2 weeks Ago
A robot server (not the guy on the left!) at Asian Noodle Bowl in Augusta delivers customers’ orders to their table. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald An ordinary strip mall in Augusta — FAMOUS Footwear, Bath & Body Works, American Eagle Outfitters, acres of asphalt — is hardly where you expect to encounter the future of American dining. Yet there, at the sunny, spic and span, fast-casual Asian Noodle Bowl earlier this month, I was served by my first robot waiter.
“Don’t forget your utensils up front. Please take your food and drink. Enjoy!” she (?) said in a flat, mechanical voice as she brought the Khao Soi Noodle bowl I’d ordered at the counter to my table.
“Have a good one!” Her message and intonations never changed as she delivered ramen, pho and fried rice to customers at surrounding tables. In utilitarian looks and in action (black and white, two trays plus a trash can, not remotely anthropomorphic), she wholly lacked the charm and personality of the loveable R2-D2. Still, my soup arrived hot, speedily, and with not a single drop spilled.
“During COVID we were short-staffed like most restaurants,” Asian Noodle Bowl co-owner Sourasay Senesombath said, explaining how the robot servers (there are two) got their jobs. “And people always called out. They get sick.
Obviously, they can’t come to work, so we will be short one person. The idea was the robot can run the food for us while we do something else. The robot is so smart that it will not run into customers or tables or any objects.
It’s very, very amazing.” The restaurant industry is plagued by sharply rising costs, ever-narrowing margins, changing workplace expectations and persistent labor shortages, all factors in the recent run of local closures . Add them up, many industry insiders say, and the model is broken.
When chef Christian Hayes announced on social media last summer he’d be closing The Garrison, his sophisticated fine-dining restaurant in Yarmouth, he wrote that the “antiquated” business model “will be the death of this industry as we know it.” In February, Kerry Altiero, who ran the quirky Cafe Miranda in Rockland for nearly 30 years, penned a vehement opinion piece for the Press Herald. “Our business models, which I and my colleagues worked to the max for decades, are no longer viable,” he wrote.
In 2023, world-famous chef Rene Redzepi spoke along the same lines to the New York Times when he announced he would close Noma restaurant in Copenhagen: “We have to completely rethink the industry.” And the James Beard Foundation titled the report it released in February on the state of the restaurant industry “Resilience and Reinvention .” Tough as the business is, not everyone agrees the model has failed.
Still, given the chance to redesign from the ground up, what, I asked several Maine chefs and restaurant owners, would The Restaurant of the Future look like? DoorDash delivery by flying car or monorail, perhaps? The automat revitalized for the 21st century? Robot servers with a whole lot more charisma? (At Asian Noodle Bowl, the robots can be programmed to sing Happy Birthday, Senesombath said, so that’s a start.) In fact, the ideas were mostly more practical, incremental and thoughtful, approaches like staying open all day , cross-training employees, eliminating tips , owning the building, raising prices by 20 percent, finding new revenue streams (such as prepared take-home meals) and truly evaluating one’s own business priorities. Co-owners and chefs Jonathan Cartwright and Selena Roy prepare meals at Caring Community Cuisine, the former Musette with a new name and mission — feeding people with cancer.
Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald At least a few people have more unconventional visions for the future of dining out: there’s Caring Community Cuisine, the former Musette in Kennebunkport that has made feeding cancer patients and their families the central part of its mission. And there’s the not-yet-launched restaurant collective, The Chametz, in New Vineyard, with a holistic approach that encompasses worker-owners, a “thrivable” starting wage of $30 per hour, and an on-property farm that prioritizes indigenous and heirloom produce. “It’s really just thinking about not a product in isolation, not the burger that comes to your table and how much you’re charging for it,” The Chametz co-owner Lina Mamut explained.
“But every little thing that goes into it, every touch point, and ensuring that as much of it is done by happy people in a happy environment, where they’re feeling fulfilled.” TIPS, TEAMS AND REAL ESTATE Here’s the advice Nina June chef/owner Sara Jenkins wishes someone had given her when she was starting out in the restaurant world more than 30 years ago: Buy the building. Jenkins, who spent some of her childhood in Italy and still has a family home there, said she thinks about why European restaurants endure whenever she travels there.
“How do these restaurants survive? And I think a lot of them survive because they own their own property.” Nina June sits inside the 1856 brick Union Hall in Rockport, facing Central Street on one side and the village’s picturesque harbor on the other. Does Jenkins own it? “No, I do not,” she sighed.
Sara Jenkins, chef/proprietor of Nina June in Rockport, has several suggestions for the Restaurant of the Future, among them eliminating tips. Photo by Hannah Patterson “In a dream world,” Jenkins would also eliminate tips, a topic that arose with — or in a few cases was studiously avoided by — other restaurateurs. “The whole tip thing is a failure,” she said.
