Posted on 03/09/2017 3:08:22 AM PST by C19fan
The next time you place an order at a fast food joint, you could see a robot behind the counter. Flippy is an AI-driven kitchen assistant that can flip burgers and place them on buns, and it debuted today at a CaliBurger restaurant in Pasadena, California. Flippy was developed by Miso Robotics and CaliBurger's owner, Cali Group. It uses cameras, sensors and deep learning software to locate ingredients in a kitchen without needing to reconfigure existing equipment. Not only does it position and flip the patties, it tracks their temperature and cooking time too. When the burgers are done, it alerts a human cook, who applies the cheese and other toppings.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
I have seen some automation used to harvest grapes in vineyards. But a lot of it is still done by hand. Guessing some grape varietals are still too delicate.
The $15.00 an hour job will now be cleaning and maintaining the robots.
The PROPOSED minimum wage is at least partly responsible. If you have to pay $15 an hour for work valued at $10 or $12 you need more efficiency.
And "cheeps"!
No the stupid thing is not understanding how Moore’s Law applies. More processing power and more memory means being able to program more actions and knowledge. It’s very simple, and you should be embarrassed to not get it.
Automation of these jobs is inevitable, but raising the cost of the workers hastens the day. It means the robots can be more expensive and still cheaper than the workers, because the day they’re cheaper than the workers the workers are gone.
Ok this is stupid. Currently the average price of labor is 25% for fast food. Automation may cut that in half to say 12.5%. The upper limit of savings is 12.5%. So most of that will go to profit with some, maybe, 5% going to the customer. This is a way to increase profits marginally. It has little to do with reducing the retail price of your hamburger.
Cost of labor as a percentage of total cost isn’t the important. Cost of labor as a percentage of REVENUE is the part that matters. More importantly INCREASE the in cost of labor as a percentage of PROFIT. The fact of the matter is that food service has razor thin margins, most restaurants are running at less than 3% profit, I worked at a McD that averaged $50 a month profit, using 10 more man hours than necessary was all it took to not profit. If you increase that labor cost by 20%, that’s 5% of total costs, that’s more than 100% of profits, that’s a closed restaurant. Reduce labor cost by 50% (just using your numbers here) that 12.5% of total costs, that’s 400% of profit, that’s a restaurant with a profit margin outside the previous realm of possibility.
Nobody said it had anything to do with reducing the retail price of the hamburger. It has to do with keeping the business open. Although with a profit margin over 10% suddenly they actually CAN reduce the price.
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