Carl's Jr/Hardee's CEO considering automated restaurant

[FaxModem1]

NBC

Carl’s Jr. CEO wants to try automated restaurant where customers ‘never see a person’
POSTED 4:57 PM, MARCH 17, 2016, BY KFOR-TV & K. QUERRY
NEW YORK – A CEO of a fast-food company is causing a stir on social media after claiming that he wants to create a fully automated restaurant.

“We could have a restaurant that’s focused on all-natural products and is much like an Eatsa, where you order on a kiosk, you pay with a credit or debit card, your order pops up, and you never see a person,” Carl’s Jr. CEO Andy Puzder told Business Insider.

Puzder says the automated restaurant would be cheaper since he wouldn’t have to worry about rising minimum wage.

“If you’re making labor more expensive, and automation less expensive- this is not rocket science,” Puzder said.

“They’re always polite, they always upsell, they never take a vacation, they never show up late, there’s never a slip-and-fall, or an age, sex, or race discrimination case,” says Puzder of swapping employees for machines. “Millennials like not seeing people. I’ve been inside restaurants where we’ve installed ordering kiosks… and I’ve actually seen young people waiting in line to use the kiosk where there’s a person standing behind the counter, waiting on nobody.”

Needless to say, many customers were less than pleased with the idea.

So far, this just seems like a trial balloon, and as a sort of corporate protest against minimum wage increasing. But I'm curious how many people will eat at this Hardee's/Carl's Jr if it actually becomes a reality. Automation is coming, slowly but surely.

[Simon_Jester]

I'll avoid the place if I can help it, but others, alas, won't.

I remember Manna.

On a semi-related note, restaurants where you never see a human being aren't actually a new idea. In their earliest form they date back to the 1910s or '20s, and they were called automats. All the touchpads provide is increased customizability, which is admittedly a nice feature.

The really significant thing going on here is that automatic ordering of customized food (which has been feasible for ~20 years) is finally mature and widely accepted enough that people are willing to accept it as the only option.

...

On a bit more reflection, one problem likely to arise is that if I have a problem at a fast food restaurant, I want someone I can interact with to inform them of it. Things like "you got my order wrong" or "the dispenser is out of ketchup." This is, however, really just an obstacle to running the restaurant with literally zero employees. Frankly, if anyone DID construct a zero-employee restaurant it would almost inevitably NOT be a sit-down restaurant. It'd be a front end that looks a lot like a vending machine (or a Star Trek replicator), with a back end of very densely packed automatic kitchen machinery.

[Darmalus]

Sorry Simon, but I remember Manna from the last time it was brought up, it's still bunk. Management (in the form of someone who can talk to customers and deal with random stuff going wrong without constant instruction and put a legal signature on things) will still be the last, not first, thing replaced. Very likely that will be the only employee at this test restaurant.

And my position remains the same, this is inevitable. The sooner we realize (or are forced to realize) and increasing percentage of the human population will be permanently unemployable, the better. Reduced pain down the line as we transition to whatever we call the future economy, since it won't be capitalism as we know it.

So, god speed Carl's Jr./Hardee's.

[bilateralrope]

Management (in the form of someone who can talk to customers and deal with random stuff going wrong without constant instruction and put a legal signature on things) will still be the last, not first, thing replaced.

Especially since most fast food restaurants are franchises. That means there is someone who owns that specific restaurant.

Automation replacing employees is simple. Just convince the owner that automation will be better for the owner than employees performing the same function. But replacing the owner is harder, because that would require the owner to be convinced to replace himself with the robot. What incentive is there for the owner to do that ?

[Darmalus]

because that would require the owner to be convinced to replace himself with the robot. What incentive is there for the owner to do that ?

In that case (franchises) the owner "buys" more leisure time at the expense of whatever the management robot's maintenance cost is, but given a more likely sequence of events than Manna proposes the management system will be managing robots anyway, so it's not like anyone will notice. I was thinking more in the case where the manager is not the owner, where there is a legal or social need for a human in the loop during the graveyard shift when the owner wants to sleep.

[Napoleon the Clown]

Who wants to provide the sticks if I provide the marshmallows? This is going to crash and burn. I know humanity. I know how they are. You're gonna have the fucks that see nobody around and so they'll vandalize the machines, people who throw trash everywhere, and then the true lowest lifeforms, the assholes that can't feel satisfied without verbally abusing another human being.

