A few New York City restaurants are experimenting with virtual staff members, who greet customers onscreen via Zoom from the Philippines.
"'You hear hello and you say, 'What the hell is that?',' Shania Ortiz, 25, recalled of a recent trip to Sansan Ramen, a neighboring Japanese restaurant that had a gold-framed, flat-screen monitor set up in the foyer with a surveillance camera trained on guests."