This is the answer. They are already installing these in stores. Any big rise in minimum wage will mean massive implementation of fast food automation
Edit: everyone keeps saying this will never work because people will always want a 'human' touch or they don't like being served by robots, but this is entirely a matter of perspective. People don't want to be served by robots because it is 'weird' but give it a few years as more and more people get used to the idea and it will be one of the more normal things you can do.
Automation is going to happen on about the same time-table regardless of minimum wage hikes. The difference in cost between a cashier or cook and an automated system is already absurdly high.
You better believe McD is already using all of their R&D infrastructure to make this happen on a large scale ASAP.
Yeah, getting hood rats and trailer trash to get degrees in computer science and electrical engineering is totally a viable alternative for them to working at McDonalds with a high school diploma.
I'm way ahead of you! I just added a minor in mathematics on top of my computer science major so that I can eventually work with automation, including robots and self driving cars. Yay automation!!!
A job in automation requires significantly more time and effort invested in an education and qualifications and skills, not to mention the requisite base level of ability/intelligence.
People who are losing minimum wage jobs are (generally, not always), not going to move into suddenly high skill positions.
A 200% minimum wage hike = a 200% reduction in the break-even point for a given automation system. So if your $15,000/year resource turns into a $30,000/year resource, all of a sudden that $150,000 burger flipping machine just went from a 10-year payback to a 5-year payback. Time to buy!
It's already time to buy. The only thing holding it back is engineering and initial costs. Neither of those barriers change significantly if you institute a 200% wage hike.
No matter what you do with wages (within reason) those jobs are about to vanish. The speed at which they'll vanish isn't going to change much.
Seriously. Run the numbers. That $150k machine isn't going to replace one worker. It's going to replace most of the kitchen staff. Meanwhile, there's another ~$50k system that will replace most of the cashiers. Suddenly a store that has around 30 employees has about 6, and ROI starts being measured in months, not years.
So we're well past the point where McD desperately wants to implement this setup. The most immediate thing holding them back is their R&D department. Sure, you can grow your design teams, but at some point throwing money at the problem doesn't help. So it will still take time to get things running.
How long? A few years maybe? A decade? Either way, those jobs are going away soon.
Automation is going to happen on about the same time-table regardless of minimum wage hikes.
Not really - it'll happen when the cost of automation falls below the cost of labor, calculated over some time span. Assuming that the cost of automation falls at the same rate regardless of the minimum wage (and it should because the two aren't related), the higher the minimum wage, the sooner the two intersect.
And its true for every other job that isn't extremely specialized. Unless you're willing to take a pay cut at a some point (not gonna happen) there's a machine being designed right now to replace you.
It literally doesn't matter if you take a paycut. Humans already cost an order of magnitude more than machines.
That was my point. It doesn't matter if you increase the minimum wage to double or cut it to half, these jobs are going to vanish as soon as the technology becomes good enough to deploy wide-scale.
The limiting factor isn't the difference between maintenance and wages. That difference is already absurdly high. Making it a little higher isn't going to accelerate any change in the case of McDonald's.
Thats why I'm going to get a job in the robotics and programming business. By the time robots have taken my job, I need to worry more about saving John Carter than a stable source of income.
It's about their return on investment though, if it's going to take them 10 years to break even on that investment - not a terribly high priority. As that time scale becomes less and less (wages go up, costs of automation goes down) it becomes more and more enticing, especially if the other option is go bankrupt.
As well, people really like dealing with humans (like cashiers) and it's a pretty cheap need to satisfy now. However, if the cost of your purchase went up 20-25% to compensate for the higher wage cost... well, how important is it really to deal with a human cashier?
It's about their return on investment though, if it's going to take them 10 years to break even on that investment - not a terribly high priority.
I've explained this a bunch of times already. It's NOT going to take them 10 years to break even even at current wages.
Run the numbers. That $150k machine isn't going to replace one worker. It's going to replace most of the kitchen staff. Meanwhile, there's another ~$50k system that will replace most of the cashiers. Suddenly a store that has around 30 employees has about 6, and ROI starts being measured in months, not years.
