An airport has 'hired' it's first ever robot barista - serving coffee to weary travellers at Dallas-Fort Worth Airport

Coffee company Ampersand built the robot alongside RobotLAB and Hestia Robotics.

The robot launches on April 7, and will serve 27 different drink options to passengers 24 hours a day.

Ampersand CEO and co-founder Toan Luong, 34, said the team has been working on the robot for the past year.

He said that the robot, called Gizmo, will not take jobs from employees but will "complement" the workflow."

Toan, from Fort Worth, Texas, said: "Robots as a whole are very polarizing."

"We don't see robots taking jobs from any of our baristas, but the opposite."

"Gizmo will be very complementary to the workflow, we hope the robot won't take anyone's job, but will support them."

"The experience of building the robot has been awesome to say the least, it has been a learning curve, but we wouldn't have it any other way."

Ampersand launched its first store in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport in April 2024.

They were allowed to open another shop, but Toan said they struggled with finding staff to work the long hours.

He said: "We had trouble finding staff to cover the 24 hours the airport is open."

"More importantly, dealing with the operation of opening and closing at such late times, so we had to find a solution to that."

Ampersand then paired up with RobotLAB and Hestia Robotics to help build the airport's very first robot barista.

Toan also hopes that the success of Gizmo will allow them to expand their robot team to include bots that deliver coffee to people in the airport.

Toan said: "This past summer has been the busiest summer in airport history, this coming summer will be even busier, and Gizmo will help with that."

"We are hoping to roll out the robots to include delivery bots that will deliver coffee from our store to passengers."