McDonald's Says Goodbye Cashiers, Hello Kiosks
forbes.com
forbes.com
Replacing cashiers in stores with kiosks, and ultimately replacing the fries-making and burger-flipping jobs with automation, removes a massive slice[1] of job roles for young teens from the market. As the article writer asserts, this will prevent lots of first time workers from learning the basic work-skills that are needed as they progress to more senior roles elsewhere. Things like time-keeping, quality-control, ability to focus, and social skills... the list goes on.
With young people the world over now only able to interact with society via the medium of toxic social media, resulting in poor face-to-face social skills, the next time you bump into an intolerant sulky mono-syllabic belligerent teen, remember that it was these sort of technical 'innovations' that resulted in their abandonment, and directly contributed to them becoming the anti-social outcasts that mainstream media has always painted them as.
As elders, we need to support the up-coming generation, not cast them aside in pursuit of our own greatness.
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[1] pun totally intended.
Sounds like the market is coming up with a solution. There are many ways for teens to learn the lessons you mentioned besides working in fast food.
If the kiosk is designed well, it ends up being a better experience than a human interaction. One example that comes to mind is Panara Bread’s system. If a kiosks is available, I always prefer it to a person.
I will use the kiosks if there is a line for the cashiers and at Starbucks, I like using their mobile app instead of waiting in line to give my order.
If they can make customer experience and efficiency gains off the back of it as well, it's an all round win for them.
All the things you've mentioned are things which potentially increase profit, though the rollout is a big investment with a lot of risk, which decreases profit.
Also decreasing profit is having to pay your workers more, so in that sense, increases in minimum wage possible did contribute to this decision. The thing which people who point to that as a sign of minimum wage increases being bad miss is that these things are a moving target. Automated kiosks are getting cheaper every year, and at worst an increase in minimum wage brings it a few years closer.
That's not great for people working in jobs that were a few years away from being economically viable to automated, but they'll still benefit in their next job, and a huge chunk of the population still benefits (and thus the economy overall)
One thing the last few decades has shown particularly well is that often it’s easier to make money through growth than through cost cutting. Of course, this isn’t universal, especially within tiny markets, commoditized offerings, or when growth has plateaued.
There are excellent pros to the kiosk, and I use it when impatient and not wanting to stand in line. However, if I walk in to an empty store, my experience would be more enjoyable when speaking to a person rather than a wall size touch screen.
During lunch hour my Chick-fil-a was a mad house of ppl waiting in line to order but once the app hit critical mass, the line basically disappears and people just show up to pick up their order and leave. I think the key to success iss that CFA only has a couple items on the menu and there are only so many ways you can customize a chicken sandwich (or tenders or nuggets).
Because the app streamlined their process they upped their throughput and hired more employees to meet this demand. So I think kiosks could ultimately be a win-win for employees and customers but we gotta get over the learning curve hump. The McDonalds kiosks are NOT user friendly.
* I order an off-menu item (scrambled eggs, they're delicious and you're welcome). it's literally impossible (afaik) to get it from the kiosk
* i want to see somebody and and have some kind of interaction. I'm a software engineer and I'm about to spend 8 hours staring at a computer screen with minimal human contact. I'm a huge introvert but still human and will go crazy alone just like everyone else.
* sometimes the cashiers are cool. I don't mean to be creepy but last week one definitely was flirting with me and asked where I'm from. it got so intense, that at the end she burst out in laughter and she was smiling at me the whole time till I got my order and left. Im a single guy in his 20s, don't skewer me for this. another time, this guy made a d&d joke (!!) and we both had a good laugh.
* I don't want to touch a filthy screen. there's 200+ ppl in these places at a given time... remember this is downtown Manhattan.they do an admirable job of keeping the place clean, but it's just one more unnecessary disease vector
* I used to be a cashier at a KFC in high school. it helped pay for my first, oh so shitty car. $7/hr, I was happy because minimum wage at the time was like $6.50. I made money, got tasty free employee meals, learned how to work with others, and met tons of cool people (and some shitty ones). it taught me a lot and we had fun.
