I had an uncle who used to sell commercial freezers to grocery stores. One of his biggest obstacles was the fact that the people who owned these stores were just TOO DAMNED CHEAP to buy his product. They’d scour the secondary market looking for cheaper used ones, and would only invest in his product as a last resort.
If the question here is $15/hr. wage vs. $50K upfront outlay for a piece of equipment, I think I know on which side these guys will come down. You can always cut the hours of your employee. Can’t renegotiate your $50K capital equipment loan.
And wait until it gets hacked to hawk the competitor’s products.
You can if you lease instead of buy.
They’ll pick the robots. They’re cheaper. Because they aren’t replacing 1 $15/hr person, they’re replacing at least 3, possibly as many as 7 (that’s how many people it takes to man 1 position 24/7 through sick/ vacation without anybody working OT). It winds up cheaper in the first year, before you even add things like shrinkage (number 1 perpetrator of retail theft is the employees), union troubles, OSHA, FICA... People are very expensive. Sure you don’t do a total replacement right from the start, you bring in 1 or 2 and make sure they work, but in relatively short order you’ll find employees are an avoidable PITA.
“If the question here is $15/hr. wage”
that’s probably not the real deal breaker. the deal breakers are obamacare, unemployment insurance, state and federal labor departments, osha inspections, harassment and sexual discrimination lawsuits, wildcat strikes, tax withholding, noshows, scheduling, etc. Multiply that times, say, 30 employees for a McD’s compared to a dropin food factory, and the food factory might look pretty good, especially in the kommie states like Kali, Ill or Mass.
Self-service espresso shops look like nobrainers, though.
One more plus for the robots is that they count as capital equipment. Capital equipment can be written off as a depreciation expense on corporate income taxes.