[ipsin]

"The improved workflow allows for the redeployment of team members to focus on creating memorable moments for customers."

I... doubt it? It seems like it would allow the redeployment of team members to "no longer working at White Castle".

[seanmcdirmid]

Or in the current tight labor market, it would allow for redeployment of team members to being "no longer being seriously understaffed and not quitting to go somewhere else better."

[prepend]

Seems fine with me. Fast food is pretty horrible and the worst part are the employees. Let them do other, more interesting jobs.

I once ordered a Big Mac and the employee forgot to put in the meat. Someone did that. They put it in the bag and handed it to me. When I returned it, no one apologized, some other employee shrugs and went back and got another one.

The service will be much better with robots. And the remaining employees can be paid more, thus be smarter and happier.

[diffeomorphism]

> And the remaining employees can be paid more,

But they won't. And they could already be paid more (see McD in Norway and McD in the US, drastically different minimum wage but basically the same prices), but aren't.

> The service will be much better with robots.

Doubt it.

[prepend]

I’ve experienced much better service with the robots we have so far. Ordering by kiosk or app is so much easier than talking to a human cashier.

Based on that experience I think a robot burger maker will be less likely to forget to add the burger to the burger.

[MontyCarloHall]

> basically the same prices

A Big Mac with soda and fries is well over $20 in Norway.

Those high wages have to come from somewhere. Margins in the food service industry are incredibly tight.

[dagw]

I was in Norway a few weeks ago and paid just under 100kr or roughly $11 for a Big Mac, soda and fries.

[jazzyjackson]

Maybe that's just the USD being weak compared to krone, I could complain about how many pesos a mcfish costs in hong kong

[MomoXenosaga]

I live in a rapidly ageing society. It is morally unconscionable and economically idiotic to waste young people on McDonald's.

[hertzrat]

Not very thoughtful. Do you think fast food workers are aware of a vast number of more interesting, higher paying jobs they are able to get and are simply working at minimum wage over a deep fried for the fun of it?

[prepend]

I meant more interesting within their employer.

I think fast food workers want any job to pay the bills. It’s hard to imagine that anyone enjoys frying fries.

I think it’s similar to how no one liked manually plowing fields so they moved on to other jobs when automation made them unnecessary.

[faeriechangling]

> Let them do other, more interesting jobs.

What jobs are there, especially for somebody who may quite bluntly not be the sharpest tool in the box? The labor market is not prepared to absorb these workers.

[prepend]

Chick-fil-a has people walking around and smiling and asking people if they need anything. Picking up trash, giving refills, whatever.

Every fast food place is understaffed right now (eg, Burger King has a help wanted sign over their drive through menu) so I think the robots will pick up the slack from all the missing humans.

[BeFlatXIII]

Would you agree that the baseline skill set to be employable at any wage has slowly creeped up over the past century?

[teawrecks]

No, I would say the opposite, but I would also say that's the problem. We have deliberately tried to make every entry level job idiot proof.

100+ years ago, industries weren't solved yet. Customer interaction was improvised, food service involved actual cooking skills, products were still hand crafted. Today jobs that involve customer interaction are scripted. Food and commodity production use preprocessed, packaged ingredients, and the process is pipelined. Entry level jobs today have no wiggle room for creativity, and very minimal amount of training that is portable across jobs, because that's what maximizes profits.

[teawrecks]

What? You just got done explaining why the human employees suck at their job, and your conclusion is that they'll be paid more now? Maybe you mean by going and doing a different job?

[Nition]

Well, they don't specify positive or negative memories. Maybe customers will get to remember the employees storming out, striking etc.

[ddingus]

There are two basic paths for automation.

One is to replace the people, ideally reducing cost assuming the bot, and it's programming, maintenance, etc... are less than the labor cost was.

The other is to augment the people, maybe replace a few, but for the most part the people get repurposed to tasks they can do much better than the automation can.

In the first case, it's all about optimization, and the cost is generally a more rigid organization, but a very lean, efficient one. This leads to much lower costs, assuming the scale and savings make sense.

In the second case, it's all about quality and or expanding the scope of business. The potential for rigidity is still there, depending on how the robots and people work. In general, resources are there for the people to work smarter, and or on other tasks, products, improvements, and the like.

[credit_guy]

So about a year ago, Whole Foods introduced some bicycles that carry some little trailers. A delivery person can probably deliver 3 times as much as before. That means two thirds of them could be redeployed to not work for Whole Foods (Amazon?) anymore.

500 years ago, some guy invented the printing press. With it, one person could produce more books in a month than 100 scribes. Which soon found themselves redeployed to not working anymore.

[jvalencia]

Given what I think the operations are likely going to face -- how to swap out one bot for another when it breaks. How to fill in the line when there's a gap. How to service the bot.