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After Automating Order-Taking, Fast Food Chains Had to Hire More Workers (theatlantic.com)
An anonymous reader quotes the Atlantic:
Blaine Hurst, the CEO and president of Panera, told me that because of its new [self-service] kiosks, and an app that allows online ordering, the chain is now processing more orders overall, which means it needs more total workers to fulfill customer demand. Starbucks patrons who use the chain's app return more frequently than those who don't, the company has said, and the greater efficiency that online ordering allows has boosted sales at busy stores during peak hours. Starbucks employed 8 percent more people in the U.S. in 2016 than it did in 2015, the year it launched the app...
James Bessen, an economist at Boston University School of Law, found that as the number of ATMs in America increased fivefold from 1990 to 2010, the number of bank tellers also grew. Bessen believes that ATMs drove demand for consumer banking: No longer constrained by a branch's limited hours, consumers used banking services more frequently, and people who were unbanked opened accounts to take advantage of the new technology. Although each branch employed fewer tellers, banks added more branches, so the number of tellers grew overall. And as machines took over many basic cash-handling tasks, the nature of the tellers' job changed. They were now tasked with talking to customers about products -- a certificate of deposit, an auto loan -- which in turn made them more valuable to their employers. "It's not clear that automation in the restaurant industry will lead to job losses," Bessen told me.
James Bessen, an economist at Boston University School of Law, found that as the number of ATMs in America increased fivefold from 1990 to 2010, the number of bank tellers also grew. Bessen believes that ATMs drove demand for consumer banking: No longer constrained by a branch's limited hours, consumers used banking services more frequently, and people who were unbanked opened accounts to take advantage of the new technology. Although each branch employed fewer tellers, banks added more branches, so the number of tellers grew overall. And as machines took over many basic cash-handling tasks, the nature of the tellers' job changed. They were now tasked with talking to customers about products -- a certificate of deposit, an auto loan -- which in turn made them more valuable to their employers. "It's not clear that automation in the restaurant industry will lead to job losses," Bessen told me.
They keep running out of "workers".
#DeleteFacebook
So instead of saving money by getting rid of people, they ended up hiring more and making more money?
"Starbucks employed 8 percent more people in the U.S. in 2016 than it did in 2015, the year it launched the app..."
Employees per store is the only valid statistic to support their contention. Otherwise, it's factoring in new employees in new stores.
It would help if there was a description next to the slurs to help non-rednecks understand what you're talking about.
I mean, faggots don't look appetizing to me but I'm sure there's people out there who likes them.
#DeleteFacebook
Thank you for helping me to further lower the signal-to-noise ratio in the comments. Your assistance is much appreciated.
- Ivan
Jevons Paradox, which has been around since the 1800s, says that the more efficiently a resource is used, the more demand there will be for it. Thus, the more efficiently human labor is used, the more demand there will be for it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Automation isn't likely to cause a jobpocalypse like many predict. In fact, it may actually increase jobs and allow companies to offer a wider variety of products locally. Imagine for a moment that your local retail store or local grocery store basically becomes a huge warehouse. You don't physically shop there any longer. You do your shopping online via your computer or phone. Then you go and pick your order up. Store clerks, cashiers, et cetera now all work to pick, fill, and load customer orders.
No jobs lost. More convenience and variety and cost savings gained.
I think you are deliberately being https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The proper way to deal with a troll is to mark it appropriately and ignore it. Do not feed the trolls.
If this is meant to say that "automation creates jobs", it is an utter fail. What happens instead is that those that automate get more business, a) showing that automation works and b) accelerating automation and c) job-loss in late-comers to automation will be even larger.
Are people really too stupid to see this? Because it is blatantly obvious.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
...more valuable to their employers... who, of course, pay them a higher wage commensurate with that increased value. Right?
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
So instead of saving money by getting rid of people, they ended up hiring more and making more money?
