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More Fast Food Restaurants Are Now Automating (qz.com)

An anonymous reader writes: Wendy's is adding self-service ordering kiosks "to at least 1,000 restaurants, or about 15% of its stores," reports the Los Angeles Times, while McDonald's and Panera Bread are now planning to add kiosks to every restaurant. "Lots of restaurants, not just fast-food chains, are really trying to mitigate the costs of higher wages," says one market research firm, while also citing a survey which found 40% of millennials willing to use kiosks (compared to 30% of restaurant-goers overall).

But in some cases this means more work for human employees. Quartz points out that McDonalds doesn't plan to reduce its workforce after installing kiosks, and Panera Bread "has said that at some locations where it has ordering kiosks, it has actually increased human hours to help the kitchen keep up with the higher number of orders that come in through the more efficient ordering system."

7 of 440 comments (clear)

  1. please do this for all places by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    after going to japan where many of the major chains had at-table ordering device of some sort and no tips, i cant go back

    1. Re:please do this for all places by buss_error · · Score: 4, Insightful

      and I hate tipping.

      Then quit allowing restaurants to pay servers USD $2.13 an hour and cut the tips.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

      --
      Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
    2. Re:please do this for all places by ShanghaiBill · · Score: 4, Insightful

      In some restaurants I see customer scrolling from page to page to find the thing that they want

      The UIs will improve. But customers will also get better at using the kiosks. At first, many people had problems accepting and dealing with bank ATMs. Even today, some people have problems with self-checkout at grocery stores, even though the UIs have improved.

      There were even problems getting people to accept "department stores" where you could actually WALK INTO THE STORE and pick your items off a shelf, rather than handing your list to a clerk at the front counter, and then waiting while your items were retrieved.

  2. It's not a bug, it's a feature by king+neckbeard · · Score: 4, Insightful

    All these people whining about minimum wage increases causing more automation like it's a bad thing. You've all got it backwards. Human labor has been undervalued, so nobody bothered to put effort into being more efficient. If anything, this suggests that we need to raise wages globally so we'll actually quit wasting so much human effort.

    --
    This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
  3. Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'? by gtall · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Libertarians would have us live in a dog-eat-dog society. They ignore the rule of law that allows them their freedom. And they'd like everyone armed to the teeth to defend their property.

    They'd like everyone to have the right to be bankrupted due to medical issues. Social Security and Medicare keep Grandma off the Libertarians' front lawns. In Ayn Rand's world, airlines could allow for a certain number of plane crashes a year consistent with their profit margins due to customers deciding not to fly and employees finding alternate jobs. Smog and pollution would exist only up to a threshold number of deaths due to pollution. Mercury would not be a controlled pollutant; if you ingest too much, it be your own fault. What? You didn't know you were eating it in that seafood? How come you didn't pull out your home chemistry kit and do your own testing?

    What Libertarians do not get is statistics. If you ignore statistics, then you get the every doofus for himself mentality. If you pay attention to statistics, a lot of government programs make sense.

  4. Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'? by religionofpeas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    What Libertarians do not get is statistics.

    Just taking a good look at the Prisoner's Dilemma and Tragedy of the Commons should be enough to understand that you need government programs to enforce cooperation for the benefit of all.

  5. Re:But lets raise minimum wage! -'earn'? by Hognoxious · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Meddling seems very frequently to be motivated by moral/ethical judgement

    How terrible! We should stamp out morals and ethics right away.

    --
    Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."