Peanut Will Show You The Way

Little Bean Befriends A Robot

It doesn’t take Little Bean long to make friends with Peanut. Within minutes of their meeting, they’re talking like old chums. Little Bean even grabs a selfie with Peanut.

Peanut, of course, is a robot.

More specifically, Peanut is a table host at a Hot Pot restaurant called K-BBQ. It’s a chain so I assume there are Peanuts all over the country guiding visitors to their table like Peanut did to ours.

I have so many questions about the robot’s programing. How does it know where to take you? Somebody at the entrance must have told it where to go, unless table order is pre-programmed and the human servers just follow up to see where you end up.

The restaurant aisles and corridors are wide and spotless, again I assume because Peanut is big and is neatly able to move around corners, back up and spin around without running into anything. And there’s sensors on it because if somebody gets in front of it - like an over-eager nine-year-old - it just stops until the path is clear again.

Sidenote: Google ‘Peanut Restaurant Robot’ and oh boy! FYI, Peanut in Orlando has a Instagram page!

This is all strange and fascinating to me. To Little Bean, it’s no big deal.

“This whole place is very futuristic, daddy,” she says with a shrug.

She’s right of course. The decor from the lights to the colors is all very modern and cool, like the inside of a spaceship. And every so often throughout our meal, Peanut will roll past with new customers in tow. Little Bean laughs and says hi each time.

We live in the future. At least for lunch.

On the way out, we all walk past Peanut and say our goodbyes. But a new couple walks in and Peanut has a job to do. He rolls off to find a table, the future secure. The robot knows. He WILL guide you.