Waiter-Free Dining

Wannabe actors who wait on tables and sadistic customers who love to berate service staff beware: your livelihood and malicious pleasures may soon be at an end thanks to a German entrepreneur who has created a completely automated restaurant.

At a time when most economies need more jobs, not fewer, Michael Mack has gone and invented a futuristic eatery which will, if it takes off, deprive thousands of desperate workers of their income and deny grouches the chance to swear at inept waiters.

Pompous old men who spend their retirements complaining will no longer be able to send their soup back for being a tad on the tepid side because the machines in Mack’s Frankfurt restaurant won’t listen and will give even less of a toss than a clock-watching teenager earning minimum wage.

Food served via a silver slide

That may not stop the most determined moaner, however. If the dissatisfied customer still wants to scream at something then maybe he or she can take pleasure in tearing a few strips off the metallic, spiral chute that has replaced the quivering, underpaid servant standing nervously beside the diner’s table. So when a plate of bratwurst in puff pastry comes sliding down from the kitchen above, maybe an assault on the chute will suffice.

Mack has eradicated the need for staff both in the ordering and payment processes, leaving nameless, faceless chefs as the only humans beavering away in the converted factory which houses the “‘s Baggers” restaurant.

Safely in the upper reaches of the converted industrial building away from the ravenous hordes below, the chefs read all the information off the eatery's computer system, create their masterpieces to order, put them on the serving spirals and let gravity do its work.

Computers operate front of house

Down at ground level, customers are required to order everything from seating arrangements to refreshments through the touch screens at the tables. The information is then fed into the system which then calculates the prospective delivery time for food and drinks.

The fully-automated restaurant, if it takes off in the way Mack hopes -- and he has already patented the serving spirals in advance of a global franchise plan -- will become just another area of our lives in which personal connection with service staff has been reduced.

It will join Hotelmats (where guests check in 24 hours a day with just a credit card) and supermarkets with self-scanning and automated pay booths in the growing list of dehumanized experiences.

Luckily there are enough old-fashioned, people-powered service industries still around for those who like to shout and bawl at disinterested staff.