Date of Award
1-1-2024
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Ph.D. in Business Administration
First Advisor
James J. Taylor
Second Advisor
Katerina Berezina
Third Advisor
David Joung
School
University of Mississippi
Relational Format
dissertation/thesis
Abstract
Businesses in the restaurant industry have been experiencing growing employee turnover rates. In spite of restaurant managers’ efforts to increase wages and benefits, restaurants are still struggling to obtain qualified and experienced kitchen staff to meet their business volume demands. Robot chefs are beginning to be used as a solution to counteract this problem within restaurants. The main objective of this research was to identify key strategies that restaurateurs can use to enhance the beneficial business outcomes of adopting robot chefs. The secondary objective was to further validate the effectiveness of restaurant robot chef service in enhancing consumer attitude and acceptance across restaurant segments. Through the use the use of Qualitative interviews and structural equation modeling, it was found that restaurant consumers are likely to experience lower levels of satisfaction and trust when dining at casual restaurants that only utilize robot chefs within their kitchen regardless of whether the guest could see the chefs prepare the food. Guests are likely to feel a loss of the human touch within their dishes due to this. In order to overcome this barrier, it is recommended that casual restaurants have a human chef working alongside the robot chefs in order to entice higher levels of satisfaction and trust.
Recommended Citation
Pittman, Jeffrey, "Reinvigorating Robotic Chefs into the Restaurant Industry" (2024). Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 2968.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/2968