Even if the machines have a 100% success rate and never screw up, there are gonna be complaints. He's still going to need human staff to deal with angry customers that are used to getting a bit extra guacamole for free (because it gets the customer to fuck off and bother someone else) and now they can't bully a machine into that. Gonna have the occasional hiccup. Gonna have to hire and pay people who can maintain the machines. Gonna lose customers who don't trust a machine to get it right...

But hey, it'll be fun to watch Hardee's Jr throw away a bunch of money. Having actually worked food service in a managerial position, I know how much in expenses actually go toward paying people. This is a temper tantrum from a rich fuck that doesn't consider poors to be human. Look at the comments about never getting sick or asking for time off. His whinging about discrimination cases.

[Simon_Jester]

Sorry Simon, but I remember Manna from the last time it was brought up, it's still bunk. Management (in the form of someone who can talk to customers and deal with random stuff going wrong without constant instruction and put a legal signature on things) will still be the last, not first, thing replaced. Very likely that will be the only employee at this test restaurant.

Well, Manna actually replacing the manager as such doesn't sound very likely.

I do think Manna as an automated system for coordinating the labor of employees, as an alternative to having humans do it, might well appear as an aid to managers... but it'd happen first in larger stores that have large workforces which are by nature difficult for managers to coordinate because of the sheer area and diversity of what the employees are doing.

It probably wouldn't happen at fast food restaurants until and unless we got a lot more comfortable with Son of Skype and other forms of telepresence as a way of making sure that customers walking into the restaurant can "demand to speak to the manager" and get a human being. Maybe not even then.

Anyway, I wasn't so much referencing the first chapter of Manna as the second and third- which explore the predictable consequences of having "expert systems" and networking taking over and squeezing human labor out of the economy. Not just by reducing the number of jobs it actually takes a human to do (which has good and bad aspects). But also by what is arguably an unambiguously bad development of automating the process of monitoring employees.

So I'm basically thinking of the rise of a kind of turbo-Taylorism,* of workers being expected to work more and more 'productively' as they are monitored by networked tracking systems that monitor employee activity in ever-increasing detail compared to impersonal norms, becoming more and more burned out and abused by their treatment and consequentially less able to keep up. Being, in essence, worked to death by the machine... until finally automation reaches the point where we're shoveling a hundred million people onto welfare who have no memory in their adult lives of a non-dystopian society.

It's something of a deliberate nightmare scenario but I think he makes some valid points about the dangers of combining the more toxic aspects of modern American corporate culture with highly versatile automation (i.e. machines that aren't just robot bolt-tighteners or burger-flippers).

*See the history of scientific management for reference.

And my position remains the same, this is inevitable. The sooner we realize (or are forced to realize) and increasing percentage of the human population will be permanently unemployable, the better. Reduced pain down the line as we transition to whatever we call the future economy, since it won't be capitalism as we know it.

If this leads to us actually realizing this and making a collective decision to enact the appropriate policies, I actually agree with you.

The big problem comes in if the public fails to react correctly to the threat (and it is a threat).

[Darmalus]

*See the history of scientific management for reference.

As an almost-industrial engineer, I'm familiar. The difference between Taylorism as designed and as implemented is like the difference between the theory of evolution and Social Darwinism. It drives you up the wall with frustration once you know enough.

And my position remains the same, this is inevitable. The sooner we realize (or are forced to realize) and increasing percentage of the human population will be permanently unemployable, the better. Reduced pain down the line as we transition to whatever we call the future economy, since it won't be capitalism as we know it.

If this leads to us actually realizing this and making a collective decision to enact the appropriate policies, I actually agree with you.

The big problem comes in if the public fails to react correctly to the threat (and it is a threat).

It is a dire threat to everyone involved, both workers and owners, when automation is threatening to shatter at least one of the basic assumptions of modern capitalism. I'm just an optimist and even if Sanders doesn't make president the fact that he gave such a good showing has brightened my spirit a little that we'll get through all this with a minimum of human suffering.

But to be honest I think the real earth-shaking events will be happening quietly in the transportation industry. I'm just not sure if it's going to be the automated taxis or automated fast food that starts telling the public in general that the bottom rungs of the economy are getting removed and nothing is replacing them.

[Simon_Jester]

*See the history of scientific management for reference.