You might wanna rethink your diet, that makes a very unhealthy impression.
> I don't want to touch a filthy screen.
There is an app for it. I think it was/will released this summer.
Coming from /u/PurpleRamen, that's rich :-). But seriously, I get oatmeal, scrambled eggs, a hasbrown and maybe a diet coke if not bottled water. Not terrific, but hard to beat the price/convenience/speed/taste factor.
I usually interact with public touchscreens using the tip of my credit card for this very reason. Works better than my fingers anyway
I'm totally opposite on point #2, I have social anxiety and don't like interacting with people if I can help it lol.
Third point: sometimes they are jerks too, and provide shitty service. But if I had their job, I would too - so I totally understand. Many don't speak much english here.
Fourth : Use a disinfectant wipe. The cashier touches lots of money, and the register, then may touch your food, drink containers, fries, etc...
Fifth: My first job was McDonalds, I've worked at Steak-n-Shake, a Mexican restaurant as a busser, and Papa Johns (Delivery) All before I was 20 (38 now).
It was valuable to me, but I believe in universal basic income, and I believe that in order for it to happen, and for us to move into post-scarcity we must haste the transition to automation. I'd like to see as many jobs as possibly turn over to machines in the next decade. It'll force conversations about alternate ways for society to exist.
We could choose to put all non-workers into concentration like camps, where they're fed shitty food, and just exist... maybe they ride bikes to power society and watch social media shows all day (Black mirror ep. on this)...
Maybe we give everyone basic income and they can afford a roof, food, clothes, education, and maybe many will start some side project or entrepreneurial thing when there aren't traditional jobs, there might still be barter/trade of sorts outside normal commerce.
30-40% of jobs will be gone by 2030 (that's 12 years away)... This is just one part of that move.
* Much better product discoverability.
* Better customization (like removing onion from the burger).
* Easier to see the prices and compare them.
* No more waiting in line, you just go to the kiosk and then pick a seat, they serve at the table.
* I live in the French part of Switzerland and French is my native language, and while I have a good german level, understanding every swiss german dialect is really hard, I'm glad I can use the machine. This also applies to tourists as the kiosk is also in english.
I'm a native German, and I find that hard as well. I was in Switzerland once and I saw a news broadcast where the weather segment was spoken in the Zurich dialect of German. I only know that because my host told me; I didn't recognize it as German at all.
McDonalds should introduce this in more countries. At the kiosks in the Netherlands, after you order, you still have to wait at the counter for your order to come up.
If done right, this could definitely be an improvement. On the other hand, they implemented a not so great kiosk-based system at my office cafeteria, and that transition wasn’t exactly smooth. The menu selections on the kiosks were much too rigid, and did not offer enough flexibility for customization.
* I don't have to yell to be heard during rush hours
* It makes lines way easier to deal with (they can pack in more kiosks than cashiers)
* Apple Pay seems way more reliable on these than the cashier machines
* I don't have to wonder whether they entered my customization correctly
Every time I see one of these things, I remind myself that good ideas are only half of the puzzle, the other half is the ability to execute.
They've also moved to a style similar to Argos where you pay and then wait in a different place to collect instead of 1 cashier taking on 6 orders and having to crowd around their till. They do have 1 or 2 human cashiers if people choose however.
Overall it's much better. For a customer it's less crowded and for the staff there's less pressure to take on several orders at once.
edit: typo
To experience a different:
- climate
- landscape
- city size (there are no 10M+ cities on my continent)
- architecture style
- culture (can be very diverse between speakers of the same language)
I should be able to fly to China and order a meal with very little difficulty, if any.
If they are really smart about it, they'll tie it into an app so you can order ahead or save your favorite orders and just use NFC to load the entire order and tweak anything if necessary. This would not only be nice for the consumer but would provide them with a treasure trove of data on individual customers.
