{"id":790667,"date":"2026-05-12T08:24:45","date_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:24:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/790667\/"},"modified":"2026-05-12T08:24:45","modified_gmt":"2026-05-12T08:24:45","slug":"ai-put-in-charge-of-cafe-is-about-to-run-it-out-of-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/790667\/","title":{"rendered":"AI Put In Charge Of Caf\u00e9 Is About To Run It Out Of Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted<\/a> that generative AI would quickly begin reshaping the economy. \u201cWe believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents \u2018join the workforce\u2019 and materially change the output of companies.\u201d Two years later, AI agents still can\u2019t even properly run a caf\u00e9.<\/p>\n

San Francisco-based startup Andon Labs recently put an AI agent nicknamed \u201cMona\u201d in charge of a shop in Stockholm, Sweden to sell people coffee and sandwiches. As the AP reported on Monday<\/a> (via PC Gamer<\/a>), it\u2019s not gone super great. Mona runs on Google\u2019s Gemini model and was put in charge of managing the cafe\u2019s baristas via Slack. It would tell them what to do day-to-day while making high-level decisions like what supplies to purchase.<\/p>\n

It turned out to be pretty bad at this one job. Mona had a budget of over $21,000 and blew through much of it in less than a month. Despite taking in $5,700 in total sales since the experiment began in mid-April, it reportedly only has $5,000 left of its original budget. Where did things go so wrong?<\/p>\n

One big issue is that Mona kept messing up bread deliveries. It would often fail to place orders with bakeries by the right times in order to have fresh supplies for the following day, forcing the human baristas to strip sandwiches from the menu. Ordering 6,000 napkins and 3,000 rubber gloves probably didn\u2019t help its bottom-line either. The AI also kept ordering tomatoes for some reason, despite nothing on the menu using them.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is reminiscent of vending machines<\/a> that have been run with Anthropic\u2019s Claude model and which as a result have at various times ordered fish, given away PlayStations, or tried to threaten people who don\u2019t agree to its hallucinations. They make for fun stories while also raising alarm bells about all of the bold AI hype fueling a potential economic bubble.<\/p>\n

The novelty of Andon Labs\u2019 AI-run shop has attracted some Swedish locals\u2013you can pick up a phone and \u201ctalk\u201d to it while you wait for your coffee\u2013but caf\u00e9 Mona appears unlikely to survive much longer. \u201c\u201cIt\u2019s nice to see what happens if you push the boundary,\u201d a customer named Kajsa Norin told the AP. \u201cThe drink was good.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Back in 2024, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicted that generative AI would quickly begin reshaping the economy. \u201cWe…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":790668,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[21],"tags":[691,738,2722,322879,158,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-790667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-google","tag-inventory-management","tag-technology","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116560649736228346","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790667","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=790667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/790667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/790668"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=790667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=790667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=790667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}