As an almost-industrial engineer, I'm familiar. The difference between Taylorism as designed and as implemented is like the difference between the theory of evolution and Social Darwinism. It drives you up the wall with frustration once you know enough.

Exactly.

The problem is that the character of Taylorism-as-implemented has a great deal to do with the way capitalism thinks about labor. So long as the decision of how to implement automation in the workplace is left up to capitalism as we know it today, there is a very real risk of it being used only to squeeze people, not to relieve them of burdens.

But to be honest I think the real earth-shaking events will be happening quietly in the transportation industry. I'm just not sure if it's going to be the automated taxis or automated fast food that starts telling the public in general that the bottom rungs of the economy are getting removed and nothing is replacing them.

Reading past the first chapter or so of Manna the guy who wrote that seems to agree- he predicted truckers as being the flashpoint.

I think the main reason he talks about Manna as a system in the context of fast food is as an artistic thing- it's a type of workplace familiar to most Americans, we've all frequented a wide variety of such places, we know how they operate. Also to point out that it's not JUST a question of purely automatic drones replacing human workers. It is also a question of how we use cybernetics* and networked computers to control the human workers we still have.

*In the Norbert Weiner sense, not the Six Million Dollar Man sense...

[Starglider]

This particular story is not very relevant to progress in automation. As Simon said, automated ordering is just scaling up vending machine technology and has been around since the early 20th century. The relevant disruptive technology is represented by this startup, but despite regular press appearances for the last three years, they haven't yet turned the prototype into even one actual restaurant. This technology is definitely on the way, but perhaps not quite as fast as certain media outlets would like you to think. 3D printing of food items had a similar over-hype issue; yes it is interesting and preceeds more disruptive technologies to come, but right now it is purely used as an extra tool for a few gourmet restaurants to deliver a novel product.

[Darmalus]

This particular story is not very relevant to progress in automation. As Simon said, automated ordering is just scaling up vending machine technology and has been around since the early 20th century. The relevant disruptive technology is represented by this startup, but despite regular press appearances for the last three years, they haven't yet turned the prototype into even one actual restaurant. This technology is definitely on the way, but perhaps not quite as fast as certain media outlets would like you to think. 3D printing of food items had a similar over-hype issue; yes it is interesting and preceeds more disruptive technologies to come, but right now it is purely used as an extra tool for a few gourmet restaurants to deliver a novel product.

I had assumed to burger machine in your link (seen it pop up a few times) or something similar was part of the plan, assuming there was an actual plan and not just a CEO full of hot air (always possible). Tab A and Slot B are usually lying around for a few years before someone has the bright idea to combine them and make a mint doing so.

[mr friendly guy]

I have heard of robots who make and take ramen orders used in China and Japan. This is the first time I have heard of a robot making burgers.

[FaxModem1]

The Guardian

Domino’s unveil 'world’s first' pizza delivery robot
Australian fast-food retailer convert military robot into Domino’s Robotic Unit, which could spell the beginning of the end of the pizza delivery boy
Domino’s Robotic Unit
The Domino’s Robotic Unit, a prototype of the pizza retailer’s new delivery robot. Photograph: Mike Curtain
Australian Associated Press
Thursday 17 March 2016 19.39 EDT Last modified on Thursday 17 March 2016 19.40 EDT
Share on Pinterest Share on LinkedIn Share on Google+
Shares
551
Comments
46
Save for later
Pizza company Domino’s Australia has turned a military robot into a pizza delivery droid.

DRU, Domino’s Robotic Unit, a prototype of what Domino’s says is the world’s first autonomous pizza delivery vehicle, was unveiled in Brisbane on Thursday night.


Are drones really on the verge of delivering packages to your doorstep?
Read more
The fast-food retailer built the droid with Australian startup Marathon Robotics using a robot sourced from the military and its own technology, including Domino’s GPS tracking data.

DRU, which could spell the beginning of the end of the pizza delivery boy, has a sensory system that uses lasers to move around obstacles in its path to travel unassisted to a customer’s address.

The four-wheeled robotic unit travels up to speeds of 20km/h and is designed to cruise on footpaths, trails and bike paths.

When it reaches its destination, the customer enters a security code in their phone to tell the robot to open its locked storage compartment and deliver the pizza.

Domino’s says it all began in 2015 with a microchip and a big idea and finished with months of testing.

More restaurants are developing or converting the technology.

