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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.
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.
I can also tell you that they cut those employee's hours by way more than 8%... company-wide... at around the same time. I know someone who manages several stores for Starbucks, but I also read about it on Google News. Hours were cut by about a third IIRC. The company was trying to keep everyone below the top levels in the dark about it, of course.
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!?!"
Which explains why in Japan, there have been automated coffee shops on most street corners for decades.
They're called "vending machines."
The coffee in a can is equivalent to starbucks, except cheaper and in a lot more locations.
Why the fuck don't we have that here already?
Do you remember when the industrial revolution first started and power looms and such were invented. Suddenly people could make socks in a tiny fraction of the time it used to take to knit a pair. Unfortunately they made so many socks that all sock makers went completely out of business due to limited customers and to topi it all off their lost wages lead to a complete collapse of the economy in England.
Wait, that didn't actually happen. Instead people bought more socks than ever before because people had long wanted more socks than were capable of being produced. Just like hundreds of years ago with socks, what happens when you increase productivity and you can create more of something, consumptions tends to increase because people wanted more, just not at the previous price. People will keep on wanting more shit even as we find ways of making it ever more quickly and at lower costs and probably will until we find some way to alter our brain chemistry.
Wait, that didn't actually happen. Instead people bought more socks than ever before because people had long wanted more socks than were capable of being produced. Just like hundreds of years ago with socks, what happens when you increase productivity and you can create more of something, consumptions tends to increase because people wanted more, just not at the previous price. People will keep on wanting more shit even as we find ways of making it ever more quickly and at lower costs and probably will until we find some way to alter our brain chemistry.
I'm sorry, but that's the manufacturing industry, which operates on a different basis than the service industry. It certainly doesn't hold true for the restaurant industry, because there is only so much people can eat (Americans being evidence to the contrary). You can't sell people five dinners a day, even if you can ramp up production to make it affordable.
I'm sorry, but that's the manufacturing industry, which operates on a different basis than the service industry. It certainly doesn't hold true for the restaurant industry, because there is only so much people can eat (Americans being evidence to the contrary). You can't sell people five dinners a day, even if you can ramp up production to make it affordable.
Yes, you can only eat so much at a given meal but it still holds for the restaurant industry. In the not so distant past, eating at a restaurant was a treat. Now, many people eat out multiple times a week but even today very few people consume the majority of their meals at restaurants. Some of this is time constraints and some of this is price. Call ahead ordering can reduce both.
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.