The Robot Barista Surprised Me: Here’s Why
▼ Summary
– The article describes a robot barista named Jarvis, a robotic arm made by the Seattle company Artly, which operates in a local apartment building and can make espresso drinks like a latte.
– Jarvis is trained to mimic the movements of a champion human barista, uses AI to adjust on the fly, and produces coffee the author found to be surprisingly good.
– The author contrasts the robot’s reliability and lack of human needs with their own past experiences as a barista, which involved social anxiety, mistakes, and personal struggles.
– Artly positions its robots not as replacements in existing cafes but for new locations like retail stores or factories that previously had no coffee service.
– The author concludes that while a robot can efficiently provide a quality drink, it cannot replicate the community and humanity that defines a traditional coffee shop experience.
Seattle runs on coffee, a city where finding a great latte is as easy as turning a corner. Yet, my search led me past the familiar storefronts to something entirely new: a robotic barista named Jarvis. This encounter wasn’t just about a caffeine fix; it became a personal reflection on what we gain and lose when a machine takes over a deeply human craft.
Located in the lobby of the Hill7 apartment building, Jarvis is a robotic arm from a company called Artly. It operates from a sleek stand, sharing air with a sushi counter. Ordering happens on an iPad, and Jarvis communicates through a speaker, offering polite encouragement. It performs the familiar ballet of a coffee shop: grabbing a cup, maneuvering the portafilter, and even pouring latte art. While some steps are automated, the motions are uncannily similar to those of a human barista.
My own history behind the counter made this all the more surreal. My first barista job was a crash course in social anxiety, requiring small talk I dreaded. I once served a sleep-deprived new father a fully caffeinated drink because I was so focused on conversation. A later job at a serious gelato shop taught me the real craft, dialing in espresso, mastering the pour-over, but also coincided with a messy period of life, including showing up to work severely hungover.
Jarvis has no such off days. It never arrives late, tired, or emotionally frayed. At a second Artly location near Pike Place Market, Jarvis is joined by two other robots, Amanda and Ponyo. A human attendant is present to refill supplies and handle spills, but largely, the employee sits nearby while the robots wait, repeating a greeting to an empty room.
I was initially skeptical, having first seen Jarvis at the CES tech show. Expecting a gimmick, I was proven wrong. The coffee was surprisingly good, a credit to the system being trained on the movements of Joe Yang, Artly’s head of coffee and a championship barista. The robot uses AI to adjust on the fly, narrating its process. The lattes and cappuccinos I’ve tried have been consistently solid, often better than what you’d find at a cafe that doesn’t specialize in espresso.
The true test is in the milk. Steaming it perfectly to a silky, wet-paint texture is a quiet art. Jarvis has mastered this, a skill that took me many failed attempts to learn. In my early corporate coffee job, the machines did most of the work; I just pushed buttons. That experience highlighted a broader truth my old gelato shop owner often lamented: people are hard to manage. Hiring, training, and covering shifts are a constant struggle for small businesses.
Large corporations face similar challenges. The closure of a flagship Starbucks Reserve location not far from Artly’s shop, while officially for “financial performance” reasons, happened to employ unionized workers. It underscores a tension in the service industry.
From a purely operational view, a robot barista is a manager’s dream: consistent, never needing a break, and incapable of unionizing. It can reliably produce a quality drink. But this efficiency comes at a cost. My time as a barista, for all its flaws, taught me discipline, resilience, and how to connect with people even when it was uncomfortable. I wasn’t an ideal employee, but I was human.
Artly seems aware of this nuance. It often deploys Jarvis in places where a human barista wasn’t previously an option, like Muji stores or corporate campuses, offering coffee where there was none. In an airport lounge or a late-night train station, the concept makes perfect sense. Whether it can sustain a standalone business is less clear; during my visits, both locations were quiet.
Ultimately, a coffee shop can be two things. It can be a transaction, a fast, reliable drink on the go. For that, Artly succeeds. But more often, a coffee shop is a destination. It’s a reason to leave the house, a physical space for community. The coffee is central, but the humanity around it, the imperfect chatter, the shared experience, is what gives it soul. You can program a robot to make an excellent latte, but you cannot program it to replicate that.
(Source: The Verge)