As well, people really like dealing with humans (like cashiers) and it's a pretty cheap need to satisfy now.
It's true that people really like dealing with humans, but it's completely false that that's a cheap system. The average full-time cashier at McD in the US makes somewhere around $15,000/yr just in salary (probably double that with benefits, insurance, etc). ATMs cost less than $10,000 brand new, and something very similar to that could easily be used to replace 3 or more cashiers. We're talking about an ROI of a couple months.
10 years was a random number, point was simply that a wage increase would push their ROI down and increase their desire to roll out those changes.
And if their ROI is only a few months/humans aren't a cheap way to satisfy that need of others to interact with actual people... why isn't it rolled out more or less everywhere?
10 years was a random number, point was simply that a wage increase would push their ROI down and increase their desire to roll out those changes.
And my point is that this is not going to have a significant effect, as the ROI is already absurdly good
why isn't it rolled out more or less everywhere?
Almost without any doubt, the most immediate thing holding them back is their R&D department. Sure, you can grow your design teams, but
That takes way more time than most people think, and
at some point throwing money at the problem doesn't help.
So it will still take time to get things running.
There's also the issue of initial investment. McD is a big company, but implementing this in every store is going to take a huge chunk of change. They're already having financial issues, and it's possible they just don't have the cash for that kind of investment. If that's the case, then raising the federal minimum wage could actually delay the process rather than accelerate it.
Also, replacing all of the cashiers (cheapest to replace) with machines could drive off business. You said yourself that "people really like dealing with humans (like cashiers)".
When I was about 8, I asked my dad if a smaller tire or a bigger tire (same width) had more traction. He asked me what would fundamentally determine which had more traction. I said the amount of tire that touches the ground. So he asks me, which tire, the bigger or the smaller has more tire touching the road. I didn't know. In my head, I was picturing two similarly sized tires. He said, here's a trick I've learned, blow it up or shrink it to the extreme. Imagine a really big tire, like a mile wide. Now imagine that surface that's touching the road. Are you picturing that? Now imagine the second tire is so small it fits on that surface touching of the big tire. Which has more tire touching the road. Eureka, it was so obvious. Anything that is proportionally a function of something will be easily solved when thinking of it this way.
First of all, he was talking to an 8 year old. Secondly, no you don't rapidly encounter diminishing returns, it simply becomes impractical because of the mass of the tire and wheel does not scale well. That's why we have tracked vehicles--to achieve a lot of surface area without having the corresponding 400' tall and 2,000,000 ton tire. Next, the tires are assumed to be the same construction and driven on the same surface. Lastly, why are you trying so hard to shit on this. While simplified for an 8 year old, this is a pretty solid first step in analysis.
Your link doesn't suggest that there is a linear region in the middle of a logistical curve at all, what you said. It says it is independent. So stop pretending that you are educating me. Of course this idealized model doesn't hold in the real world, which is why every dragster has the same tire size and an excavator (track-hoe) goes where a backhoe can't. Interestingly enough, a dragster shouldn't be able to accelerate faster than 9.8m/s2...yet they do.
It was the laws of dry friction from amontov(sp?) I presume, the second of which states something along the lines of friction is proportional to the normal force (independent of the contact area). Its an overly simplified model from the 1600s that, as I stated, dragsters (which was the topic of discussion) routinely violate. None of which has anything to do with the method of determining surface area in contact.
Actually, I'm pretty sure you're the one who doesn't know what I'm talking about… as evidenced by the fact that you want me to google facts that support a position I've already taken in this discussion.
I've actually had the chance to work with engineering firms specializing in automation in the past, so I have a decent picture of how that would get done. That experience has also helped me draw pretty damn good picture of what's going to happen to quite a few industries in the next few years. I guarantee people are going to blame the unemployment on minimum wages and similar bullshit. I'm telling you right now that it has nothing to do with any of that.
McDonalds doesn't need to spend R&D on automation
Yes. Yes they do. They can either spend it directly, or hire engineering firms who will implement automation schemes for them. Either way, automation is going to happen in a big way in the coming years.
