[joezydeco]

If you think labor is what keeps fast food prices high, you are mistaken.

Most of the largest chains have pretty much automated nearly everything by now that's possible given reliability and safety standards. If you look in the kitchen of any McDonald's nobody is cooking or preparing the components. They're either pre-cut, loaded into dispensers, being cooked in a self-timing temperature-controlled fryer, or being cooked on a self-timing temperature-controlled clamshell grill. If you check out a Taco Bell, they've even eliminated the cooking part. It's all made off-site in large batches and rewarmed on the assembly line. Even the beloved Chipotle has moved to retherming their components where possible.

The human labor is merely in assembly and delivery. And automating that with robots is a generation away, if at all.

[JoeAltmaier]

Read the article! Its all about automating assembly and delivery.

[JoeAltmaier]

25% to 40% I see by labor statistics. That's quite a margin.

[Retric]

Food prep is a small portion of that, you also pay people to clean the bathrooms, take orders, handle inventory and disputes, etc. Food prep on it's own is almost a rounding error.

You might be getting 30 seconds of time from people making minimum wage for a combo, but that's about it and even at 15$/hour that's well under 15 cents per order.

[petra]

So that's around 1% of revenue? For a low margin business like restaurants that's probably worth it.

[crankylinuxuser]

In other words, humans are just disposable, self-healing robots that require minimal maintenance. And when they can no longer do the job, Right-to-Work laws summarily get rid of them.

[joezydeco]

Well, yes. That's called the service industry.

In their defense they also are quickly reconfigurable with visual and audible reprogramming options. I don't think you can get that Spyce robot to leave the kitchen and mop the floor when someone drops a drink. You also can't call in more robots when a bus full of high school kids shows up out of the blue.

Disposable, self-healing robots also do other things like assemble your iPhones and laptops but they're an ocean away so out of sight out of mind, right?

In some parts of the world service workers belong to unions that stand up for fair wages and working conditions. Where you live might not see that as viable or perhaps it conflicts with local religious or political views, so your conditions may vary.