CHEAPER IS SUFFICIENT; BETTER IS THE BONUS:

The Bubble Tea Shaker Robot, or BTSR, launched in 2018 and is the brainchild of Taiwan Intelligent Robotics Co. After the machine receives a customer's order, its thick white robotic arm moves along a wall of nozzles to fill up on ingredients--tea, milk, ice, sugar, toppings--in its stainless steel shaker. The BTSR shakes it to mix and pours the contents into a paper cup, which is sealed and handed to the customer. Over and over, exactly the same every time.

In Taiwan, there are more than 20,000 drinks stores that do it the old-fashioned way. Young part-time workers assemble a drink in a series of standardized steps; at some stores they might rely on a motorized shaker, but the operation is primarily manual and susceptible to human inconsistencies. With more than 100 million drinks sold a year, some companies are betting on these beverages--more commonly called hand-shaken drinks in Taiwan--to be made by robotic hands instead.

A boba robot is a particularly Taiwanese instance of the global trend of automation in the restaurant industry. According to Research Nester, the cooking robotics market will be worth $322 million by 2028. That's more than 70 percent growth projected in nine years. In an industry that's typically low-margin and heavily dependent on human labor, automated technology promises to make operations cheaper and more effective.

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