Yes, that is true, but it doesn't mean that overall hiring increased. It means customers prefer automated ordering and spent more of their money at Panera as opposed to competitors. Since Panera most likely required less workers than competitors who don't have automated ordering, overall employment likely dropped.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
What is it with people these days and their lack of logic sense and understanding what they are talking about. Can't this guy see that he's proving exactly the opposite with his comment?
"It's not clear that automation in the restaurant industry will lead to job losses"
You make a service more convenient with automation, which attracts more costumers and whatnot. Sure. But how can you reach the conclusion that it won't lead to job losses stopping there? Are you some sort of idiot?
Here, let me complete to you. Those costumers are often choosing your restaurant over others because of convenience. As they are going there because they don't want to interact with regular human employees, this means they are choosing automated services, which might hire more people for overhead in your business, but it'll also be killing other businesses that don't have automated services.
This is no different than Amazon over big retail chain stores. Just because one restaurant is hiring a couple more employees to deal with automated services overhead doesn't mean that jobs are not being lost overall. At some point, the market gets saturated and you end up in a situation where several businesses that used to hire a lot of people to attend costumers gets replaced by businesses that have automation as the main business driver plus few human employees for the rest.
It's the same as saying that only because Amazon is hiring more slav- I mean, warehouse workers, robots are not replacing jobs. Nevermind multiple stores from small to big closing doors because they can't compete with Amazon.
This isn't rocket science, people.
https://singularityhub.com/201... When the robot grids the meat on a per order basis and assembles it all? https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
So to balance the equation two things may happen:
1. People eat out more because perhaps it will get cheaper to eat out since labor is the largest cost in the restaurant business; or
2. Competition will drive out of business the (usually smaller) less competitive restaurants resulting in job losses as competition increases for the static level of consumers.
Both of these could happen together or to varying degrees.
FFS, what happened to critical thinking?
Step 1 is to get everyone used to ordering and paying automatically.
Step 2 is to produce and deliver the goods automatically.
At Step 2 is when all the jobs go!
Its just the same plan Uber is playing - why do you think they are happy to run at a loss now? They are just planning to be the standard when self-drive cars reduce the other half of the operation to close to zero cost.
Come on people, this is pretty obvious.
I used to hate going to starbucks because it took 5-10 minutes of waiting in line just to order a cup of drip coffee. My time is too valuable to piss it away doing something like standing around. Now i place my order from my phone as i am rolling out of the drive way in the morning. 7-9 minutes later when i get there it's on the counter with my name on it. They didn't need a person to take my order and no one had to wait. This is the what innovation is all about folks. On a side note, when i go into starbucks to get my drink now, there normally isn't even a person working the register. Everyone is making drinks for mobile orders and the drive thru. Much more value added use of resources.
Scott
The rise in orders is probably just a spike from those techheads that refuse to buy anything unless there's an app for it. Once others have apps, or they go out of fashion, the demand will drop off.
The summary to me read "Increases demand, increases demand, increases demand" and ended with either a stupid joke or disingenuous propaganda
I doubt many people take away that the important bit here is there will maybe somehow be more need for coffee artists. The interesting part is that demand goes up from robots.
A more interesting, accurate conclusion would be "Evidently, people DON'T get coffee at Starbucks or food at McDonald's to talk to employees! WE ACTUALLY ALL HATE INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE IN THAT CONTEXT! WHO KNEW BESIDES EVERY SANE HUMAN BEING!?!"
If this is meant to say that "automation creates jobs", it is an utter fail. What happens instead is that those that automate get more business, a) showing that automation works and b) accelerating automation and c) job-loss in late-comers to automation will be even larger.
Are people really too stupid to see this? Because it is blatantly obvious.
Yes, people are that stupid. If a store has to hire more employees bacause of an uptick in business, it does not follow that every store that automates will have the same uptick in business. Hard to imagine anyone would think so, but here we are with the same sort of logic that created the housing bubble.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I went to a McDonalds in Coustances a few years ago. We ordered at a kiosk, but there were several people behind the counter and delivered it to us at our table. No fewer people than in the US. Automation doesn't save dick.
