10-4. Apparently, that was including the capital cost of design and development. With today’s manufacturing processes, that cost comes down for each additional machine, especially when produced on a production scale. I would submit the cost, including maintenance and updates would be much lower than even the $7.50 number because of the elimination of employment costs, overtime, sick days, short shifts and especially in efficiency tied to retraining constantly to keep up with the constant turnover. One machine alone could effectively replace up to four people per shift and we know some of these places are open 24/7.
I am in the design and development business and have been predicting this shift since the first coordinated calls for substantial raising of the “living wage” bullcrap started to surface. As most of my family is in the food service business, I have seen this first person since the early 70’s and the reasons I only worked it part time to help them out while I was focusing on my engineering education to be as far away from it as possible.
They are already putting in touch screens, kiosks and cell phone apps for automated ordering
They are also teaming with Uber to deliver orders to your house
Next phase is automated food processing which should be in place before the highest minimum wage phases in
One if the kid working the counter at our McDonalds commented that the minimum wage would kill his job and many of the rest of the employees jobs in 2 years
I suspect you’re right, but that’s the numbers the company was putting forth. I suspect they were quite conservative.
Here’s a related article from back then: https://singularityhub.com/2014/08/10/burger-robot-poised-to-disrupt-fast-food-industry/
Quote: “Momentum Machines says your average fast food joint spends $135,000 a year on burger line cooks.”
Their machine’s estimated price, back in 2014, was $30,000.
There’s an interesting discussion of the machine and the economics of it back then: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8160904 It points out the math and $10/hour is shown to be more than reasonable.
The Obamacare costs alone, for ANY full time employee, is going to lower that number even more!
My daughter, 21, has been working two and three part-time jobs because the companies will NOT allow full-time or overtime due to the Obamacare costs.
I told her to go to college after high school, even offered her assistance, but she wanted to work for a year, buy a car and THEN go to college. Now, I just don’t know what she is going to do for a career!!
Luckily, she doesn’t want kids, without a family! So, she at least has THAT going for her! LOL!