Gourmet Meals in the Global Village

Automation did not replace cooks  and waitstaff in the Global Village. Instead, ways were found to deliver the same  gourmet meals and dinning nuance offered by fine restaurants in the Industrial Park.

                                                     Photo by Louis Hansel on Unsplash

As one of the last industries to be automated in the Industrial Park, major fast food franchises developed  ways to fully automate the frying and grilling machines that cook french fries and grill burgers. The goal was to manufacture and deliver meals the same way other products were handled in the Industrial Park.

The missing part was the control mechanism that links orders placed remotely or in-person with the machines that prepare them. They had already automated the ordering mechanism using AI components that convert a customer’s voice to choice selections. The next step was to have that order prepared, boxed and ready to pick up curbside, or delivered via a food delivery service, some even used autonomous vehicles to speed orders to the homes and offices of waiting customers.

That was only the beginning. Once the process was perfected, it was integrated into gourmet meal and ethnic food preparation and delivery. The phrase, “untouched by human hands” became a mantra across the dinning out industry. However, it took nearly a decade to automate the nuance and nostalgia of dinning facilities staffed by old-fashioned chefs and congenial wait staff. During the transition from the Industrial Park to the Global Village, dining out by those who could afford this experience, considered automated food service a symbol of poverty—not an economic blessing.

Then came the pandemic of 2025. Although science and rapid vaccine development made a total lockdown unnecessary,  the measures that still had to be taken disrupted the food service industry.  The army of young waitstaff that had made the dinning room nuance possible throughout the early 21st Century had succumbed to the lure of big money in the trades and the therapeutic care industry. While there were plenty of gourmet chiefs, the pandemic bankrupted many top-notch restaurants and left many gourmet chefs with no place to practice their culinary arts. So the industry pivoted to a hybrid service system. 

In the Global Village of today[2026] the Chefs have their own personal kitchens sans dine in area. Meals are ordered via their on-line website, made to order, and drop-shipped to diners in special containers that preserve the heat and flavor. Depending on their distance from the Chef's kitchen, meals are delivered by autonomous ground vehicles or drones. However, like the recopies for Coke Cola and KFC, the technique used to give the Dine from Home customers the same nuance  they might get in a high scale restaurant is a trade secret. That's just the way it is in the Global Village.