Why the hell does someone need or even want an app for ordering coffee? Is it really that hard to walk up to the counter and say "I'll have a coffee"
WTF is happening to people?
In order to sell the idea of automation, they first say that it isn't about replacing jobs. And they generally don't replace jobs for a multitude of reasons, one big one being the new robots need constant babysitting.
But give it a decade and the robots are performing well. Then the second wave of robots are sold specifically to replace workers.
This is how it works. See it isn't so bad, when we tighten the noose on you slowly. Then suddenly the bottom drops out from underneath.
News flash: front-end automation can lead to more orders being sent to the back-end. The next step is back-end automation "to keep up with increased volume", and then the employee count will be fully reduced. Fast food is intended to be cooked precisely according to an algorithm already, so I expect cook-bots will be ordered shortly afterward.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
McDonald's corporate is apparently putting a brutal amount of pressure on franchisees to force customers to use the "self serve" kiosks they've force all the stores to install (and considerable expense), and they apparently measure what percentage of sales are rung up on those kiosks.
One local McDonald's just stopped manning the registers as much, and the service there sucks donkey balls. The other one, clever bastards that they are, simply station a cashier at the kiosk and use it as a cash register. They even had somebody build a little wheeled cart for drink cups. The only difference between that and the other registers is that they don't take cash there - you have to go to the regular counter register to pay.
No difference to the customers, no difference to the employees, corporate is happy, it's win/win/win.
Be careful what you measure, because that's what you'll get.
Hmm A probably.
And that is also a very real possibility. So longer-term, there may not even be more jobs at this company.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Indeed.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
They didn't need a person to take my order and no one had to wait.
I'm guessing when you say "no one had to wait" you actually mean "I didn't have to wait". From what I've seen, Starbucks prioritizes mobile orders. My personal experience has been that walk-ins now wait longer because the service personnel keep getting interrupted by new mobile orders.
But, in any case, I don't go to Starbucks as much as I used to. There's this other place - Specialty's Cafe and Bakery - that's right next to the Starbucks at Seattle's International District station. The coffee is better, the baked goods are amazing (and mostly made on premises!), and walk-in service is incredibly fast. Hmm, maybe I shouldn't be encouraging more customers...
Ah, yes, Specialty's. They've been doing automated ordering for several years now. And it's awful. Maybe not for the restaurant but placing an order on their Ipad's is painfully awkward and slow. It is a much worse experience than waiting to give an order to a human. Placing the order online from a real computer with login already setup is not as bad and any extra time is offset by overlapping travel time with food prep time. If I arrive at Specialty's without an order already placed, I would rather leave and eat some place else.
Although each branch employed fewer tellers, banks added more branches, so the number of tellers grew overall. And as machines took over many basic cash-handling tasks, the nature of the tellers' job changed. They were now tasked with talking to customers about products -- a certificate of deposit, an auto loan -- which in turn made them more valuable to their employers.
I've never talked with a bank teller about a certificate of deposit or an auto loan - ever.
I love how the authors gloss over changes in the banking industry, attributing all changes to the influence of atms...
If I have a job at the local bank, and lose it when the bank automated, on a personal level, I take no solace in the bank i used to work for opening a new branch on the other side of town and creating a new position there - it may balance the score as far as job loss/creation goes, but I'm left unemployed.
Ken
Who would had thunked it! People who specialized in an area of study are able to understand how the economy really works.
So when they say efficiency positively affect the economy. They are not blowing smoke or just pandering to some political party.
What will we find out next? Increase workforce with higher salaries creates more customers? And kicking out people from your country will have a long term negative affect.
But some guy who happens to have a lot of money told us differently. Just because someone is wealthy or in a powerful position doesn’t mean they know what is going on. Economists study this stuff for a reason and should be listened too.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
When Eli Whitney invented the Cotton Gin politicians predicted that it would reduce demand for slaves but instead it increased it.
Why?
The reason is known as Jevons' Paradox.
Increasing productivity decreases price which increases total consumption.
