McDonald’s is introducing the future of fast-food: kiosks and all-you-can-eat fries.
Goodbye, no-skill workers (pushing buttons and asking if I want fries with that is not a skill) demanding higher pay. Hello, technology… and 80% obesity rate?
Now that the technology is here to automate menial tasks, get ready to see a lot of minimum wage jobs disappear.
If you’re ready to cry, “but the jobs!” – what about the elevator operators who all lost their jobs in the ’50s and ’60s? Gas pump operators? Travel agents?
Thanks a lot, Internet, we were doing fine before you got here and ruined everybody’s lives and ate all our jobs (Napoleon Dynamite reference for those who need it).
Kiosks won’t replace cooks or runners (yet). So those people will benefit from the higher wages. And we should end the lower min wage for food service workers and, consequently, end tipping.
Tablets will be introduced at more casual and fine dining to replace the tasks of ordering and paying through the waiter. This will free their time to improve your experience.
This will also result in a few less waiters needed per shift, but the ones that stay will be better compensated. We should have a shorter workweek anyway. Tech handling job tasks could help shift things that direction in the food industry.
The future of dining is here. And it’s spreading quickly. Expect more and more tablets and kiosks to sweep the nation’s restaurants over the next couple years and to be ubiquitous by 2019.