Many kitchens, it turns out, don’t need their own Dishcraft robot. What they do need is clean dishes, so Dishcraft offers “dishes as a service,” exchanging clean dishes for dirty ones and then washing them in a centralized location.
Why in the world would you drive dishes around town, and keep a double set on hand, or possibly a triple set on backup for when the service goes down
Also, in recent years, many restaurants have started to charge for the wrapped plastic cutlery + dishes, usually 1 RMB for cutlery and 2-5 RMB for the dish set (you don't get to keep them - it's basically just the fee for the cleaning + packaging). Perhaps they're trying to encourage people to bring their own, which is a bit of a weird (but probably environmentally friendly) idea.