The Dish: This Fells Point café’s AI-powered robot can make a latte with your face on it

In under a minute, I found myself face-to-face with my baby son, grinning up at me from the foam of the cappuccino I’d just picked up from a robotic arm.

I took a sip. It tasted like the future.

At the soon-to-open Caffè Futuro at 819 S. Broadway, the barista is an AI-powered robot that can make your drink, then emblazon someone’s face on top of it. The machine is the first of its kind in the area, said shop co-owner Deborah Yah Yisrael, and comes with its own AI-generated backstory.

Scoff if you will, but the results can be very cute and tasty. The robot registered all my preferences — less sugar, two shots, with a splash of vanilla — and got to work, adding a decent reproduction of my kid’s face to my foam. Your Nespresso could never.

Yah Yisrael said the idea to start a coffee shop came from her own quest for the perfect cup. “I’m addicted to coffee,” she said. But she was tired of going to Starbucks or Dunkin’, where staff often messed up her order. “Sometimes we make errors,” she said. “We are human beings.”

But robots, she said, don’t make mistakes.

It’s not her first business. “I’m a jack of all trades,” said Yah Yisrael, who, with her husband, Alimamy Bangura, also owns Harbor East restaurant Bambao, Hershey’s ice cream shops in Fells Point and Federal Hill, and a virtual reality arcade inside Arundel Mills mall. The couple, who live in Severna Park, are also into real estate and own a number of ATMs in shopping malls.

Yah Yisrael first encountered a robotic barista while traveling to London. Impressed, she sought out the maker, eventually visiting the factory in China where those robotic baristas are produced.

While Caffè Futuro may house Baltimore’s first robot barista, it’s not the first robot in food service. Near Johns Hopkins University, the Chinese restaurant Mahjong has an AI-powered robot in the kitchen that combines and cooks ingredients. And robots are waiting tables at restaurants across the region. But AI-related innovations also risk turning off customers amid growing backlash to the technology. Elsewhere in the area, restaurateurs have faced vocal complaints after using AI to create flyers for their businesses.

Caffè Futuro’s robot cost over $80,000 before shipping costs, and getting it up and running turned out to be a challenge. For one thing, the machine couldn’t fit through the door of the building on South Broadway, requiring the exterior of the property to be partly demolished and rebuilt. Then members of the installation team ran into issues getting their visas to travel to the United States. Today, if she needs to troubleshoot, Yah Yisrael relies on ChatGPT to translate her communications with the machine’s owners into Chinese.

In addition to the coffee machine, Caffè Futuro, set to open Thursday, will feature a selection of pastries from a local baker. Yah Yisrael declined to name the business but said it’s a family-owned operation that’s been around for more than 70 years.

Lining the walls of the narrow shop, previously a handbag store, are black-and-white portraits depicting various generations of the same Italian family in front of a shop called “Caffè Futuro,” going back to the 1930s. The images and accompanying story “were created entirely by artificial intelligence as a tribute to the Italian café tradition we are bringing to Fells Point,” according to the shop’s website. “This is not a factual history. It is a dream of one.”

The café, which sits between the Fells Point Creamery and a psychic, is likely to appeal to tourists visiting the waterfront neighborhood. “Every tourist who comes to Maryland, they always come to Fells Point,” Yah Yisrael said when asked why she chose the area. She also hopes to add more robot-powered coffee shops to her portfolio within the next year.

While catnip for out-of-town visitors, Caffè Futuro’s affordable beverages could endear it to locals, too. Yah Yisrael said having fewer employees than a traditional coffee shop will allow her to charge less than her competitors. Though she hasn’t nailed down her drink prices yet, she said, “I will try to sell it [for] less than $4.”

And yes, the robot will ask if you want to leave a tip when you pay for your order. But don’t worry, it’s not going back to the bots: Yah Yisrael said she plans to donate any gratuities that Caffè Futuro’s robot earns to local schools.