They've re-invented the Automat, little glass doors and all.[1] The first Automat opened in 1887, and the last one closed in 1991.
Whee anecdotes!
The failure of hot food vending machines to become more widely adopted over the last century, even in venues already selling only pre-cooked food with minimal service, is a pretty good indication that many customer service workers who could have their jobs automated out of existence by better technologies in future will end up keeping them.
This new Automat-like thing is really a cook-to-order, you-pick-up operation, like most eateries in mall food courts. It's not clear what value all the little windows add. The kitchen side is not, apparently, automated beyond usual fast food levels.
Touchscreen ordering has been tried many times. McDonalds, Wendys, and White Castle have deployed it at some locations. But it hasn't really caught on. If you want to try it, Specialties, an SF bay area lunch chain, uses it. It's worth looking at again now that tablets are cheaper. Slow people at the ordering kiosk can bottleneck the whole system, but if you have lots of cheap tablets available, everybody can work their menu in parallel.
I've been expecting The Counter, a local high-end hamburger chain (hamburger and fries, about $15 plus tip) to go this route. They give you a plastic order sheet and a grease pencil. Their user interface had a problem; the original grease pencils were too big for their closely packed check boxes. They've since upgraded to sharper grease pencils. There are still problems with check boxes being scrubbed out after you hand in your worksheet.
If you're really into the mechanics behind fast food, see "http://www.qsrmagazine.com". They have an article on "Eatsa", from a industry perspective.[1] The kitchen is not automated, but it's organized on the "machines should think, people should work" principle: "The Eatsa team worked to take the complexity out of the kitchen as well, with each employee responsible for a singular task, paired with a system that tells them exactly what goes into each bowl and in what order, increasing the speed of service."
[1] http://www.qsrmagazine.com/news/tech-forward-concept-makes-f...