Robot serving at “Comical Café”

Tokyo. At the fully automatic Henna Café (“Comical Café”), a robot serves both freshly brewed filter coffee and delicious coffee specialties from the Melitta® Cafina® XT4. The travel group H.I.S. has opened the first café of this kind in the department store Shibuya Modi. If the test project proves successful, further Henna Cafés will follow in Japan. H.I.S. already operates two Henna Hotels in which mainly robots are employed.



Just 10 square meters in size, the new automatic café in the Shibuya Modi store is causing a sensation. At the Henna Café, guests first select and pay for the hot drink they want at a terminal and receive a coupon with a QR code. As soon as they scan this receipt at the counter, Sawyer the robot starts to prepare their coffee for them.

“Authentic drip coffee” is the most difficult task for the robot. Its long arm first grabs the cup, places it in the automatic pour-over station, then takes the filter and puts it next to the coffee grinder, starts the grinder and pours the ground coffee into the filter, places the filled filter back into the station, and starts the brewing process. In the filter station, hot water then runs through the ground coffee and filters into the cup. Finally, Sawyer picks up the filled cup and serves it at the counter. The robot then cleans the filter for its next use.

Sawyer has much less to do when preparing the six other specialties on offer. Whether americano, café latte, cappuccino, café mocha, matcha latte or cocoa: the robot simply places the cup under the outlet of the Melitta® Cafina® XT4, presses the button for the chosen coffee specialty, and serves the filled cup. The grinding, brewing, milk frothing, and mixing processes are all handled by the fully automatic coffee machine of Melitta Professional Coffee Solutions.