Last month, Seatac Airport announced its partnership with Costa Coffee and debuted its 24/7 coffee machine. For anyone who has come through the airport early in the morning or late at night this means that there are still warm drinks available and that is a very comforting thing for travelers. When I heard about another robot coffee place in Seattle called Artly Coffee where coffee is made by a barista bot, I knew this was also something I really needed to see.
Robot coffee doesn’t mean coffee made without humans
At least it doesn’t seem like this will be something that happens anytime in the near future. At Artly Coffee when I visited, there were two very real humans in the store working as well. I talked to one of the humans to figure out what I needed to do to get coffee and then punched in my order on a tablet and paid with my watch and the coffee robot said my name and began making my drink.
I ordered a fancier drink than my usual latte or flat-white. I ordered a honey rose latte and the barista bot went to work. Part-way through my order it ran out of milk and one of the humans had to refill it. ( I was also informed when I visited the Costa Coffee 24/7 machine at the airport that it is also overseen by humans-it has a cleaning schedule and a milk refill schedule so that things stay fresh.)
Needing help from humans might not be a totally uncommon thing with robot food making machines. When we visited Oxnard California recently, we had a lot of fun trying a robot cotton candy machine at a local mall there, but we also had an issue when we first tried to use the machine. The cotton candy had run out of sugar and stopped making cotton candy but was still taking payments and we had trouble phoning the support number for help so I instagrammed the machines’ account and was able to get a refund. Apparently so many people had used the cotton candy machine that day that the humans running the machine were a little overwhelmed. We went back the next day and the robot worked with no problems.
And Artly Coffee also makes coffee art
I get a bit upset when I go for coffee in a shop and it comes out looking like something sadder than a coffee I could make. I am not a professional coffee maker. So when I saw how beautiful the art on my coffee made by Artly Coffee’s barista bot was I couldn’t help but be impressed-it’s why I totally fell in love with this Seattle robot coffee place. Artly Coffee seems to be a bit of a chain-I went to the one at 101 Stewart near Pike Place Market but I checked their site and found that there more Artly coffee shops in Portland, California and other places too. I wonder if they will be able to change the art the barista bots make one day or if it is always the same. I was also very surprised at the variety of drinks this robot coffee machine could make-not all of them even are coffee drinks too.
Do you need to tip your robot barista?
There were a variety of tip options when I paid for my coffee. Do you think you need to tip a robot barista? And what percentage do you think would be an appropriate amount?
Are you excited about robot coffee in Seattle? Here is a video I made for instagram if you want to see it in action.
Terumi Pong is a Seattle-based family travel writer and mom of twin teenage boys. She loves coffee and pastries, shopping local and looking for greener ways to live. She is also known as Scout’s mom (Scout is a 5ish pound little black yorkie-poo)