Fmr. McDonald's USA CEO: $35K Robots Cheaper Than Hiring at $15 per Hour

foxbusiness.com

3 points·azazqadir··6 comments

I'm just waiting for the first fast-food-robot-kitchen to appear.

Where you go up to a window and pay with your smartphone, choose an item from a menu and watch the robot make the food and then serve it - perfectly fried, cooked and spit free.

How would you compete with that?

Easy. You keep people employed. The missing point in all of these discussions is the revulsion most people will experience being served by a machine.

I can't wait for one of these restaurants to go all automatic and go bankrupt because people simply stop eating there.

These restaurants are un-health, filled with horror stories like people getting their burger spit in, and people still eat there. You might be underestimating how much people want their cheap burger.

Either way, if that does happen the chains will either have to react or competition will pop up. Both sound like good things.

Likewise, they will undoubtedly try it in a few stores first to figure out the impact. So the risk to them is low.

It will be interesting indeed to see how it goes.

If the prices are lower than a real restaurant for the same or better food cooked and served faster - I'm not so sure what they will choose.

You get around that by having one or two people "front of house" as the face of the restaurant. People can't see their food being prepared now and don't care that they're eating frozen mostly-burger patties. I don't think a robot flipping said mostly-burger patties will change that.

Relevant discussion (re: Wendy's) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735928

Reply on news.ycombinator.com