Jevon's original research was to demonstrate popular claims that more efficient coal engines would reduce total coal consumption and make England's reserves last longer were ignorant. Jevons' work was later cited by Tesla over 100 years ago as a warning that we should transition to sustainable energy sources as soon as possible. Today, politicians still claim that more efficient cars will decrease total oil consumption and that decreased cost of goods and services will reduce total consumption.
No, it most certainly isn't.
Order-taking is half the interface with the customer. In many restaurants, it involves the customer waiting to have their order taken. Automating this part of the process provides a real feeling of getting things going much faster than waiting in line or at a table without having yet gotten anything done. Then there's the issue of the order-taker having gotten the order right.
For example, McDonalds curbside / online ordering allows you to "favorite" items you like to order, including custom variations like no mustard, extra pickles, etc. This further streamlines the ordering process, reduces errors, and (of course) pleases customers. You can also have the order ready to go, drive up to the curbside slot, and send it immediately, further reducing friction.
Reducing friction — or even apparently reducing friction — at this juncture tends to lead directly to higher customer satisfaction. That in turn leads to more sales.
Right now, that leads to more work. That won't last, because all of these jobs will eventually be automated away. The kind of automation we're talking about here isn't the kind of automation that is the real concern. This phase of the process has simply changed from the employee driving it to the customer driving it: they moved the interface to the customer in a way that actually works and makes them happier.
As the actual food delivery to the store, inventory management, prep, delivery, cleaning and maintenance fall to automation, that is when you'll see human employment in these restaurants fall. We're simply not there yet.
Best not to confuse the one process with the other.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
But usually in those cultures even the smallest street kitchens found on every corner can provide better quality and more variety than the run-of-the-mill american chain restaurant that microwaves the same slop from coast to coast.
Better quality I could believe but you're going to have a hard time finding any restaurant that has more variety than a place like TGI Fridays or The Cheesecake Factory. Those places have menus the size of phone books and have something from just about any category imaginable. None of it particularly good mind you but plenty of variety.
Personally I like restaurants that have small menus and do whatever they do extremely well. Any menu larger than a page with more than around 20 items on it is probably going to be sacrificing quality for variety. Places like a good ramen shop are an exception because they are really just selling the same product with lots of permutations. I never order something like ribs at a place that doesn't specialize in bbq because the odds of them doing it well are rather remote. I don't get seafood at a place that doesn't specialize in it because the quality will suffer and seafood is sketchy enough to begin with.
Restaurant workers are already not the people who can afford to buy daily $3 coffees and the like.
I think you are under the delusion that restaurant workers are all living hand to mouth and barely making a living. While there are cases where this is true, there also are plenty of people in the industry doing just fine. Waitstaff at a decent restaurant can make a VERY decent salary.
Even McDonald's is quite expensive compared to a grocery store.
That depends on what you are buying. You can't even buy the meat for less money than a basic McDonalds hamburger costs (currently ~$1 including bun and condiments) unless you buy something really sketchy or mass produced. On the other hand you can buy the ingredients to make a much better burger than McDonalds will sell you.
It's mostly busy middle class business types who buy fast food, and the deciding factor for them is how quick and painless you can make the experience
It's not "mostly" middle class though they are the largest portion of the people buying fast food. Pretty much everybody buys fast food and the middle class buys marginally more than the poor (who have to stretch their money) and the rich (who can afford more options more often). But basically we all buy fast food, including many people who loudly proclaim they don't.
They need to install a Manna system to manage these workers :D
On the other hand, it's easy to imagine that on-line ordering could drive greater sales, as it removes the need to visit the store to make a purchase.
Think of it this way. My wife HATES standing in lines and is introverted so she also hates talking to people needlessly. Buy Starbucks came out with an app that allows her to place her order and then just walk in and pick it up without having to talk to anyone or stand in any lines. They eliminated a frictional transaction cost so now she goes to Starbucks MORE often than previously as a result. Enough people like her and Starbucks will have to add workers because of the positive effects of automation. Taking the order is an unnecessary expense to both the customer and the restaurant.
