Timea will take your orders now: Kabul eatery first in Afghanistan to use robot

“Other restaurants may also introduce the same technology soon. Also, we have not fired any of our waiters to replace them with Timea.”

Weighing 30 kg, the petite 1.5-meter-tall robot has been designed to give the impression that she is wearing a headscarf. (AN photo by Sayed Salahuddin)
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Updated 16 February 2020

SAYED SALAHUDDIN
February 16, 2020

After taking an order and serving customers, Timea thanks them in audio messages

KABUL: A Kabul restaurant has become the first in Afghanistan to use a robot as its waiter, drawing flak from experts focusing on rampant joblessness in the country.

However, that hasn’t stopped regular and new diners from visiting the Times Restaurant, with its owners saying their cash registers haven’t stopped ringing since Timea began work last week.

Standing 1.5 meters tall and weighing 30 kg, the petite white and grey robot has been designed to give the impression that she is wearing a hijab or headscarf, and only serves women and families in the segregated section of the hotel, Mohammad Rafi Sherzad, the restaurant’s manager, told Arab News.

“It takes orders, processes it, serves food and delivers and bills the customers. It is a technological renovation here. We have regular customers, but new ones are also visiting to see the robot, too,” Sherzad said.

After taking an order and serving customers, Timea thanks them in audio messages that are prerecorded in Dari and Pashto, two of Afghanistan’s main languages.

And she doesn’t even take a tip.

“We usually go to other restaurants, but today came to see the robot,” said Mohammad Ajmal Raskh, a civil servant who visited the eatery with his wife and two children.

Another diner, school student Asadullah, said he was “thrilled” to see the robot in action.

“Hospitals and clinics could use this technology, too, based on their requirements,” he told Arab News.

However, in a country grappling with growing poverty, a high rate of joblessness and major power cuts, the use of the robot has drawn criticism, with experts saying it is a “ridiculous” move.

“This is unnecessary, perhaps, ridiculous and counter-productive, because 65 percent of people live below the poverty line, some barely live on a dollar a day, and the unemployment rate is very high. The restaurant owner should have dedicated it to a university for research,” Mohsin Amin, an analyst, said.

Sherzad, however, is taking the criticism in stride.

“Other restaurants may also introduce the same technology soon. Also, we have not fired any of our waiters to replace them with Timea.”

One fast-food restaurant in Afghanistan recently made a buzz by employing a robot as a waiter. Source: @IsmailHotak1

AFGHANISTAN - 02/17/2020
Afghanistan has its first robotic waiter – but is that a good thing?

One fast-food restaurant in Afghanistan recently made a buzz by employing a robot as a waiter. Many customers duly headed to the Times Restaurant in Kabul to see this high-end tech in action. Interestingly, just by having this robot in Afghanistan's capital as a waiter has highlighted some of the concerns among the country's conservative families. For example many of these families have not been happy with having male waiters, so this robot waiter has solved a problem.

Four months ago, Mohammad Naeimi opened the Times Restaurant in the Shahr-e-Now neighbourhood of Kabul. Then one month ago, he equipped his restaurant with a secret weapon: a robot.

'Everyone’s happy with this robot'

Naeimi claimed he imported this robot from Japan:

Our restaurant is not that big but we have 40 workers. Employing a robot was partly to attract the younger generation to our restaurant and to show them that it is possible to have new tech in Afghanistan too.

We wanted to familiarise them with new technolgies. This robot can welcome the customers, take their order, bring the order, give them the bill, receive the payment and also collect the dishes. It can manage eight tables at the same time, and it can speak in Persian, Pashtun and English. Its battery lasts for about 12 hours and then it has head to the charging station.
News about this robot has been everywhere on Afghan media and has even been covered by international media, such as Radio Free Europe. However many Afghans question the motivations behind employing a waiter robot in a country with 25 to 30 percent unemployment. The restaurant owner says he has not fired anyone for a robot’s job and it is just assistance to the restaurant's workers.

The Times Restaurant in Kabul. Source here

'With this robot, we no longer have unhappy conservative customers in our restaurant!'

Mohammad Naeimi continues:

The robot has also solved another problem that we had with conservative families. In many cases, they do not like that a male server approaches them to take orders or anything, so with this robot, we solved that problem.

When families are here with women with a hijab, we send our robot. So now they can eat our food and we have more customers. These customers can enjoy our restaurant without any problem. Everyone’s happy! So far everything is good. And we have customers who only come here to check out our robot.
Buy a robot or pay an Afghan worker for 10 years

However, many people havemade fun of this whole idea, saying it's not a good move. Others have suggested that the restaurant could employ a woman instead of the robot.

In addition, this robot came from China, not Japan. Its official name is “Amy” and it's produced by the Suzhou Pangolin Robot Corp. The price of this Chinese robotic waiter varies online from $6,000 to $7,500 (€5,537 to €6,921). This means that this robot costs between 463,000 and 579,000 Afghani, which is equivalent to a salary for eight to 10 years for an Afghan worker