When you read the comments of virtually every article written about the desire to raise the minimum wage to $15 at least a few commenters sagely say that if they raise the minimum wage that high burger places will “just” automate the process and the burger flippers will be out of a job. Other commenters will agree with their heart-felt exactlies.
What nobody discusses, even those who disagree, and what I’ve not been able to reason out, is how they think that this would a. be possible and b. be cost effective.
So… can you think of ways that the sales of hamburgers could simply be automated in a way that would significantly eliminate the need for humans and not be even more expensive than keeping the human workers on for $15/hour? I get that doubling wages would be a big expense, but as far as I know robots aren’t cheap either.
But unless that also automates putting them on the buns with the condiments the customer wants and costs less than having a high school kid do it, it’s not going to be worth it if it just replaces one part of the process. Plus it’s going to be more maintenance/cleaning and a bigger deal when it breaks down than a griddle with a flame under it that had almost no moving parts.
Even Spongebob tried to automate the process with Le Spatula and it just about took out the Krusty Krab.
Don’t some burger places use a broiler with a moving wire grid? Broil both sides at once.
If they can make machines to make pizzas I’m sure they can make a burger machine.
They’re not just going to automate all the jobs, but they’ll certainly automate some. I had read that Australia has a similar minimum wage ($15 range or so) and that fast food places over there do, in fact, operate at lower staff levels than their American counterparts.
It’s probably not a scenario where an American restaurant employs say, 20 people and an Australian one employs 2. But there are probably things you can do to get the headcount down to say, 15-16 that aren’t worth doing at the current minimum wage price point.
It would be easier to automate/outsource away the customer interaction - you could easily take the order with a touchscreen, with backup support of some indians in chennai, and then you pay using a credit card/cash just like at a self-checkout. That’s the real low hanging fruit. Although it is certainly possible to automate further - I could easily see an automated fry cooker/filler.
Automate order taking. While some of the labor time for those on the registers is other tasks I’d be surprised if you couldn’t replace 2-3 register people at the busy times with one person that hands out orders and assists with problems.
I could potentially see something like an fry machine robot too. That’s a pretty high volume process that doesn’t have a lot of variation.
Back when I used to go to McD’s, when of the local ones I went to had that. I don’t think it put it in the grease, but they had an automated machine to fill the baskets. They also had an automated machine to fill sodas as the registers called for them. That probably sped things up quite a bit instead of having employees stand around in front of the fountain.
Sounds like nothing, a few seconds here and there, but in a time when UPS requires drivers to start the truck AND put on their seatbelt at the same time because of a 7 second savings times 50 (guessing) stops a day times about a quarter million drivers turns out to be about a savings of a million hours a year. As it turns out a few seconds here and there counts when you have a lot of employees.
He probably means machines to automate the actual making of the pizza, before it is cooked. Ovens have always been mostly passive bakers of pizza, even in the wood fired days (at least once you get it going.) It used to be any pizza you ate, a human being had to knead the dough, mold the edges (so the crust would be raised, for that style of pizza) and then hand toss it, top it etc and send it off to the oven.
While I don’t know the specifics, I suspect this process is automated at least in some places. I know that there are now “take and bake” pizzas being sold en masse in grocery stores and even chains dedicated to the weird concept (weird to me, that I would go to a restaurant and be given a pizza I have to take home and bake myself.) I’m guessing someone other than a machine is doing the work. I would also bet brands like Digiorno there aren’t tons of factory workers manually making pizzas, partially baking them, and then flash freezing them. While obviously those factories have workers I’m guessing a lot of that stuff is automated.
The dough comes from a factory (or a local bakery as the case may be) in ‘dough balls’, ready to be rolled out. If the pizza is too much more done than that, the chain will be at risk of it’s customers just saying they’re selling frozen pizza. If it’s never frozen, it would probably be hard to transport unless it was made locally and transported by their own people (that might actually work) to be baked on site. The problem is, as a society, we want more and more ‘local’ and ‘small business’ and ‘farm to table’ and ‘hand made’ and also cheap, and ‘artisan’ and probably some other buzzwords, but almost never 'factory made last month, shipped across the country and cooked from frozen a few minutes before you eat it…even though you can’t taste the difference"
Also, as for pizza making machines (machines to spread the dough, add toppings etc), of course the are, but they’re not going to fit in a small store. Even if they did, it’s going to be cheaper to just have a few employees…even if it was cheaper, do you want to go to the place where you’re pizza is handmade or the place where a bunch of stainless steel machines make your pizza?
Yes, I was thinking of the machines for frozen pizza such as in the video. My local papa johns franchise has two folks making pizzas when I’m picking mine up.
My point is that if the machines I see on Food Factory or How it’s made can make all that stuff such as pot pies, cheese cakes and the like they can surely make a burger machine including toppings.
I’m sure they can*, but probably not, feasibly, on a small enough scale to fit in the back of a restaurant. And also, like I said earlier, would you go to a restaurant where your burger was made by a machine? I think DQ burgers are pretty good, but I’m still kinda of put off by the fact that it’s microwaved.
*I’m always surprised by how many big(ish) companies hand make stuff on How It’s Made. I’m not talking about sweatshop big, but watching a few employees roll 1000 empanadas in or raviolis a day is impressive (and probably mind numbing.
A few years ago I read of a US-based company that could handle drive-through ordering. So that when you’re placing the order by talking into the clown head, you’re talking to someone in a call center in Utah or Colorado instead of in the local restaurant.
But using a robot to assemble hamburgers doesn’t sound like a good idea. You’d need a very expensive robot to do something that a low-cost person could do quite easily.
I recall seeing a documentary on that, probably as part of something of fast food restaurants. I wonder if it’s worth it, considering the person taking your order is usually also running the register for the person at the front of the line so ISTM they’re adding payroll/machines/jobs not cutting jobs and contrary to popular belief, orders just don’t get screwed up all that often.
Slightly off topic, they now have E-ICU nurses. Nurses that work in ICUs, but off cite (one of my cousin’s is one). It’s a central location that does all the vital monitoring for all the ICU beds for a group of hospitals. When something goes awry they can send a nurse to the room but in the mean time the nurses at that location don’t have to be sitting at the desk staring at monitors all day. Again, I’m not sure if it does any good. They’re already there, why make it more complicated?
I don’t want to turn this into a full-on hijack, but you might find this article interesting.
ETA: Joey P, your post shows as edited by me because I screwed up and hit “Edit” when I meant to hit the “Quote” button. Apologies. I put everything back where I found it.
They do have lower staff levels. They employ exactly the number of people required to allow a customer, when service is slow, to say to their companions, “What the hell are the rest of them doing?”
My local McD’s already has almost exactly that. Lots of touchscreen kiosks that take your order, payment and print a numbered receipt, then you wait and collect your order when they call the number.
You only need order at the staffed till if you want something different (no pickle), or are paying cash or are redeeming a voucher.