For instance, automation of agriculture drastically reduced agricultural employment.
Not quite as simple as that actually. Total employment in agriculture in the US increased dramatically from 1850 to 1900. It has fallen since then but the total number of people employed in agriculture has only in the last 20 years or so fallen below the number employed in 1850. In 1850 about 3.5 million people in the US worked in agriculture. It wasn't until about 1970 that the number fell below 3.5 million again. In 2000 the number was around 3.1 million. Per captia numbers in agriculture have been falling since the 1400s but total employment actually seems to have peaked around 1900, well after automation started having serious impacts on the industry.
Automation in agriculture was a major factor in enabling the industrial revolution. If the majority of us still had to tend the family farm then technological progress would have happened much slower and chances are good you're not using the computer you are reading this post on.
This is why I'm not particularly worried about those proclaiming that automation is going to take away all our jobs. It won't. It will just change what we do and what we reap economic benefits from. Anyone who is programming computers for a living owes their livelihood to the jobs that were CREATED by automation. The problem is that it's hard to see what those jobs will be ahead of time because many of them haven't been created yet. There is an entire economy around the smartphone in your pocket that didn't exist at all 30 years ago and would have been hard to predict in any but the most general of ways.
The coffee in a can is equivalent to starbucks, except cheaper and in a lot more locations.
I won't pretend Starbucks coffee is amazing but to claim that coffee in a can is equivalent is only valid in the sense they are both coffee. Pretty much nothing else about them is equivalent. Both are fine but they are vastly different in too many ways to bother enumerating here.
It seems to be alive and well in my local Post Office. They've got two automated machines where you can supposedly do all the necessaries to get your parcel or letter sent however you'd like it to be handled. Then they've got the traditional queue-up system with a handful of windows and a "please go to window 2" machine.
I took a look at the machines, and bearing in mind I'm a sysadmin, thought "how hard can it be?" (pff! most of the people in the line are pretty old, maybe it's too complicated for them!). Then I tried to use it... almost immediately it popped up "Help is on the way". Seeing no one around, I just joined the queue. "Help" arrived at the machine as I was getting called to my window.
The next time I went, I of course ignored the machines like everyone else. A helpful lady asked the person in front if she'd like to use the machine and a few other questions, and then said "actually, you may be better off going to the window in case it gets complicated". She then came to me, and as I just had a parcel to send first class (nothing special), we headed over to the machine. She operated it entirely - all I did was put my credit card over the reader to pay. She even stuck the label on my parcel and then took my parcel into the back room. The lady who was in front of me in the queue was stood behind me and was then assisted in sending her parcel after I left.
So... at my local post office at least, they've got the same number of 'windows', but now have an extra person to operate the automatic machines because none of the general public can do it on their own. Crap automation = more jobs :-)
Yes, people are that stupid. If a store has to hire more employees bacause of an uptick in business, it does not follow that every store that automates will have the same uptick in business.
Of course not. But automation demonstrably can and does make industries grow faster overall. There will be winners and losers but the size of the overall economic pie can be grown larger through automation and that often means more jobs overall - albeit doing different things.
Hard to imagine anyone would think so, but here we are with the same sort of logic that created the housing bubble.
That was a different phenomena and isn't really a great analogy. First there is no evidence of a bubble but if you are going to compare with one a better analogy might be the dotcom bubble. New automation technology created a bubble until people sort of figured out how best to use it. There were some winners and losers and once the dust settled there was economic growth and more jobs than before.
People may return more, but heaven forbid they actually interact with another person.
And those new banking jobs suddenly became redundant, leading numerous job losses in multiple countries. Maybe the traders have already gone through this as well? Another edge of a cliff is passed as the AI assisted self-services become everyday things.
"It's not clear that automation in the restaurant industry will lead to job losses," Bessen told me.
That seems like a very short-sighted assessment. It's understandable that more efficient ordering can lead to increased sales, resulting in more demand for other positions that offset the decreased need for order-takers. But I'm not sure why one would assume those other positions are immune to automation, or that growth can continue at such a rate that the dwindling number of positions that need a human worker will continue to support the same staffing levels as before automation.
