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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.
"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.
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/...
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 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
But handling more orders means that others handle less orders, because there's only a limited amount of customers. When those workers go away, it's not a net win in amount of workers for the restaurant industry. It will likely be an overall loss for the industry, because the restaurant workers now laid off elsewhere and their families will have less money to spend at restaurants.
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.
Even McDonalds doesn't put fries in soda. You need to go to a better class of restaurant.
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.
"If you make 150$/hr, and it takes you 4 hours to shop, travel, prep and package your week of food, you cost yourself $600 on top of your grocery prices."
Often quoted, but never holds in real life. It doesn't matter if you make $10/hr or $50/hr or $150/hr. What matters is whether or not someone will pay you that amount for that period of time.
A lot of people have jobs with salaries, and "saving" four hours by not cooking doesn't "cost" me $600, since my company isn't going to pay me more money for that time anyway.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.