“I used to joke in New York that the only people making money in restaurants were landlords and waiters, right? I know there’s this myth of the terribly underpaid waiter. But I would like to meet one. Sure, there are crap nights, and the winter can be hard.
But my wait staff makes on a good night in the summer between $50 and $75 an hour. My highest-paid cook is about $35 an hour. That’s a huge disparity, and I am a cook, so I really resent it.
” Jenkins has got a customer-focused idea, too. Since customers rate restaurants on Yelp all the time, and not always kindly, how about letting restaurants take a crack at it and rate the customers? It’s not as far-fetched as it sounds. After all, Uber allows it.
If an Uber driver sees, for instance, that a would-be fare tipped poorly in the past and threw up in the back seat, he can decline the passenger. In Jenkins’ Restaurant of the Future, customer menu modifications would go the way of the smoking section. It used to be, she said, that restaurant-goers “looked at the menu, you liked what the chef made, you heard about it, you wanted to experience it, you ordered what was on the menu.
” Now, many diners want to customize their dishes, unknowingly, she said, “bringing the whole (kitchen) line to a screeching halt.” For chef Matt Ginn, who recently left the Prentice Hospitality Group (Twelve, Chebeague Island Inn, Evo, and the Good Table) for Dry Dock (a new venture from Luke’s Lobster owners), the restaurant of the future is personal. You might call it the restaurant of his future.
As a young, ambitious cook rising up the ranks in the kitchen, his dream was to oversee an intimate, chef-driven restaurant with a seasonal, constantly changing menu where everything — everything — was made from scratch. To reach that, he happily worked long, late, punishing hours six nights a week. “I wanted to be on the line on Friday and Saturday at night.
Because if you weren’t, you weren’t on the A-team,” he said. Then he had kids, and everything changed. Today, Ginn’s vision for a restaurant of the future involves a large team, a lot of collaboration, an all-day schedule and cross-training (for “Swiss Army knife employees”), all part of an organizational structure that gives the staff more flexibility.
A more flexible schedule means a lot to Ginn: “I painted my daughter’s nails last night,” he said. She is 6. “Sparkle.
Clear paint and then we put glitter over it. A moment I’m glad not to be missing.” Another way to achieve work-life balance despite the high demands of the restaurant world, Ginn said, is for the organization to figure out where to put its energy, time and money.
“In every restaurant, every chef is going to have their own own opinion, right? You realize what you’re really opinionated about and what really is important to you,” he said. It may be butchering whole animals or making sourdough bread, vats of creamy hummus or bitters for the bar program. “It’s just deciding where your priorities lie from a production standpoint.
” Pliny Reynolds, who co-owns Terlingua and Ocotillo, both in Portland, thinks that successful restaurants of the future will need to choose between two paths: Either double-down on full-service, “over-the-top,” old-fashioned hospitality or offer low prices and convenience. “At the end of the day, it depends on your personal passion, why you’re in this business,” Pliny said. “Are you a food factory or are you really trying to provide an experience for your customer? For me, it’s more experience.
We spend so much time making the best food that we can, and we want the experience to reflect the effort we put into it.” As far as he’s concerned, robots, schmobots. “You see all this AI technology emerging, and I would feel a little bit more uneasy if I was a lawyer or a doctor or in some of these white-collar jobs that seem to be maybe replaceable in a high-tech world, whereas I don’t think you can replace a cook.
I don’t think you can replace a server. And I don’t think that you can replace that experience, that ethereal, magical night that only a restaurant can provide.” Not so fast? Ryleigh Messier Cormier at Asian Noodle Bowl cleans one of the robots after it returns from delivering an order.
Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald HARDWIRED FOR SUCCESS Anima Nikonthet, a partner with Senesombath in Asian Noodle Bowl, doesn’t recall where she first heard about restaurant robots. She ran across them somewhere, is all she can remember, so she reached out to Bear Robotics, the California-based company that has been making them since 2017. Nikonthet is an accountant.
She likes efficiency and productivity. She gets easily bored doing the same task, and she thinks the staff at Asian Noodle Bowl does, too. She and Senesombath have installed several pieces of time-saving equipment in the kitchen — the salad dressing maker, the chicken slicer.
That robot waiter had her name written all over it. The price might have dissuaded a less determined person. But when Nikonthet, who moved to Maine from Thailand, first learned that they could lease a robot server for $799 a month or buy one outright for $15,000, she looked for a workaround.
“They asking for the crazy price at that time and I was like, guess what? No one else in Maine is using it. You try to expand your market,” she said she told Bear Robotics. “They made a deal with me.
OK, I get to use that robot for free for one year. Absolutely free.” The partners first tried it out at Asian Cafe in Winslow, their other restaurant.
