Carl's Jr. CEO Wants to Open a Robot Restaurant Free of Human Workers

Eater ^ | March 17, 2016 | Whitney Filloon

[C19fan]

As minimum wages across the country rise and restaurants face increased labor costs, one fast food CEO is thinking about replacing human workers with robots. Carl's Jr. head honcho Andy Puzder wants to open a new restaurant concept that's "employee-free," reports Business Insider.

Puzder was inspired by a visit to Eatsa, the futuristic San Francisco-born restaurant where patrons order via tablet and retrieve their food from automated cubbies. He believes the idea of a restaurant free of social interaction could be especially appealing to millennials, noting that young people seem particularly fond of ordering from kiosks over humans.

[C19fan]

I remember going to one in NYC during the 1970s.

[who_would_fardels_bear]

Thanks for that info.

Before Carl died the burgers actually tasted char-broiled and were the best of the major chains.

Soon after I noticed a definite decrease in quality. The burgers are more rubbery and tasteless than before.

The Carl's near us somehow got a Zagat rating, but it is definitely not deserved.

[Clay Moore]

“And many of them are unemployable.”

I went in to a FF joint some years ago and the female operating the cash register literally could not add up total value of a few coins in her head.

[elteemike]

http://www.gizmag.com/hamburger-machine/25159/

[George Washington Axe]

RISE OF THE MACHINES - food industry first attack

[Mastador1]

My question is....once we prove it works and you can dismiss three-quarters of all the burger flippers in the world...what will they do next?

Go back to Mexico and Central America?

[Pelham]

You remember it like I do. Carl’s Jr used to char broil their hamburgers and they were excellent. Carl used to eat at his stores regularly, and when the owner is a customer the product is going to be good.

IMO the quality started going downhill before Carl died. That began when he lost control of the company to the MBA crowd that runs it today. All they were interested in is short term dollars. Cut back quality, lower the payroll, crank out soft porn ads aimed at teenage males. That’s their formula.

[nascarnation]

I tend to agree.
Hardee’s in our area are like K-Mart...zombie stores.
Hard to figure out how they keep the lights on given the obvious low traffic count.
Some folks tell me they do well early morning breakfast time, not sure I’m usually at home then.

[IYAS9YAS]

They can try but progress and the law of economics eventually wins

Yeah, but we're still talking California.

[Laser_Ray]

If that starts happening on a large scale, it will have a twofold effect of collapsing the economy for low-pay workers and all the places they shop (Wal-Mart will take a massive hit) and start a nasty little house-of-cards effect right there. Secondly there will be massive social unrest as entire cities have huge numbers of people and they will rapidly go from merely being angry to being ready to fight for a socialist revolution because they literally have nowhere to go for work and nothing to lose.

The push for automation to try and dodge Obama’s taxes and regulations is the easy (ie; cowardly) way out as opposed to spending the time and money to fight him politically or otherwise. It will also end up biting a lot of the little business monkeys in the butt. You think you’re so clever replacing tens of thousands of humans with robots...tell me then, what’s your brilliant plan to replace all the money the working class spent on your burgers in a month or two?

[RainMan]

Yes. Quite frankly, people like you are an expensive luxury that current minimum wage laws make it hard to service. I have never seen a large breakfast or lunch gathering at a fast food joint ... a requirement of those places is usually a wait staff so that they can get food orders from the attendees.

At the end of the day, the business owner is trying to figure out how to stay in business and make a profit. If that means that he has to give up something that he used to do so that he can cut costs across the board on rent, utilities, labor, etc ... and still maintain a decent profit margin, then more power to him. As much as you may want to bitch about it, if he can keep his burger costs low, and competitors have to raise theirs ... yeah, he will lose people like you but pick up new customers because his prices will start to seem like a bargain.

So, to counter the loss of you, he would probably gain me and many like me as a customer because I never eat in the restaurant anyways. Price, speed and consistent quality are what brings me in.

[FreedomNotSafety]

So long as they are US made robots (/s) I’m good with this. Let’s pretend we can have a successful economy without imports. What will prevent the corporations from mechanizing and robotizing away all the imagined job creation that supposed to happen? Isn’t the goal of limiting imports to create good paying jobs?

Got it. We need to ban the importation of robots. Of course building and exporting robots would be good just so long as we make sure all those robots do not stay in the country illegally.