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect one of the biggest problems is that a complex interleaved machine for making burgers can make burgers very fast, but the minute anything goes wrong with the workings it can't make burgers at all.

It's pretty hard to stop a McDonalds' from making burgers, since the equipment required to do so is relatively foolproof and simple compared to a system of conveyor belts, robot arms, and whatnot.

A robo-McDonalds' might only have one such breakdown every few months, but it wouldn't take many to give the restaurant a reputation for incredibly unreliable service.

[Joun_Lord]

I suspect one of the biggest problems is that a complex interleaved machine for making burgers can make burgers very fast, but the minute anything goes wrong with the workings it can't make burgers at all.

It's pretty hard to stop a McDonalds' from making burgers, since the equipment required to do so is relatively foolproof and simple compared to a system of conveyor belts, robot arms, and whatnot.

A robo-McDonalds' might only have one such breakdown every few months, but it wouldn't take many to give the restaurant a reputation for incredibly unreliable service.

I suspect a robot restaurant would not be completely automated no matter how much a whiny CEO would want it. I think it would be something similar to self-checkouts in stores. Part of the restaurant would be mostly automated for smaller orders but for custom orders and the like there would still be human attendants. There would still humans even for the automated area just the same as you'd find at a Walmart or Krogers, someone who is there to press a button anytime the machines have a hiccup and to help people out when they need it. Still saves labor though, much how like a Walmart can have one person doing the jobs of 4 or more these restaurants might be similar.

Probably the most feasible would be like a modern day automat where there is few if any human servers but still human cooks. One thing most people like is custom food that alot of machines might have a problem preparing on the fly.

I think alot of people especially young people would be turned off the fully automated approach less because of the jobs lost but because any sort of restaurant like that is going to rely heavily on prepackaged "non-fresh" food. Seems like places like Subway and the like are doing well is they have the food being made fresh in front of the customers and with relatively fresh ingredients. Youngsters seem to prefer that to the mass packaged frozen slabs of preservative laden crap shoveled out at restaurants like McDonalds.

One of the things that would probably be looked at for restaurants who want complete automation in the near future would be some sort of 3D printing. Of course that has the problem of when 3D printing is fast and reliable enough to be put in restaurants for people to order printed burgers, surely the tech would be mature enough for home use. There in lies a problem, why go to a restaurant and toss a dollar or 5 dollars on some burger that some machine crapped out when you could stay home and do the same? Assuming some laws don't clamp the nuts of 3D printing in the near future of concerns of hurting business or something, 3D printers of all types will become increasingly adopted by consumers.

Some have said a 3D food printer in the next 20 years could be like the next microwave, something that will be found in every home. It could be to restaurants as the microwave was to aluminum tray TV dinners.

And considering the drive to have more things in home I'm sure many consumers would prefer to download a pizza rather then go out to some noisy smelly and expensive restaurant just the same as many consumers are preferring to sit down at their huge ass TV to watch the latest movie in the comfort of their own home rather then going to some noisy crowded and expensive theater.

Apparently the future belongs to shut-ins.

[bilateralrope]

One of the things that would probably be looked at for restaurants who want complete automation in the near future would be some sort of 3D printing. Of course that has the problem of when 3D printing is fast and reliable enough to be put in restaurants for people to order printed burgers, surely the tech would be mature enough for home use. There in lies a problem, why go to a restaurant and toss a dollar or 5 dollars on some burger that some machine crapped out when you could stay home and do the same?

Because the machine costs thousands of dollars to buy in the first place ?

Because the machine requires too much maintenance for a home user ?

[Darmalus]

Because the machine costs thousands of dollars to buy in the first place ?

Because the machine requires too much maintenance for a home user ?

I'd expect the fast food of the future to be going online to AmazonFoodCourt and having it delivered by drone. They can absorb and distribute the capital costs of automatic food makers (however limited) and maintenance personnel, franchising fees so you can get your Taco Bell or Good Burger, etc. They'd probably be the ones to get the first food printers too.

[Jub]

I suspect a robot restaurant would not be completely automated no matter how much a whiny CEO would want it. I think it would be something similar to self-checkouts in stores. Part of the restaurant would be mostly automated for smaller orders but for custom orders and the like there would still be human attendants. There would still humans even for the automated area just the same as you'd find at a Walmart or Krogers, someone who is there to press a button anytime the machines have a hiccup and to help people out when they need it. Still saves labor though, much how like a Walmart can have one person doing the jobs of 4 or more these restaurants might be similar.