“The space is so small and the floor is uneven so when we bring the food over, sometimes it spill,” Nikonthet said. They transferred their new hire to Asian Noodle Bowl. “It’s perfect! The floor is so smooth,” she said.
“We serve soup, noodle soup. When people holding it, you have to be careful. It’s hot object.
It could spill. With the robot, it not even spill a little.” There are other benefits: With two trays, the robot waiters can carry several bowls at once, saving the staff repeat trips and helping the fast-paced restaurant run smoothly.
Customers order at the counter, then sit down to wait for their food, which keeps the counter area free from congestion. The staff at Asian Noodle Bowl skews young, and they’ve no trouble programming the robots. “If they can figure out how to use an iPhone, they can figure out how to use these robots,” Nikonthet said.
Sourasay Senesombat at his restaurant Asian Noodle Bowl in Augusta. He and his partner have installed two robot servers. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald Early on, there was really just one glitch: fickle customers.
“People moving without notifying us because they want a better table. They want a booth. They want to sit next to their friends.
They want a table in the sun,” Senesombath said. “Which is OK, but they didn’t let the staff know.” Unaware, the robot would deliver orders to the wrong tables, forcing the kitchen to remake the food.
“The robot obviously is a computer. You program it. It go where you tell them to go.
Robot is not a problem. Human is a problem,” Nikonthet said, laughing. Now, Asian Noodle Bowl communicates more clearly with customers: Please stay put! Or at least tell us if you move tables.
(A second hiccup, if you could call it that: Should one tip a robot?) The robots probably don’t save the business money, Nikonthet said. But they do free up the staff for other tasks, plus they’re a great marketing tool. Kids love them.
Grown-ups post videos to social media. Reporters come calling, and word of mouth brings new customers in the door. Take Melanie Gordon, who lives in Hartford.
Soon after she heard about the robot restaurant, she and her colleagues arranged a staff lunch to check it out. Gordon told her mom, Janet Bruehl, of Boothbay Harbor, who was curious, too, so on a recent Monday, mother and daughter met for lunch at Asian Noodle Bowl. Alas, a run-of-the-mill, perfectly pleasant real live human delivered their order to their table, a bit of a disappointment.
Sometimes, it goes the other way. “There are actually some people request ‘human only. No robot,'” Nikonthet said.
“Obviously, we accommodate what the customer needs.” What with robot waiters, Roombas and self-driving cars, it’s a brave new world. But surely, we still need humans to cook our food.
.. “Actually, since you brought that up.
..” Senesombath said.
“Anima and I, we are thinking about (robot cooks). Keep an eye on us!” FINE-DINING REVOLUTION “There’s been a real fascination for a long time about efficiency and how do we get the most amount of food on the table for the least price,” said Mamut, at The Chametz. “I think we’re really seeing that this (time) is kind of the end state of that hypothesis.
” Mamut’s own perspective, and that of their life and business partner chef Jared Rudnick, is worlds away from futuristic robots. “We’re trying to think through the entire business model and think about it both vertically and horizontally,” Mamut said. “Not just thinking about the restaurant as a place you get food, but thinking about it as an experience to be had and reframing the business model in terms of the experience rather than the specific item of food.
” The Chametz is set to open in early fall, offering an eclectic, multi-course prix fixe menu of “extreme organic” food grown steps away from the dining room and cooked and served by a team of workers who, eventually, will have an ownership stake. “All equity is held by the workers, which means that the workers will be able to make all of the decisions for how the restaurant runs, what we do with profits and have full transparency,” said Mamut, who, for now, has a day job in the tech sector. Mamut and Rudnick, a graduate of Johnson & Wales and the kitchen at the highly inventive Journeyman in Boston, both had unhappy personal experiences at previous workplaces, where distant owners made bad decisions.
They’ve set up the business to avoid that. Once The Chametz really gets going, financial projections allow for “premium wages,” Mamut said, as well as 401(k) matching plans, healthcare coverage for the staff and their families, and paid vacations. For the customers, the holistic model encompasses a van to bring customers there and home again, and multi-course meals that still somehow evince restraint.
Despite the large meal and wine pairings, it’s important to Mamut that customers feel bright-eyed and vibrant the next day. Behind the scenes, Mamut and Rudnick intend to confront problems they’ve found endemic in the restaurant world, such as racism, substance abuse, sexual assault and mental illness, some of these the outgrowth of the crazy hours, Mamut said, “100 hours a week from opening to close. That’s not a sustainable schedule for anybody.
