Posted on 04/30/2024 5:04:32 AM PDT by Cronos
In response to recent minimum wage increases in California, fast food restaurants across the state are shifting to automation to get rid of wage-earning humans.
The move to making customers place orders at digital kiosks alleviates what owners say is the financial strain of rising labor costs after the minimum wage for the state’s fast food workers increased on April 1 from $16 to $20 per hour.
Harsh Ghai, a Burger King franchise owner who manages 140 outlets along the West Coast, is leading the transition to automation. He plans to introduce digital kiosks across all his restaurants within months — a drastic acceleration from his original timeline of five to 10 years.
...Rather than make less money, restaurant owners are exploring alternative strategies to maintain profitability. Reducing staff numbers appears to be their primary solution for lowering overheads.
“Undoubtedly we will lose some people. There’s no way around it. If we continue to maintain our current menu pricing and absorb higher labor costs, 100% of our restaurants won’t be profitable,” Ghai said. “We can’t raise menu prices because that will hurt traffic and we’ve already seen in the media the backlash from customers having to pay more for burgers because of food price inflation.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Gosh, if only someone could see this coming. Congratulations, liberals, you now see the real minimum wage is zero dollars per hour when you get fired because you have unreasonable demands to push pictures of different hamburgers on the computer screen.
People seem not to understand that the TRUE minimum wage is $0.00.
This is exactly what Deep State wants.
The destruction of the American middle class, the dependence of more and more Americans on the government for handouts.
1 minute 23 seconds...GMTA
Been doing that in Europe for at least a decade. Wasn’t needed in US because people were paid to make careers serving fast food. Now things are different.
As it is (to others) please stop claiming that the Democrats didn’t expect this in response to the high minimum wage, they knew EXACTLY what would happen, and thus the Democrats are PERFECTLY HAPPY to throw people out of work to make their political points.
That’s how you fight them - don’t call them dumb, after all they outsmarted our side to install Biden in White House - simply call them EVIL, as that’s what they are.
People will never accept correct, spit-free orders, delivered promptly.
I have frequent occasion to buy lunch from McDonalds. Presently there are 7 or 8 parking spaced detailed for picking up on line orders. Those spaces are mostly vacant. Not many online orders to be filled. The order kiosks inside are also not used. customers will stand in a short line at the now reduced in size order counter. Interestingly, most customers prefer waiting in line in their cars to order and then be served.
Kids today can’t get traditional 1st job experiences. No newspapers to deliver, no lifeguard IG positions, no food service. This is intentional. They are learning to be dependent or steal.
I do not like the McDonald’s kiosk - I use it from time-to-time, as I did ordering chicken sandwiches last week (I’ve given up on Chik-fil-A long ago)
I STILL have to go to the counter to complete payment because I use the actual BOGO coupon from the previous receipt.
I DO love the BOGO deal on the receipt - takes about 1-1.5 minutes max to fill out with my phone.
Sometimes my order is so custom (Quarter Pounder with Cheese a special way) that I have to go to the counter anyway so I just skip the kiosk).
If the place is busy, I just go with the Big Mac (2 for the BOGO) as I don’t customize them, usually.
The flavor suffers for a stupid cause.....................
GMTA written abbreviation for great minds think alike
No worries, soon the anti-capitalists will force the payment of taxes, unemployment, social security, medicare, etc, for every deferred human employee.
California has just legislated fast workers out of jobs.
Fortunately, the $15 minimum wage activists gave fast food chains a heads up on whats coming down the pike and gave them time to prepare.
McDonalds has been installing the infrastructure in their stores to automate just about everything.
You can order and pay from a cell phone app and even have your order delivered.
They have automated kiosks in all stores
They have most of the infrastructure installed to allow them to install robotics to automate most food preparation
It's really not that expensive and it replaces the repetitive drudge work employees hate with a better, more uniform production system so the employees left over are happier.
At current California mandated min wage and employee overheads it costs $65K per employee per shift to staff a store.
For two shift operation that comes out to $130K per job function.
Automation has never been so easy and inexpensive as it is now. At these labor prices, payoff for investing in automation is less than a year.
And that does not even take into account costs for employee labor disputes and workers comp lawsuits, harassment lawsuits, gender and racial discrimination lawsuits, personal injury lawsuits and all the other lunatic crap that California has brought upon employers.
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PREDICTION:...The AUTOMATS will make a comeback!..........
Saw a meme on Facebook—”if I have to order a meal standing up, I won’t be tipping”
Fast food places that have increased costs due to higher minimum wage. As a result, employees are being laid off or given fewer hours. Kiosks have no health benefits or sick leave/personal time off.
At least one fast food place is trying NO workers, other than the cooks.
I go to some places—chains like Ruby Tuesdays or 99—where if you pay by credit card they put the card in a reader and hand it to you so you can enter in the tip, then “sign it” with your finger. But those places are sit-down meals, etc not fast food.
What do they pay the wait staff, a mere few bucks an hour and “we depend on tips”? Any “do you want fries with that” employees shouldn’t expect miracles—there are so many costs in running a restaurant and it’s bad enough diners are paying a lot more now and getting smaller portions...
There was some kind of Wendy’s I read about some years back where they wound up getting only 29 hours a week because less than 29 meant no, or less, health benefits or other perques would have to be paid.
And I'm not even going to mention what I caught two queer bakers doing with the jelly and cream doughnuts up in the Bay Area when I walked into the doughnut shop a 5 am.
think of all the coding jobs created from the automation of the fast food industry.
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