Save
You step into a restaurant, and before you pass the foyer to reach the table, a camera scans your face and body and transmits all your ethnographic data to a database. The maître d’ welcomes you, and before you start the meal, he asks you to fill in a sensory form with 30 questions that will generate the dishes you are going to eat that night. There's no menu: the algorithms (and the sensors in the camera) will tell the chef in the kitchen what you feel like eating that night.
Before the first dish, the maître d’ brings virtual reality glasses that allow you to observe artworks displayed on the walls that you weren't allowed to see before — they are NFTs from prominent digital artists that only exist virtually. When you look across the table, your dining partner (who physically stayed at home in Hong Kong) smiles at you, drinking the same cocktail that you now have in your hand. You two chat for a few minutes until the waiter announces the first course has arrived. You can finally can start eating.
Although it seems like a science fiction scene, this restaurant could soon be in operation. The technology is already available. And it will start to become more common in the coming years. There seems little doubt that digitisation will transform the dining scene as we know it, just like the pandemic has accelerated new ways of digitally interacting with food (whether due to social distancing or a lack of trust in physical interaction). A new digital universe is being built while you read these words. To be more precise, a new whole metaverse.
It is still hard to understand what the metaverse really is and how digital dining will finally be reality. What could food look like in a virtual world, and what does it mean for restaurants? At this point, no one really knows. But the interest in the metaverse is leaving no industry untouched — even food brands are trying to benefit from it by inventing virtual reality to interact with their audience, as author Jamie Shackleton writes in a recent report from the consultancy and technology company Wunderman Thompson.
"Opportunistic food brands are racing to file trademarks for virtual goods and services, indicating their intent to make a mark in the metaverse", he says, citing a range of cases, from Burger King and French hypermarket chain Carrefour, to Panera Bread (who filed a trademark application for the “Paneraverse") to Chipotle. The latter teamed up with the gaming platform Roblox to allow customers to roll burritos for fun in the metaverse, and then earn credits they can use on Chipotle's digital platforms.
