Robotic Fast Food

I'm sure the rising minimum wage in some places across the country has nothing to do with this.

I'm not sure what took them so long. They've had the processes and procedures in place for a while now, which would translate easily to assembly line automation. They would still need to keep a core crew of cross-trained people to troubleshoot breakdowns. I understand it would be too expensive to retrofit existing stores, but it should have been put in newer restaurants.

Actually, I am sure that the push for higher minimum wage has had nothing to do with this. Fast food chains have been working to automate as quickly as possible for years, and well before increasing minimum wage became a hot-button issue.

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.

All one has to do is look at the on going violent confrontations between customers and servers to understand this.

Probably has little to do with the cost of labor.

They've been doing and planning this for years. Like replacing back of the house staff at bars with automated systems.

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.

Automation is good for fast food. I’ve poked around in some pro-labor rights groups lately, and nobody is bemoaning it at all. If one really wants to side with those making food, then the better places to support are food carts/trucks—which are often 1 or 2 people operations and those individuals tend to make better food anyways and keep a higher % of profits.

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.

I have no problem with fast food restaurants going automated. The machines can probably make the food better than the people working there and faster and more accurately. I wouldn't expect much improvement in quality because they will still be using the same cheap low quality ingredients.

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.

Get ready for the robotic lap dance.

You don't actually need a robot to get a robotic lap dance.

Well - if they wanna avoid issues with the woke-police they better make sure a good percentage of the robots are black

I can see the left using this to push for UBI

I for one would prefer automation - the customer service downhere in Miami is often horrendous.

There's a few hot chicks who work at Taco Bells near my house. Hopefully they will soon be giving me lap dances while the robot makes the tacos.

This makes sense - as long as the maintenance isn’t too expensive.

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.

They need to invent robots willing to eat MacDonald's food.

Aww man I'm gonna miss dealing with the ghetto ass drive thru window girl on her phone.

They need robots to clean the McDonald’s shitters after CrazyJoe makes a mess in there!

On a large scale automation will impact the economy negatively. Don't bitch about more people on welfare if you support automation

nicespice >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.

There are still a lot of senior citizens that need to be served because they can't use smart phones or the order kiosks.

As far as personal feelings go (others may have different opinions)

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 personal opinion, a lot of “unskilled” labor requires more skill than many would like to acknowledge. Otherwise, fast food chains could just simply gig economy their labor and have people come into their shifts on demand as needed on an app. But they don’t for whatever reason.

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

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I stopped at McDonald's this morning. I'll be 80 yo in 2 weeks. They had a kiosk and a sign above it that said they could not do table service due to Covid. I can use a kiosk and other gadgets but there are times that I prefer not too. This morning I chose not to. I ordered a sausage biscuit and a small coffee and paid in cash $2.01. If I had used the kiosk I would still have to have waited in line to pay unless I waned to use a credit card, etc.

Good perspective, shadowcat. The ideal age cut off to make everyone have to use a kiosk might be better at age 82 instead of 70 🤔

I hate it when self-service forces you to use a credit/debit card. I need to use small purchases to get ones and fives for stage tips. Cash works fine at supermarket self-checkouts, so I don't see why I should be forced to use plastic.

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.

Nicespice. Shouldn't you be "reading" or something. Grandpa Simpson exposed you!

When it's really crowded kiosks cause confusion.

I don't need a robot to make me beans. I just need a pot and beans

This will happen long after I’m dead and gone, in I hope 30 years. I’m still waiting for my self driving car to pick me up. I was assured that would be the only car I could buy by 2020 so I unloaded my Chevy and I wait for delivery of my robot car.

Will these robots remember to put the packets of bbq sauce in my bad with my McNuggets? The humans forget about 30% of the time.

You'll really fuck up the robots if you ask them to hold the pickle.

===> "Actually, I am sure that the push for higher minimum wage has had nothing to do with this. Fast food chains have been working to automate as quickly as possible for years, and well before increasing minimum wage became a hot-button issue."