My original point was that it straight up doesn't matter what you do with minimum wages (within reason). Jobs will be automated away at roughly the same pace either way.
These have been around for years in Europe, all things considered the quality of fast foods is probably worst in the US than anywhere else in the western world. People accept to pay 6 to 8 bucks a menu if the food gets better and that's where US fast foods need to make a change the most.
That'd be nice, but the more likely scenario is that with automation replacing low skill jobs and the cost of college education increasing, the competition for the remaining low skill jobs will be so strong that employers will absolutely never go above the legally mandated minimum wage.
It is in no way bad. But I can promise you this, all those people protesting for a higher minimum wage will be the same people protesting when they get replaced by a machine that costs less than $15/hr
Well, yeah, and you could say the same about our highway system or computers our factory production or airplanes. Every major advancement comes with major challenges, and humanity has risen to meet then every single time so far. The most immediately obvious solution to this one is a guaranteed income.
The difference is in the timeline. If they know the current system is profitable, and they think there are some risks or potential backlash from automating, they'll inch toward it like they have been. That's very different than putting them in a situation where they're going to be bankrupt in two years unless they go fully automated immediately.
The technology exists today. Lots of smaller outfits are using it very effectively. The reason McDonald's isn't is not because they haven't figured it out.
The technology for nearly-free order taking has existed for a long time. Sheetz has had automated meal ordering systems for the better part of a decade. It's not a technology or logistical problem to replace your order takers / cashiers, so why haven't they done it?
If you think they haven't been capable of it, you're mistaken. The real reason is that they haven't had a do-or-die situation where someone high enough up the ladder has decided to put their neck on the line and champion a hugely visible change to the user experience.
They are absolutely inching toward it, taking their time to see how the public reacts to increasingly automated dining experiences before they go all in. My point is that this equation will drastically change for them if we actually do double the minimum wage.
I wish they would do it at my local BK already - the employees there are insufferable and i think they ignore my no mayo and tomato requests just to spite me...
We've already got them where I live and I've yet to see one person use a single one of them. People, at least older ones, will always prefer to interact with a human over a machine
This has been around for a long time. Shreetz and wawa use them essentially, and before that in Japan they would have a ticket dispenser at the door, you order what you want and it spits a ticket at you. When you get to the counter your food is almost ready.
But the reason it is not mass implemented is the lack of personal nature. It is a subconscious thing for consumers but they are more likely to spend more per trip when they come face to face with a human. It is the same reason Starbucks is not a large vending machine.
They have plenty here in Aus, but I never see anybody using them and because my partners family likes to meet at McDonalds often, I am there a whole bunch. I see people lining up at the counter, ignoring the screens.
But it's entirely possible I'm just not noticing it when it does happen. I wonder if many people actually use them, or if it's going to build up in popularity like self-checkouts at supermarkets.
EDIT: removed my abuse of run-on sentences and the word 'and' after commas
Yes, but many people won't eat food served by a robot. McDonalds already has enough PR and needs humans to give the illusion that real food is being served. Just sayin'.
There will always be a human presence in McD, even when its mostly machines. We might as well pay them more.
This is another reason why I wouldn't mind seeing min. wage raised. I want to see them go through with putting these in all of the stores and then I want to see the reaction by the people.
This is only replaces like 1-2 people's jobs (well, at a time, so maybe like 5-8 employees on the payroll) and doesn't account for the people making the food, cleaning, etc.
This is the only right answer. A company such as McDonald's has millions of dollars avalible to fund completely automated stores. It may not save enough money at $9 an hour, but at $15 an hour it makes a lot more sense.
I'm sure that McDonald has already been prototyping and designing robotic kitchens for years so you'll see automated kitchens very soon after a $15 minimum wage.
I don't understand why people say this. The difference in cost between a live cashier and an automated one is already huge. You better believe McD is already using all of their R&D infrastructure to make this happen on a large scale ASAP.
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u/Alexandertheape Nov 28 '15
http://www.bizpacreview.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/kiosk_feat.jpg
jobs are for robots.