Beep boop, can I take your order? Robots take over Sackville chicken joint

What was oncehome to a well-known Sackville diner has received a new coat of paint, a new menu and a robot.

Mel's Tea Room has been transformed into Oh! Chicken, a Korean fried chicken restaurant.

The restaurant that now occupies the former Mel's location is owned by Paul Ahn, who also owns the Asian fusion restaurant Song's Chopsticks just across the street.

He said the location was attractive since it was so close to his other business.

Mel's had been vacant for years, and Ahn decided to try his hand at opening a second restaurant.

"I was like, 'OK, is this meant to be our spot?'" said Ahn.

"I contacted [the] landlord [to] see if anyone's interested. They said so far it's still available and they prefer us taking over this spot because we were doing pretty well across the street."

KFC(Korean fried chicken)

While Oh! Chicken serves a dish that sounds familiar to most New Brunswickers, it's quite different from the southern-style fried chicken most people are used to.

The first difference is a focus on sauces.

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Now a Korean-style fried chicken restaurant, the former Mels Tea Room now sports a robot server.

"If we go to, for example, KFC there's no sauce to it, maybe gravy,"Ahn said.

"We have yum yum sauce, we have spicy yum yum, we have honey sauce, we have soy sauce, cheese sauce and onion sauce."

Ahn said Korean fried chicken is also softer and less dry than its American counterpart.

Robot server a hit

Besides the chicken, the attraction at Oh! Chicken is its serving robot, currently unnamed.

The robot takes food from the kitchen to the customer's table automatically.

While this hasn't reduced the number of wait staff Ahn has hired, it has made the human workers' jobs a little easier.

"It's less work for the workers because our restaurant distance is pretty long, so running back and forth, it's a lot of steps," said Ahn.

The robot server can even provide a little entertainment, since it's programmed to sing Happy Birthday to customers.So far the robot has been a hit with patrons.

"They take videos, they take pictures," Ahn said.

"They love it so far. It's something new."