These stores would probably have at least a couple front of house staff just to help customers order, deal with complaints, and clean up messes. They may have another person monitoring the machine and fixing any issues that arise. That said, I expect that these machines will be very efficient with a better than human level of food prep mistakes and very few critical breakdowns. As for custom orders, at least at the fast food places that these will roll out at, they mainly consist of extra this or hold this which should be easy for a machine to do. Other stuff might just no longer be possible or, if it's common enough, could be programmed in.

Probably the most feasible would be like a modern day automat where there is few if any human servers but still human cooks. One thing most people like is custom food that alot of machines might have a problem preparing on the fly.

I think it's more likely to be the other way around. People like to have a server to chat with, but mostly don't care how the sausage is made. You could supplement servers with robotic tray carriers so that a restaurant can have fewer servers per number of tables with them taking orders and checking if you need anything and robots bringing your food and drinks.

I think alot of people especially young people would be turned off the fully automated approach less because of the jobs lost but because any sort of restaurant like that is going to rely heavily on prepackaged "non-fresh" food. Seems like places like Subway and the like are doing well is they have the food being made fresh in front of the customers and with relatively fresh ingredients. Youngsters seem to prefer that to the mass packaged frozen slabs of preservative laden crap shoveled out at restaurants like McDonalds.

I don't see why that would be the case. When even places like Subway ship in things like precut tomatoes where the staff basically peel off the top and put it in a metal container before sending it to the line. You could easily have all your veggies come like that, precut and shipped in an airtight sealed package and inserted into the machine. These toppings are pretty hard to tell from a sample that was prepped the night before so I doubt people would care. The robot could also put your food on a conveyor belt with a glass window and let you watch it assemble your food with the 'fresh' toppings of your choice. An automated Subway isn't that much, if any, harder than an automated McDonalds.

One of the things that would probably be looked at for restaurants who want complete automation in the near future would be some sort of 3D printing. Of course that has the problem of when 3D printing is fast and reliable enough to be put in restaurants for people to order printed burgers, surely the tech would be mature enough for home use. There in lies a problem, why go to a restaurant and toss a dollar or 5 dollars on some burger that some machine crapped out when you could stay home and do the same? Assuming some laws don't clamp the nuts of 3D printing in the near future of concerns of hurting business or something, 3D printers of all types will become increasingly adopted by consumers.

I don't see why they would really want this when drone delivered food that is cooked and assembled at the restaurant would probably be cheaper and easier than 3d printed meals. Plus, if 3d printing does come up, they could always advertise things as using whole never printed ingredients and make that sound like a plus and get people's cash that way. 'Real Food' tm could be the next Organic.

And considering the drive to have more things in home I'm sure many consumers would prefer to download a pizza rather then go out to some noisy smelly and expensive restaurant just the same as many consumers are preferring to sit down at their huge ass TV to watch the latest movie in the comfort of their own home rather then going to some noisy crowded and expensive theater.

I can already cook better food than most restaurants at home, or pop a frozen pizza in the oven if I want something faster and easier than delivery. People eat out for many reasons that won't be touched by being able to print a pizza at home.

By the same token, do you have any evidence that people are going to fewer movies yearly opting to stay in? Also, if you can prove that last point, do you have proof that this is due to preference over having less disposable income as cost of living outpaces wages?

[Joun_Lord]

Because the machine costs thousands of dollars to buy in the first place ?

Because the machine requires too much maintenance for a home user ?

It will probably cost thousands of dollars at first as any new technology does. The earliest home computers and I'm sure microwaves cost an arm and leg and a half a testicle to own. Over time they went down in cost.

If it requires too much maintenance for a home user it would probably require to much maintenance for a business aswell. Having some dude with a plumbers crack rooting around in it often would get expensive and have far too much down time.

These stores would probably have at least a couple front of house staff just to help customers order, deal with complaints, and clean up messes. They may have another person monitoring the machine and fixing any issues that arise. That said, I expect that these machines will be very efficient with a better than human level of food prep mistakes and very few critical breakdowns. As for custom orders, at least at the fast food places that these will roll out at, they mainly consist of extra this or hold this which should be easy for a machine to do. Other stuff might just no longer be possible or, if it's common enough, could be programmed in.

