Robotic Fast Food
motorhead
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life
McDonald’s and IBM are partnering to develop robotic drive-thru windows
The statement from McD reads
“The merger between IBM and McD Labs was necessary because the next phase of development is "beyond the scale of our core competencies."
that’s funny coming from a company that in the past has tried McPizza and McSpaghetti
The statement from McD reads
“The merger between IBM and McD Labs was necessary because the next phase of development is "beyond the scale of our core competencies."
that’s funny coming from a company that in the past has tried McPizza and McSpaghetti
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The reality is that even if employees in fast food worked for free, the cost of insurance, minimal benefits, as well as the time/effort that goes into maintaining schedules, hiring, firing, etc., is still more expensive than having machines do the same work 24/7. And there's far less of the problems of basic human error and greater consistency via automation.
Add to that the customer-by-customer marketing metrics that will be collected via algorithms/AI every time you go to McDonalds, Taco Bell, etc., and the ultimate desire by these companies to keep humans employed is exactly "0" regardless of wages. There's not many folks who go to Burger King for the ambiance and to see their favorite order-taking kid.
Bear in mind, I think that this is inevitable, but it's also problematic. In a few years, there's going to be a real crisis in the unskilled labor field regardless of the pay scale desired or offered.
Probably has little to do with the cost of labor.
A lot of places have reverted to using people though. Unions are really fighting this. Plus it kills the customer experience.
I stopped using kiosks at places. If nothing else at least I help someone keep their job.
The only people who are going to suffer are the smug people who like being “served” and can do so easily thanks to cheap labor.
Hopefully the robots McDonalds buys are more reliable than their ice cream machines.
I also hope more upscale restaurants don't try to go automated too quickly behind the fast food places. A well staffed quality restaurant can't be replaced by machinery because of the quality of the waitresses and the kitchen staff don't rely on the same repetitiveness that a high volume fast food joint does.
I also wonder if there is a push to unionize fast food workers? When I was working at McDonalds - they weren’t union. That likely saved a good amount of money. Very few were allowed to be considered full time, even if they worked there for years and worked more than 40 hours consistently.
There are still a lot of senior citizens that need to be served because they can't use smart phones or the order kiosks.
If somebody is 70 or below they can use a kiosk just fine. Boomers certainly don’t struggle with using social media, as one example.
The absolute eldest boomers and silent…*maybe* I have some sympathy.
Also, there’s plenty of industries that needs roles filled that isn’t going to be as readily filled thanks to less immigrants coming in for the past decade or so. (Which honestly I think is why labor strikes is starting to gain traction—because they can)
And a lot of jobs that would do just fine as far as finding people if there was a return to management culture that had to do things like actually train employees instead of requiring things like 3 years experience for an entry level job.
Thank goodness we won't have to out up with this crap anymore
https://youtu.be/c2Z9j3Y_CHk
I would guess that, within 10 - 20 years, you'll order fast food on your phone, walk outside, reach up and take it from a mini-copter drone.
When it's really crowded kiosks cause confusion.
I disagree. Sure they've been automating at the fringes, but it seems to have taken on a greater sense of urgency as a result of upcoming minimum wage hikes in a number of states. Same holds true for supermarket checkout lines, warehouse operations and other places as well.
Places don't automate just for the sake of automating. It requires big upfront investments of capital and other resources, which may not be worth it when your labor costs are modest. But when you're about to be forced to pay a bunch of kids $15 per hour to drop fries and chicken nuggets in a deep fryer, then you're forced to either pony up to replace some of those kids with automation or dramatically raise your food prices.
The special orders should be easier to handle, if they have programmed the robots to accommodate them.
I guess there’s less chance of getting hair in your food?
Retailers have been going this way anyways, see your local Shop-Rite checkouts, but an increased minimum wage is an accelerant to the automation of lower-end jobs.
Since the days of the Luddites, people have predicted mass unemployment from automation. That hasn't come to pass, only because humans took jobs operating the machines. As AI develops, those "operator" jobs will diminish.
Ultimately we'll all need to be re-skilled.
The urgency has existed for a very long time regardless of the minimum wage debate. The missing piece to implementation until relatively recently has been adaptive technology in the background, which is to say machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Now that these adaptive technologies are advanced enough for real-world use, there are numerous industries (including military and defense) who are aching to remove humans from the workplace.
I know that it makes you feel warm inside to blame "those dumb, lazy kids", but they are not the primary driver towards this labor shift. And the industries looking to automate the fastest also want to blame people pushing for higher minimum wage, but that's because those industries don't want to lead with "our profits go up when we create higher unemployment."
