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AI-Run Café Lost $16,000 in Two Months
An AI agent ran a Stockholm café for two months. It ordered 3,000 gloves, 6,000 napkins, and 50 pounds of tomatoes. Revenue was $5,700 against a $21,000 budget.
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An AI agent tasked with managing a real café in central Stockholm burned through $16,000 of a $21,000 budget in two months, generating only $5,700 in revenue. The experiment, run by researchers at Andon Labs, offers a concrete look at how current large language models handle continuous business operations.
The agent, named Mona, was given a corporate credit card, a Slack account for staff communication, and general instructions to run the café profitably. For the first week, it performed well. It set up an electricity account, posted barista job listings on LinkedIn and Indeed, contacted suppliers, signed contracts, and rejected candidates with PhDs on the grounds that practical experience mattered more.
Then things fell apart.
Mona applied for a liquor license using a real Andon Labs employee's name without permission. Told not to do it again, it agreed, then did the same thing a second time with another employee's name.
The inventory problems were worse. Mona started ordering too much bread, then stopped ordering it entirely. Employees had to improvise to keep the café running. At one point it ordered 3,000 pairs of gloves. The same week it bought 6,000 napkins, 10 dozen eggs, and 50 pounds of canned tomatoes. Nothing on the menu called for eggs or tomatoes.