DontBeAMoran confessed:
I mean, faggots don't look appetizing to me but I'm sure there's people out there who likes them.
But at least they're liable to be high in fiber ...
Check out my novel.
He just made that word up.
Until the cooks and cleaning staff are also automated, it should have been obvious that self-service kiosks would require more staff to meet the demand.
Wawa (a convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic region [and now Florida]) installed touch screen ordering at all its locations in 2002.
Mobile ordering is now available as well.
Have gnu, will travel.
No shit.
Though economists do believe that labour efficiency drives aggregate demand (up to a point).
In related news, electric cars have no tail pipe emissions.
A) the amount of money and total number of accounts that banks hold increased at orders of mangitude faster than hiring more tellers. B) The number of customers the average teller sees per day is down to around 1/3rd of what it used to be. C) the number of tellers is now falling again because they are not automating the inside of the branches too so fewer tellers can do more work. D) the number of customers entering branches is showing signs of slowing and dropping in some markets. There will be fewer branches soon enough.
I assumed he meant the drop as a percent of the labor force
Then that is what should have been said. Fact is that automation did NOT drastically reduce agricultural employment. It merely kept it from increasing along with population growth. And that is a Good Thing.
Similarly there has been much hand wringing about loss of jobs in manufacturing in the US but the fact is that the jobs that left the US were (relatively) low paying labor intensive jobs. Total manufacturing in the US has increased and accounts for about $3 Trillion of US GDP and rising annually. I work in manufacturing and the death of US manufacturing has been greatly exaggerated. I see no reason to believe that information workers and other white collar jobs won't experience similar benefits (and some pain) from automation but the dystopian concerns are mostly ill founded.
"Big Men???" keep on turning
Carry on like boys of sin
Singing songs about the teen-girls
He rapes 'ole' 'bamy once again and He likes 'em young
Well I heard Mister Moore deny about her
Well I heard ole Roy put her down
Well, I hope Roy Moore will remember
A southern folk don't need him around anyhow
Sweet home Alabama
Where the guys have not a clue (apparently)
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, it's startin' smell like poo
In Ole 'Bamy they love the POTUS, boo-hoo-hoo
Now we all did what we could do
Now Pussy-Gate does not bother 'em
Does your conscience bother you, tell the truth
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies WERE so blue
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, can not these people be true?
Now GOP has got Deniers
And they've been known to twist the truth
Lord they make nearly vomit
They lie and cheat and steal, now how bout you?
Sweet home Alabama
Where the skies CAN BE AGAIN so blue
Sweet home Alabama
Lord, I promise to make it for YOU!
Productivity "per worker" is no longer a very useful metric.
We are approaching the limit cases where a few human engineers design the process and a few supervisors tweak it and call in a few maintenance screw-tighteners now and then. Otherwise, the production process operates autonomously, meaning machines, energy input, and materials (delivered by autonomous trucks and trains).
Measures like energy and material efficiency, and configuration-as-product value-add over raw-material value, would seem more relevant as measures of production process productivity.
If I am the supervisor who is technologically enabled to oversee automated production of 100,000 units a day, do I deserve more money than the supervisor who used to supervise humans producing 1000 units per day? Let's assume that the automation makes my workload about the same in both cases.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
You can thank ObamaCare for that
Technically, I think you can thank the reaction of insurance companies to ObamaCare for that.
Sure, they said they were losing money and had to raise rates, or pull out of "unprofitable" markets because of it, but I never really believed them. I think that small businesses suffered, and blamed it on ObamaCare. But the insurance companies were the ones who started that chain reaction. I don't think ObamaCare was a smashing success, but certain money-grubbing industries made sure to not help it succeed.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
- automate the order fulfillment
- automate the customers
In one of Harry Harrison's books Slippery Jim diGriz hides out in an automated fast food outlet. He simply took food from the automated dispensers.
Tracy Johnson
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BT