[throwaway0a5e]

Franchises care a lot about the experience so they're not gonna roll the dice with "lite" formats until they can guarantee consistency and quality befitting their brand at those small scales. You can just about fit an entire fast food restaurant worth of equipment in a semi truck. You can't fit it and have it be anywhere near reasonably operable though. Sufficient automation could change that.

If you reduce the foot print enough you can fit a store that can serve the whole menu into a food truck (or sea can, or construction trailer) format and do it with acceptable results that opens up options.

Imagine renting a McDonalds for your sporting event, concert, oil drilling rig or forward operating base the same way you rent a big genset, rock crusher or any other equipment that gets mobilized on a semi truck.

I don't see it happening in the next decade without some yet unforeseen change that makes the tech cheaper, the engineering cheaper or the recurring cost of labor for running a manual restaurant more expensive.

[JoeAltmaier]

I beg to differ about the experience part. The drive-thru experience is already nearly contactless. There's no 'experience' other than waiting in line and shouting into a can.

As for automating food preparation, there's already factories that produce TV dinners and whatnot. There's nobody in those factories (doing food prep). It's not a matter of technology; i'ts a matter of format and deployment.