, day-to-day duties.

Just days ago, we wrote about the impact robots are having on service industries, an area once thought to be safe from robots and automation. According to CNN, restaurants are one industry that is particularly benefiting.

Espartaco Borga, owner of Dallas-based Latin restaurant La Duni, is renting robots for $15 a day. The robots have been a game-changer for Borga, who was struggling to meet the uptick in demand, with only a third of his staff returning after the pandemic slowdown. In spite of the smaller staff, Borga says their business was 50 to 100% higher than ever, including pre-pandemic levels.

The solution was robots from American Robotech.

“The very next day they showed up, they mapped the restaurant, and they assigned the tables numbers within 45 minutes,” Borga said. “After a day, the girl at the expo line was in love with this because her arm didn’t hurt after carrying 60 trays in a day.”

Borga says the robots greet customers, deliver orders and even sing “Happy Birthday” to customers. He’s also not worried about concerns of robots taking jobs, since his whole problem sprang from no one wanting the jobs he had available. Even more, with the money he’s saving using the robots — at a mere $15 a day — he’s able to pay his remaining workers more.

The robots are also a hit with customers.

“They don’t even see them as what they are, which is a tablet on wheels,” he said. “They see them as part of the service experience because these robots have a personality, they can interact. If you touch them, they giggle and they tell you things.”