That seems to be the main thing that would be needed no matter what, someone to bitch at. Even if the process is completely automated and advanced enough to allow for all the random custom orders that customers like doing there will still be mistakes and someone will need to sooth the customers. I can't see a machine dealing too well with a customer shouting that a order was wrong, that a burger was overcooked, or whatever. And even a perfect system there will be orders fucked up just because of the human element. No matter what, no matter how simple a system is people with get confused by it or just fuck up by mistake and will need some flesh and blood person (or a really good AI) to sort out the fuck up.

I think it's more likely to be the other way around. People like to have a server to chat with, but mostly don't care how the sausage is made. You could supplement servers with robotic tray carriers so that a restaurant can have fewer servers per number of tables with them taking orders and checking if you need anything and robots bringing your food and drinks.

Some people don't care about how the food is made but quite a few people nowadays do. Look at the rise of restaurants like Chipotle which tout how fresh and locally sourced and sustainable their ingredients are. How alot of restaurants like Chipotle and even some McDonalds are embracing an open kitchen approach. Alot of people what transparency in what they eat and would balk at food done by machines pooping it out. And goddamn that mental image of a some machine pooping out burgers make me giggle so much.

I don't see why that would be the case. When even places like Subway ship in things like precut tomatoes where the staff basically peel off the top and put it in a metal container before sending it to the line. You could easily have all your veggies come like that, precut and shipped in an airtight sealed package and inserted into the machine. These toppings are pretty hard to tell from a sample that was prepped the night before so I doubt people would care. The robot could also put your food on a conveyor belt with a glass window and let you watch it assemble your food with the 'fresh' toppings of your choice. An automated Subway isn't that much, if any, harder than an automated McDonalds.

See above about people getting the panties in a twist about freshness and seeing their food being prepared. Presumably people wouldn't care if a machine was tossing their salad or putting the mayo on their buns if they can see it all happening in front of their eyes and see the ingredients as relatively fresh, like you said the conveyor belt with the glass window. They would probably be less inclined to like it if its some industrial machine pooping it out in the back. Though I say some, some people care but some people don't. As long as its edible and doesn't appear to have spit or semen or whatever in it they don't give a fuck. Which I guess is one thing robits definitely have superior to humans, not matter how much you piss of a machine it can't spit on your food. Yet.......

I don't see why they would really want this when drone delivered food that is cooked and assembled at the restaurant would probably be cheaper and easier than 3d printed meals. Plus, if 3d printing does come up, they could always advertise things as using whole never printed ingredients and make that sound like a plus and get people's cash that way. 'Real Food' tm could be the next Organic.

Drone delivered fresh food could open up a niche that allows restaurants to compete with home prepared foods as could "real" food. I could very easily see some restaurants taking a page from Star Trek and still getting business despite home 3D food printers because people might prefer the "real" food prepared by real people or think 3D printed food tastes inferior. Of course that would probably be the opposite of what is being discussed, that would be less automation and more people.

I can already cook better food than most restaurants at home, or pop a frozen pizza in the oven if I want something faster and easier than delivery. People eat out for many reasons that won't be touched by being able to print a pizza at home.

There would still be reasons to eat out, sure. The social experience will probably always be important. But thats mostly sit down and eat type deals. Fast food is still popular because its (usually) cheaper and easier then staying home and tossing in a frozen pizza. Its press a button more or less and receive food. Even a frozen pizza you still have to prepare yourself even if its tossing it in the oven/microwave. A 3D printer of food, a quasi replicator, essentially does the same thing as the restaurant assuming its relatively fast, press button and receive food.

Home printed food will not really bother dine in eateries but I think, I assume without hopefully putting too much ass in the assume, that the fast food places will be the ones to feel the burn.

By the same token, do you have any evidence that people are going to fewer movies yearly opting to stay in? Also, if you can prove that last point, do you have proof that this is due to preference over having less disposable income as cost of living outpaces wages?

I don't know if they are staying in to watch movies, they could be doing something else I dunno, but certainly fewer people are going to theaters then they once were. Though it could very well have alot to do with costs but that certainly wouldn't be the only reason. Cost is a big part though, as ticket prices rise its not worth it to go to a theater and deal with all the headaches while staying home is easier and cheaper. Or something.

