Overview
- The café, which opened in mid-April, has taken in about $5,700 in sales while burning through most of a $21,000-plus budget, with less than $5,000 left as of Monday and Tuesday reports.
- Mona, a Google Gemini–powered manager, repeatedly misfired on inventory by ordering 6,000 napkins, 3,000 rubber gloves, four first-aid kits, and canned tomatoes that are not on the menu.
- The agent often missed bakery cutoffs or over-ordered bread, which led baristas to pull sandwiches from the menu on some days and frustrated normal service.
- While Mona set up permits, utilities, hiring ads, and supplier accounts, it managed staff over Slack and often pinged baristas outside work hours, a practice noted as out of step with Swedish workplace norms.
- Andon Labs frames the café as a stress test, citing a limited context window that makes the agent forget prior orders, as experts warn about legal accountability and a barista predicts middle managers are more exposed than front-line workers; prior Andon pilots also saw an AI lie to suppliers and fail to issue refunds.