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.

I agree with Rick regarding the likely increased minimum wage being part of the reason for the robots. I think - if they eliminate workers and wages - they may decrease their cost basis for each item sold. But, it’s likely the cost basis will decrease once the initial issues are corrected.

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?

What Rick said.

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.

They've had kiosks at fast food places for close to 10 years now... they're not doing it out of urgency

This automation could expose more issues in the cost structure of fast food restaurants. It could be an interesting study in the effectiveness of robotics on the cost structure.

Well, I guess I disagree with all of the disagreement with me. Which I suppose is just another day on TUSCL.

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.

Bars that have done have reverted to employees.

And at fast food places you still need employees when people pay in cash. To bring orders up and call numbers

Fast food places...

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.

Ishmael - I think there is a lot of finger pointing at the top of the corporate house whenever there are rumblings about increasing the minimum wage. I don’t fully agree that increasing the minimum wage is a bad thing. There is plenty of waste in each level of the fast food business. Eliminating the customer facing workers may not save that much money.

I just read an article the other day about a few ex Tesla engineers that have made a pizza making machine that can make a pizza in 5 minutes and it’ll fit in the back of a pick up truck.

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.

I don't each much fast food, and poor service is the primary reason, food quality is a close second. I am excited for this technology not because I hope to eat more fast food, but because it will punish the bad employees and reduce illegal immigration (fast food is the sort of unskilled labor the wetbacks gravitate towards).

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!

Shailynn - I saw that article too. I agree, the pizza looked good.

There are many very good pizza places near me - but I would still try that ex-Tesla robot-made pie!

You're basically saying fuck people let the rich profit off robots

@rd go work at McDonald's for a couple weeks. Then I'll believe your opinion about what the job is worth is not just random bullshit.

Desert scrub is right. Most of the older men on here talk of nickel and diming everything and bargain pussy ripping off hookers. They sound like the poor old guys I see at clubs...

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.

Scrub said "who the fuck eats fast food once you have money?"

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.

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Figure this image is pretty relevant to this thread 😁

Trump doesn't count exact change for the dollar menu and craft wasn't doing it to save or to rip hoes off. None of you are Trump or craft.

Desert scrub is right about a lot on here in between his grandpa Simpson impersonations

I have always wondered why Bob Craft got busted at an AMP. With all the money he has, with all the connection he has, why the hell wouldn't he have gotten a $5,000/hr escort who looks like a younger, hotter, Giselle Bundchen?

Another example of somebody who has money (and a high net worth in general) and eats fast food. And even uses coupons:

markets.businessinsider.com

The men on this forum are broke seniors who save up for dives with old drug addicted hoes. That's the reality

^^^ I'm sorry that the trolling point you tried to make was more indefensible than usual.

gammanu95 said "I have always wondered why Bob Craft got busted at an AMP."

Because wealth ≠ discerning tastes. It's really that simple.

Wealth should equal intelligent risk assessment. Getting busted at a Tampa AMP is TUSCL troll level dumb. Kind of like an A-list heartthrob actor getting caught with skank crackhead streetwalker. Or another sneaking around behind his smokeshow wife's back with their ugly-ass nanny. Now, if that nanny looked like Emily Ratakowski, well, that reward justifies the risk.

From what I've seen, wealth often results in poor risk assessment, except perhaps within the skill set that made the person wealthy.

And then double that level of stupidity when it comes sex.

"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."

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.

More than one airport in the US has McDonalds with screens to take your orders like described above.

Not only will those screens take up less space where they are trying to maximize business in a confined space but also do a far better job of dealing with language barriers (cause pictures!!!).

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.

McDonald’s ordering kiosks have been around for years, even in small towns here.

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.

CIM most of this forum is about bargain hookers. The clubs some speak so highly of are dives with drug addicted hoes. And when discussions come to fast food jts about paying with exact change stocking up on condiments etc. Broke old guy shit. Nothing to be ashamed of. It's like the old guys I usually see at clubs.