[bertil]

This is actually an area where automation has some significant potential. Taking orders with a menu on a webpage or an app is a classic at this point. I remember seeing not just vending machines, but a vending wall at Amsterdam Central train station where a chef would fill transparent boxes with freshly fried snacks, to be sold automatically.

Cooking is an enormous working-class employer and it is getting automated — will it lower demand for work? Most people still cook their own food, so there‘s a lot more cooking service that could be sold, but at this point, the economies of scale point at fewer people manning the frier, and just one person monitoring several robots.

[mywittyname]

> will it lower demand for work?

Commoditization of Compliments.

If it's cheaper to make food using automation, then some complimentary component of food service is going to capture some of the dollars saved. For example, we could see food trucks that make your food while en route and the truck pulls up and delivers it fresh.

Or, more simply, we could see commissaries/"ghost kitchens" capable of serving a larger variety of food with fewer people pop up in suburban strip malls. Maybe they could have a rotating menu. A small restaurant like that could pull down a few million in revenue each year even in less populated states, which is more than enough to pay good wages if the number of operators can be kept to <4 people.

Most of them now have several operators making a limited selection of food.

[0ldskool]

Couldn't we have self-driving food trucks, each specializing in a specific food? People could have events and schedules a couple of food trucks to drive by while cooking food on the way. Fast food takes on a new meaning (fast vehicles cook+deliver food on demand).

No more need for fast food restaurants because they just can transformed into a fleet of trucks.

[anonporridge]

The vast majority of working class people used to work toiling the fields to grow food. Now that entire process is done by a tiny number of people managing fleets of machines.

History is full of clues of how this story is going to play out over the next few decades.

[s1artibartfast]

History is also full of hard times with high unemployment, where skilled and unskilled workers failed to transition and struggled to feed their families.

[jasonwatkinspdx]

What's old is new again: https://www.thoughtco.com/thmb/D9CHI_k00oHw5h_4XYIIEu2mveg=/...

Long story short: there's a lot more going on with service industry than "just make it more factory automated to reduce labor costs" and any attempt at "disrupting" the industry that ignores that is going to do little better than be a more expensive vending machine.

[seanmcdirmid]

Vending machines were popular in the USA I think in the early 20th century. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Horn_%26_Hardart

They went out of style in the late 20th century (in the USA at least).

[schrijver]

Apparently they went out of fashion everywhere, except the Netherlands, probably because of the strong presence of the ‘FEBO’ franchise from the 1960ies onward, a fast food brand built in part on having these machines. So it’s hardly new to see them in Amsterdam!