The more annoying thing is that they've moved to a JIT production system at the same time, which means if you just wanted to pick up a cheeseburger in a rush, you end up waiting much longer than you used to.
The people on the JIT production line also tend to completely ignore the customers and tend to just stand around chatting right in front of them waiting for things to arrive, the customers all mill around awkwardly near the serving counter, and all this reinforces the impression you're waiting a lonnnggggggggg time.
It really feels less a fast food restaurant and more like an awkward food restaurant.
Perhaps it's just because I'm British ;)
On the plus, I'm sure it's reduced food waste.
They've done this here in the US with several of the product lines, preparing it once you order it instead of keeping it in a heating unit. It's pretty annoying in the drive-thru unless they are really busy. If there is only a car or two in front of you, guess what... once you pay they're going to have you park and wait a couple of minutes, if there are several cars in front of you though it will usually be ready by the time you get to the second window.
I'm not getting fast food because I want made-from-scratch freshness, I'm getting fast food because I am in a hurry and want something inherently portable.
Macdonalds wants to disassociate itself from the image of fast food and heat lamps for much the same reason that KFC no longer calls itself "Kentucky Fried Chicken."
Since people pick it, I have still had order mistakes but hey, it usually means ordering quickly instead of waiting behind the person who wants to reconfigure the entire menu during their order.
There's still a cashier if you need one but there's hardly anyone at them, even if there's a queue to use the kiosks.
Ordering form the machine lets me choose English, and while most Finnish people understand English I feel bad when I have to use it.
(I'll be taking another round of language classes in a few months.)
Unnormal orders are much easier and normal orders are quicker.
For the most part it's actually a better experience, it's certainly faster. The touch screen kiosks could be more intuitive.
I do hope (assume?) they clean those things several times a day, hygiene rules and such.
It's actually one of the more interesting challenges of beacon (and QR) adoption; most of the obvious/easy to implement use cases are already well supported by GPS
That's the experience I know from China. Are there any restaurants in the US that do it similarly? Or perhaps not due to the lack of WeChat and suitable payment providers?
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/08/more-th...
Because there are restrictions on what hours minors can work and what equipment they can operate.
Guess what job they do the most of? Cashier.
Guess what job these kiosks replace? Cashier.
You still need humans to do the cooking, to troubleshoot system issues, you'll always need a proper cashier for times when systems go down or you have a disabled patron (blind for example), you'll need people cleaning the facility and parking lot, taking the trash out, restocking things.
This is a chicken little issue "ermagerd, a kiosk is going to replace a cashier, we're all gonna starve to death when our jobs are replaced!!!".
This is something we WANT. Widespread adoption of kiosks gives John Q Public a wake up that automation can replace jobs, it gives minimum wage workers yet another nudge that saying "do you want fries with that" isn't a career.
They're replacing cashiers, the most pointless and un-fulfilling job on the planet. It'll be ok.
If the kiosks cause people to lose a job and, say fall behind in rent, then they create homeless people or bad educational outcomes, or any of the other consequences of poverty.
If we want to continue our 35 year old preposterous cult of imagining everyone who is homeless are really just lazy versions Jeff Bezos who don't apply themselves, then we will continue to get the same results having that approach has generated.
It is empirically beyond any reasonable doubt, demonstrably conclusive to be a highly dysfunctional and patently incorrect approach to structuring a society. Sure, let's have kiosks, but let's also prioritize not having profound disruptive deleterious harm to society in the process. There's consequences and costs to all of us for our negligence, incompetence and irresponsibility.
Those who continue to advocate for ignoring this reality are controlled and blinded by their passions and preference. It's terribly wrong and we are suffering the consequences.
Not the adults that can work nights, early mornings and you know, legally operate the grill and fryers.
"[D]emand work. If they do not give you work, demand bread. If they deny you both, take bread." - Emma Goldman, said to a crowd during the panic of 1893.
So the article lifts an interesting point. The low-competence trainee entry will disappear, meanwhile perhaps a greater demand for expertise than ever before will arise. How will the training occur?