And I do believe in companies seeking to increase profits. That's their job. But it's still going to create a labor crisis over the next several years.
And at fast food places you still need employees when people pay in cash. To bring orders up and call numbers
You walk up (or drive up) to a display screen and place an order, you pay by inserting cash, and the machine provides change in cash. The machine also provides an order code that may or may not be printed on a slip, chip, or some other physical item. A machine announces when an order is ready (using the order number), and then the customer approaches the kiosk and inputs the order code (or allows the computer to scan it). The order is delivered mechanically to the kiosk, and the customer walks away with it.
The technology to do all this already exists, and I assume that it's already being tested and refined by various fast food or other franchise hospitality services. But it probably won't be rolled out all at once. You'll see the average fast food place employing, say, 20 people across all shifts reduced to 15 people, reduced to 8 people, reduced to 3 people, etc., over the course of years.
As far as older customers are concerned, there will likely be an effort to make the user interfaces as bullet-proof as possible, but at the same time the not-out-loud position of the industries will be (A) they won't be customers for a really long time, and (B) it costs more to accommodate those customers than it does to let them go eat someplace else.
I can see bars being different. Theirs a social aspect that does not exist in fast food.
They showed a photo of the pizza, it looked pretty good, but I can’t eat a photo on my phone to confirm it is indeed good.
Poor service is not just a scowling counter idiots or incorrectly assembled orders. It includes poor personal hygiene around my food, poor foodservice sanitation and cleanliness at the workstation, and more. Poor quality is not just overholding the meat or forgetting to skip the ketchup and mayonnaise, it includes incorrectly cooking or preparing the bread and meats, using too much or too little of any condiment or dressing, incorrect staging and prep. And all the while these idiots are demanding $15/hour for jobs that retirees, high schoolers, and other part-timers should be doing; not primary household earners. This will show them, and I will laugh all the way through my dividend reports.
Robots don't get COVID. Robots don't call out sick to go to keg parties and Mardi Gras parades, robots don't skim registers or give out free food to all of their friends. Robots don't have these "Day without an Immigrant" walkouts (legal immigrants are good, illegal immigrants are criminals). The initial cost will be tremendous, but the payoffs will be well worth it. Humans will still be needed to clean bathrooms, dining rooms, and to maintain and repair the robots. The employees who repair and maintain the robots will not necessarily require college degrees, but will need to be journeyman or better electricians and mechanics. Ironically, these employees will be the highest paid persons in the store, well above even junior salaried managers.
I used to dislike scanning myself out at the grocery and hardware stores, but now that I have learned it is faster and easier than the usually rude employees at the register. They've worked out most of the kinks, and I usually do not see anyone except old fogies requiring the assistance of employees at the self-checkout.
You wanted $15/hour, instead you got obsolescence. Well done!
There are many very good pizza places near me - but I would still try that ex-Tesla robot-made pie!
And I've been to some of the clubs that are popular on here and they're dumps with old coked out methed out hookers.
Donald Trump was widely known both before during and after his Presidency for eating fast food routinely (and he never denied it when asked). He also purchased tables full of fast food and served it to different college football teams visiting the WH during his term.
And to make this a bit more relevant to this site's patrons, Bob Craft got arrested for going to Asian massage parlors, and I'm pretty sure he could afford better than the sex-work equivalent to fast food.
Wealth ≠ discerning tastes. That applies to food, P4P, and many other things.
Figure this image is pretty relevant to this thread 😁
Desert scrub is right about a lot on here in between his grandpa Simpson impersonations
https://markets.businessinsider.com/news…
Because wealth ≠ discerning tastes. It's really that simple.
And then double that level of stupidity when it comes sex.
I used one 5 years ago at McDonald's in BANGKOK. The machines exist and work.
They didn't hand out the food because that's mostly an easy job where one person can handle many orders rapidly but also the main focus of where complaints and need for personal communication will exist.
If you look at the average store, while busy, 4-5 registers with people taking orders with lines behind them and 2-3 people focused on the drive through, with 3-4 people actually cooking all the food.
Add enough of the computers and not only will you need fewer people, but get orders faster. No line ordering will be faster in and out, people will come more often.
Mcdonald's is a huge international brand now. In Bangkok the place was full of Chinese tourists.
Those machines got them out of having to hiring people with language skills. And made it easy for foreign customers to order in touristy areas.
Now most fast food companies let you place a drive thru order with their app just like curbside pickup. You just pull up to the speaker and tell them the order number.
Food prep is the trickiest part by far, but it doesn’t seem impossible anymore, especially for McDonald’s food.