If they raised minimum wage even to the $18 to $20 an hour level....it’d just speed up the transition to automation. I could see most McDonalds being automated with just five total humans in each shop...within the next decade. If you wanted to dispense with the marginal employees....accepting the automation would help.
But the demand for ice cream machine repair persons will still be sky high. :-)
Yep. We’re in a transitional state. The ordering kiosks at many of their restaurants are user friendly and super efficient. The big challenge for automation will be replacing the burger flippers and fry cooks. This would require re-engineering the entire operations, to an even bigger scale and scope than the original Speedee operations revolution by the McDonald’s brothers.
We have two McDonalds in the town near me. One of 'em has gone that way. Wife went in, expecting the old setup only to find a row of kiosks and one girl in front, with three employees in the back. Said it was an eerie feeling and didn't return thereafter.
The other one we still visit on occasion for coffee and burritos. They have two kiosks and one gitl in front. Last time there, with no other customers waiting, she led us over to one of the kiosks and placed our order and then back to the register to take our cash. (???) Maybe they are doing that to ramp up the kiosk count.