A restaurant in Havana defies Cuba's tech struggles with digital menus and a robot waitress

For Sonia Pérez, stepping into Havana’s Doña Alicia edifice felt similar entering a movie

HAVANA -- For Sonia Pérez, stepping into Havana’s Doña Alicia edifice felt similar entering a movie. Even arsenic Cuba struggles with powerfulness outages and technological scarcity, this eatery has leaped into the 21st period with integer menus, Alexa-enabled assistance, touchless bathrooms and adjacent a food-delivering robot.

“I thought I was successful a cartoon movie!” said the 64-year-old authorities employee, marvelling astatine the opposition with the technological realities outside. “I privation determination were much of these successful Cuba... We are truly precise down successful technology.”

While commonplace globally, specified automation is simply a analyzable feat successful Cuba owed to the island’s predominant powerfulness cuts and a deficiency of modern technology.

Opened 7 years ago, the edifice gradually embraced technology, starting with tablets astatine tables, followed by Alexa services and culminating successful the accomplishment of Doña Alicia — a food-delivering robot named aft the owner’s grandma — who present assists quality waiters successful the eating room.

Guests are greeted with integer menus connected screens astatine their tables, allowing them to browse and bid accepted Cuban dishes specified arsenic savory pork steak, pasta and saccharine desserts. The barroom further enhances the acquisition offering drinks specified arsenic mojitos oregon freshly made daiquiris. Human servers are connected manus for those little tech-savvy.

The prices align with those of different backstage restaurants, making them unaffordable for the mean Cuban and reflecting the island's inflation.

Despite the challenges of constricted and often unreliable net entree successful Cuba (mobile net lone became wide successful 2018, and outages are predominant owed to the vigor crisis), Doña Alicia appears to beryllium navigating these obstacles.

Manager Yadiel Hernández believes the technological advancements assistance pull customers by creating a unsocial and appealing eating acquisition successful Havana.

“We’ve noticed a change,” said Hernández. “Both children and adults find it absorbing to person a robotic adjunct bring nutrient to the table...it's a caller experience.”

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