Life of the Future – Dinner in 2035

Imagine this: After a pretty normal day of work you get home, greet your family and you all decide to go out for dinner. You pick a restaurant, unfortunately no reservations can be made. But you want to give it a go anyway because you really crave their food. Your apartment is on the 28th floor of a modern city residential tower. When leaving your home, you turn off all lights, radio and any other device that was running by clicking the home control app on your smartphone. While in the elevator you book a car which already awaits you downstairs when exiting the building.

Arriving at the restaurant you are being seated in a waiting area that virtually takes you to whatever destination you wish. Large screens around you can basically be set to any city, country or to the beach. Which is exactly where you choose to wait. A waiter brings you a cup of tea as a welcome drink and only a short while later you are being taken to your table. Except the individualized waiting are, nothing unusual so far. However, there is no waiter taking your order.

Ordering Dinner to your restaurant from other locations - sounds strange?

On every table there is an individualized QR-Code. Once you’ve scanned the code you are taken to the digital menu of the restaurant and you place your order. One of the kids doesn’t like the food and cannot find anything on the menu. He picks up his smartphone and orders at a nearby takeout. The food arrives about the same time as our order at the restaurant. If you think, that people around you might stare at you because you ordered something from another place don’t worry: You are not the only ones doing it. There are several delivery men walking in and out of the restaurant during your stay. Now back to the food you actually ordered at the restaurant you are sitting in. The food and drinks are being brought to you by a robot on a tray, accompanied by a human waiter who explains a little bit about the dished you ordered and asks if you have other wishes. Once the plates are on the table, both robot and human waiter leave you to it.

At some point during dinner, the waiter returns to your table and asks if you are enjoying the food and if he can do anything for you. He can’t. Everyone is happy. But then your wife suddenly feels like having a tea from her favorite brand. She takes out her smartphone and orders a HeyTea Mango Smoothie with cream cheese on top. The virtual queue shows that there are currently 25 people in front of her in line – just enough time to pick up the drink when you leave the restaurant. HeyTea is just across the street. However, when you finish dinner, your kids decide they want desert. In the meantime, the HeyTea queue shows there are only two people in front of your wife so she decides to order the kids desert via the QR-code on the table and she changes her tea order from pick-up to delivery. About three minutes later, the kids get their desert – this time it’s only the robot – and your wife gets her mango smoothie delivered to the restaurant.

At the end of dinner, you pay with your smartphone by scanning a QR code on your receipt and pay mobile. While walking out of the restaurant you call a car that arrives shortly after and takes you home.

Does this all sound odd to you? Like a scene out of a futuristic movie showing mankind in 2035?

This actually happened to me and my family just the other week in China. Connected services are a reality as much as robots serving food in restaurants. Everything is developed around the consumer’s convenience and China has successfully connected online and offline services – all to make the consumer’s life as agreeable as possible. The one thing that really struck me was that the plates were delivered by a robot and this way the human waiter could really tend to us, have a short conversation, explain a bit about the restaurant and the food. It was a nice mix of technology and humans.