Bye bye barista...

I've talked a fair bit before about issues with automation replacing human labor through things like burger-making bots and it seems that, at least in the coffee world, even the high-end labor is already being replaced by machines:

In the UK, more than 15 Michelin-starred restaurants use Nespresso, the market-leading capsule system, to make their coffee — including Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck in Berkshire, and The Ledbury in London. In France, Nespresso supplies more than 100 Michelin restaurants, including the legendary L’Arpège in Paris. Even in Italy, where the first espresso machine was patented in 1884, more than 20 Michelin restaurants use the new capsule system, and many others around the world use it or its rivals developed by Illy, Kimbo, Lavazza and Segafredo. Push-button espresso began as a domestic product, a way to simulate espresso at home without the mess and fuss. But in recent years it has rapidly, if quietly, started to take over the restaurant world.

Source: Aeon Magazine

For those not snooty enough to have encountered restaurant names like The Fat Duck before it was ranked in 2005 as the world's best restaurant, holds 3 Michelin Stars and has a ratio of one chef per customer. That's the sort of establishment already seeing this level of coffee automation. (And in the taste tests later in the article Nespresso came out on top).