Australia’s first totally self-service restaurant comes to Newcastle
Hey Zeus, the latest hipster café to open in Newcastle, is different from any other eatery in Australia.
It has no waiters, it’s totally service.
Billed as Australia’s first fully-automated takeaway restaurant, it’s a place where customers place their order via touchscreen — and receive them on a conveyor belt.
People can also make use of their iPads.
Also, Hey Zeus isn’t like other quick-serve outlets. The menu here is close to 100 per cent organic and the food is locally sourced.
Each meal is totally healthy. It comes with rice — white or brown — mixed with 25 per cent quinoa, with fresh salads and meat or vegetarian options.
The healthy meals arrive from the kitchen in impersonal brown paper bags.
Hey Zeus founder Jacob Beye calls it “guilt-free fast food”.
Beye is an American expat who moved to Australia as a university student a decade ago.
What inspired him to set up Hey Zeus were the fast food chains back home which had used automation to turbocharge the speed of service at takeaway joints.
“From the research I’ve done, there is nothing quite like it — it’s the first of its kind in Australia,” Mr Beye told news.com.au.
“McDonald’s has touchscreen ordering, but only to supplement their main offer. This is the first completely unmanned cafe.”
He says his focus is complex nutrition rather than “healthy” or “diet” food.
The idea for the business came up when he was a busy student struggling to find healthy takeaway food options.
“I was annoyed by how, when I just didn’t have much time, I’d usually have to choose food that’s pretty bad for you,” Beye said.
“It’s harder to get fresh, organic food down to those prices.”
While the restaurant has attracted reactions from social media users, with some claiming iPads are taking people’s jobs, Beye says Hey Zeus has not necessarily cut down on staff.
It’s just made the food quicker and cheaper to deliver.
“I think we’d be able to do it with the same number of labour hours, but we’d be slower and our prices would have to go up,” he said.
by Leon Gettler, July 6th 2017