I guess I mention these things because these are the unsung plagues of fine dining, things that don’t get a lot of air time, but by rethinking the business we’re going to be saving people’s lives, too, honestly,” Mamut said. In the longer term, the couple have on-site lodging and farm animals in their sights; for now, the farm grows fruits and vegetables. They say they are inspired by acclaimed, integrated restaurants like Erin French’s Lost Kitchen in Freedom, Dan Barber’s Blue Hill at Stone Barns in Tarrytown, New York, and Thomas Keller’s French Laundry in Yountville, California.
But a comprehensive approach doesn’t come cheap; Mamut declined to say what a meal will cost. “The fact is that we do have to charge a premium for what we’re offering,” they said. “It’s expensive, but it’s worth it.
It’s also posing that question to consumers, would you rather have four ‘meh’ meals out a month or one exceptional meal?” For Mamut and Rudnick, The Chametz isn’t merely a one-off. They dream their restaurant will be so successful it can one day serve as a brand new model for fine-dining. That’s not just fine words, either.
“We hope that we would be able, as a collective, to start a development fund for other communities who are interested in a concept like this — a fine-dining restaurant with a farm and lodging attached — and offer that to communities around the world,” Mamut said, “where we would not only be able to give them some capital to get started, but also help them with all their systems that they’re going to need to have in place.” FOOD IS LOVE After overseeing the kitchen at the exclusive White Barn Inn in Kennebunk for two decades, chef Jonathan Cartwright followed up with a very different gig. He opened Musette, a casual bistro in Kennebunkport.
But it’s the bistro’s current iteration that might most surprise diners who have followed his career. Early last November, Cartwright and co-founder/co-chef Selena Roy renamed the place Caring Community Cuisine, and refocused it on helping Mainers with cancer. They’ve applied for nonprofit status for the restaurant, which would give them access to grants and other funding, so they can deepen their new focus how they know best: making food.
“It’s really uplifting and soul-filling to be able to say that we are here for you. We can feed you,” Cartwright said, talking about the cancer “warriors” he and Roy work with. “We can do what we know how to do with our eyes closed and in our sleep, virtually — cooking and providing healthy meals.
Co-owners and chefs Jonathan Cartwright, center, and Selena Roy, right, with events and social media manager Skylar Maloney at Caring Community Cuisine in Kennebunkport. Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald “And that listening part on top of it, being a shoulder. I think we are the restaurant that gives out the most hugs.
We didn’t use to do that at the White Barn. We did do a lot of good food, but we didn’t hug everybody that comes in the door. We may have shaken hands with a few people,” he said, laughing, “but now we’re hugs galore.
It’s a nice way to operate.” So far, Caring Community Cuisine has been providing meals to two families dealing with cancer and is making arrangements with a third. The goal is to help 10 families each month.
It works like this: They’ve had self-referrals as well as referrals from the Dempsey Center. The families let the restaurant know about any allergies, food likes and dislikes, and how many people need meals. It may be just the cancer patient, or it may be his whole family.
The idea is to alleviate daily tasks, groceries and meal prep and such, so the family can focus on dealing with the hardships of cancer. The families select up to five meals a week from the same menu that’s served in the restaurant, which Cartwright and Roy have rejiggered to be healthier, offering, for example, risotto with carrots, broccoli and root vegetables, and working with several dieticians. But the food is also designed to offer emotional comfort in a time of deep distress, say quiche, or for the small kids in the family of six Caring Community Cuisine is helping now, pancakes for dinner.
The “warriors” and their families are welcome to dine at the restaurant whenever they like, to join the community. Within a certain radius, the restaurant will also package up and deliver their meals twice a week. So far, donations at the restaurant and online, special events and backing from the pair’s catering company, Mobile Musette, have helped cover the costs.
Also, every meal an ordinary customer eats at the restaurant helps defray rent, labor, food costs and such, in turn supporting the cancer mission. “We think this can be a beautiful way to go, a real nice way to dine on good food and pay it forward,” Cartwright said. Jonathan Cartwright, co-owner and co-chef, says goodbye to regulars Bob and Mary Woodman after they have lunch at Caring Community Cuisine.
Brianna Soukup/Portland Press Herald His own zeal started with the untimely death to cancer of Laurence Bongiorno, the White Barn Inn’s original owner and a mentor and dear friend. Roy has dealt with the illness in her own family. Like Mamut at The Chametz, Roy and Cartwright would be thrilled if their restaurant could serve as a model.
They know of at least one similar concept: the four JBJ Soul Kitchens in New Jersey, which are operated by the Bon Jovi Foundation. Roy and Cartwright may lack rock star glamour, but they have a deep sense of purpose. “Our end goal was to have this model work at other locations, because how amazing would that be?” Roy said.
“You’re still having jobs for people here at the restaurant. You’re still paying for the space as you typically would, but you’re also helping people on a much different level than then just coming in to have a bite to eat. We’re really hoping that this expands out as we grow and as we learn.
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