[Starglider]

Compare this to supermarket automated checkouts. UPC barcodes were phased in during the second half of the 1970s. It would have been technically possible to make an automated checkout in 1975, but it would have been impractically expensive with a mainframe just to run the checkouts in one store. By 1985, it was fairly practical; an Intel 286 class PC would suffice to run a self-checkout POS (minus fancy graphics), with cheap Ethernet networking and off-the-shelf weighing and money handling equipment. It was not done because it was not the low hanging fruit; the industry was still grappling with all the other challenges of supply chain automation and the staff and customers were already having to adapt to change at a fairly high rate. The actual first self-checkout prototype arrived in 1992 and was not put into trial deployment (in one chain) until the late 90s. Widespread global deployment did not occur until the mid 2000s and even now in 2016, despite a steady rise in adoption, the majority of purchases are still via manned POS.

So yes it is great to see progress happening, but in fragmented complex industries with a massively distributed asset and staff base (i.e. food service, even moreso than food retail), it takes decades to switch over. Of course this is still vanishly short from a long-term historical perspective, but it's an order of magnitude slower than some breathless futurists and their media enablers like to pretend.

[MKSheppard]

Damn you FaxModem! I was about to post that here.

A delivery robot makes a lot of sense for high density urban areas, where you can deliver to a large group of people in about 10-15 minutes using a relatively slow robot like that.

Plus, there's another hidden benefit which will not be missed by franchise owners operating in high crime areas -- you don't have to payout to families of drivers shot dead -- deaths on the clock count under state workman's comp laws.

Robot gets vandalized and beat up by a bunch of perps for the pizza and/or the small amount of cash in the machine? Just order a new machine and sell what's left of the old machine for parts credit and forward the video of the perps to the police.

[MKSheppard]

I suspect a robot restaurant would not be completely automated no matter how much a whiny CEO would want it.

Currently a 'standard' sized drive-in restaurant runs about maybe 20 people per shift, meaning a 3 shift place could easily have in excess of 60 people.

If you assume 90% of those people are basically job drones; with the last 10% of pay going to the Shift Managers and Team Leaders; that's about

(60 * 0.9) = 54 * 1,040 hours a year (at 20 hrs/wk part time) = 56,160 hours worked * $7.25 minimum wage = $407,160/year in simple labor salaries.

If you automated down to just three people a shift (Store Manager, Machine Operator/Janitor I, Machine Operator/Janitor II) and made the drone jobs $15/hr, your total labor costs would be:

(2 drones * 3 shifts) = 6 drones * 1,040 hours a year (at 20 hrs/wk part time) = 6,240 hours worked * $15 Wage = $93,600/year in simple labor costs.

That's a savings of over $310K~ a year in labor costs that could be used to buy equipment/maintain it; and unlike employees, you can amortize the depreciation of equipment value on your taxes.

Seems like places like Subway and the like are doing well is they have the food being made fresh in front of the customers and with relatively fresh ingredients.

So you simply arrange it like a carwash. Customers go to a central kiosk station, order their meal, and then watch through plexiglass as their meal is made by the machinery and moves from station to station.

Fun for the whole family!

[MKSheppard]

As long as its edible and doesn't appear to have spit or semen or whatever in it they don't give a fuck. Which I guess is one thing robits definitely have superior to humans, not matter how much you piss of a machine it can't spit on your food. Yet.......

There's a reason cops eat at Waffle House, and it's not because of the grade of food. (HINT: they can see the servers preparing their food).

[MKSheppard]

A robo-McDonalds' might only have one such breakdown every few months, but it wouldn't take many to give the restaurant a reputation for incredibly unreliable service.

That's why you won't see serious deployment until a complete McDonald's Food Assembly Line (TM) costs maybe $80-100K, allowing for a McDonalds to have about three or four of them and not seriously impact the current cost of building a franchise, which is somewhere between 1 and 2 million USD.

[Raw Shark]

But to be honest I think the real earth-shaking events will be happening quietly in the transportation industry. I'm just not sure if it's going to be the automated taxis or automated fast food that starts telling the public in general that the bottom rungs of the economy are getting removed and nothing is replacing them.

Reading past the first chapter or so of Manna the guy who wrote that seems to agree- he predicted truckers as being the flashpoint.

Speaking as a taxi driver who loved the business... the grapes of wrath are ripening... If they officially put us out of business, I am a very intelligent person with very little to lose and that is not a situation that anybody should want to create.