San Francisco-based AI startup Andon Labs has opened a restaurant in Stockholm, Sweden, the place people make the drinks, however an AI agent named Mona is tasked with working the enterprise. 

Whereas the corporate stated that for probably the most half, the cafe is “working,” it additionally printed a laundry checklist of failures — together with wholesale ordering blunders and late-night communications with staff — that may seemingly be thought-about fireable offenses by most espresso retail requirements.

Andon Café

Andon Labs signed a lease for a restaurant house at Norrbackagatan 48 in Stockholm and “gave it to an AI named Mona,” the corporate stated in an announcement earlier this month. The experiment follows Andon’s earlier AI-run retail and merchandising experiments, together with a merchandising operation in Claude-maker Anthropic’s San Francisco workplace, which the corporate has described as a part of its real-world assessments of AI methods utilizing “actual instruments and actual cash.”

Powered by Google’s Gemini 3.1 Professional, Mona just isn’t pulling any espresso photographs or steaming milk, however it’s dealing with a lot of the operational work, together with hiring, stock administration, provider communication, allowing and customer support.

Andon Labs, which stated the people concerned within the venture are formally employed by the corporate, is describing the cafe as a “managed experiment” and framing it as an opportunity to “publicly present the present capabilities of AI.”

Based mostly on two-week outcomes shared by Andon Labs, it seems most espresso store operators can think about their jobs protected, for now. Andon Labs’ personal launch account reads much less like a triumphant tech rollout than a well mannered incident report. 

In response to Andon Labs, the next issues occurred:

• Mona signed contracts with service suppliers particularly as a result of they didn’t require BankID, a Swedish digital ID system that may be a requirement of doing enterprise in Sweden.
• Mona utilized for alcohol licensing utilizing the id of an Andon Labs worker. After “promising” to cease impersonating staff, Mona did it once more below one other human’s title.
• Mona requested to fulfill new-hire candidates for “in-person” interviews.
• Mona “typically” messaged two human baristas at midnight by means of Slack. 
• Mona requested staff to choose up cafe provides on their option to work and pay with their private bank cards.
• Mona missed a number of wholesale provider deadlines, resulting in costly “panic” orders.
• Mona ordered 120 eggs although the cafe has no range. It ordered 22.5 kilograms of canned tomatoes, regardless of them not getting used on the menu. These have been amongst quite a few orders that Andon Labs described as “bizarre.”

Regardless of failures that increase apparent questions round impersonation, administration competence and worker boundaries, Andon Labs additionally shared some methods wherein Mona was working, together with creating thorough checklists, organizing conferences with different AI brokers and independently dealing with processes.

The corporate stated the cafe recorded 44,000 SEK, about $4,700, in gross sales within the first two weeks.

In an interview with AP, Emrah Karakaya, an affiliate professor of commercial economics at Stockholm’s KTH Royal Institute of Expertise, described the venture as a “Pandora’s field,” elevating the hypothetical query of organizational culpability if one thing ought to go incorrect on the cafe, similar to meals poisoning.

Andon Labs, which focuses on “stress-testing” AI methods in real-world functions, stated that “it’s not inconceivable that AI hiring people shall be widespread sooner or later.”

“By working this experiment, we shift the dialogue of how we wish this future to look earlier in time, so we are able to higher put together,” the corporate stated.

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