[notahacker]

The basic technology to serve people fast food without human interaction (the Automat) has been around for longer than fast food franchises. Fast food franchises invest vast amounts on process optimization and kiosks are still at the experimental stage (and still with human food delivery!).

Obvious conclusion: fast food companies operating on high margins still think they sell more stuff with humans in the chain, and also find that by virtue of its versatility cheap human labour makes less expensive mistakes in preparing the food (which in most aspects is so simple it would appear ideally suited to automation) than a robotic production line would.

[majewsky]

That conclusion is not so obvious. Some middle managers might just be pushing back against automation because it eats their lunch, too.

[notahacker]

That might be the case for Mom and Pop listening to their restaurant manager, but nobody high up enough in McDonalds' hierarchy to have significant influence what experiments in store tech they roll out to some or all of their 37000 outlets/franchises faces any risk to their job from automation. Nor do the management consultants they hire to validate their assumptions and provide justification for their unpopular decisions. On the contrary, even a 1% productivity improvement is a major feather in their cap, bumper pay rise and appreciation in their shareholdings.