In Argentina, the consumption of empanadas is close to 100 units per inhabitant and to 4,000 million units per year.

Ordering this typical Argentinian food is a tradition in the South American country, which is always willing to nurture friendship. Deliveries and innovation have opened a new competition profile for door-to-door sales, thanks to the use of robots that take orders from customers.

The devices, called bots, take the customer’s order with an application from Facebook Messenger.

“Facebook presented the chance of adding bots (robots), starting a new way of connecting companies and their customers”, said Alejandro Zuzenberg, former director of Facebook for the Southern Cone and founder of Botmaker, the first sales channel that uses bots with artificial intelligence.

The experience enables making orders from any cellphone through Facebook Messenger, which takes those orders with a program designed to simulate a smart conversation using textual and audiovisual methods.

“It emerged as an initiative from our commercial area together with Facebook. They wanted to promote a tool that is providing good results in other markets, which is the use of Facebook Messenger for food delivery”, pointed out to Telam Mariano Castagnaro, General Manager of El Noble, a local brand of empanadas. He also pointed out that “it is an embryonic experience in Argentina”.

Zuzenberg highlighted that “we are facing a revolution where interphase (the device that sends and receives information) is becoming more and more human”, and he assured that “computers can process and build a language that is closer to people’s language”.

“It is no casualty that this revolution is being led by social networks. That is where people are and where they speak their own language”, claimed the executive, who stated that “this change opens a major business opportunity”.

Another operator of the market stated to Telam that “the door-to-door business must be as dynamic as the advances of technology. This forces companies to either reconvert quickly or be left behind”, and he said that “during the past few years, there were many companies who just fell behind, when they used to be the top companies in the market. Some examples include Tercera Docena, Sólo Empanadas or La Fábrica”.

Source: Télam