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Gone are the heady days of cashiers asking if you want your order "supersized."
Not only has the infamous upgrade gone by the wayside, but cashiers at fast-food restaurants are becoming increasingly uncommon. McDonald's started rolling out ordering kiosks at its US locations in 2015, and the chain hasn't looked back since: by 2020, most of its 14,000 locations will have kiosks installed.
Panera Bread has also committed to digital ordering. Admittedly, when I first tried it in 2015, I found it had decidedly dystopian vibes. But it ended up being a fairly pleasant and painless experience.
A recent poll conducted by Business Insider's partner MSN suggests that diners aren't big fans of automated kiosks: 78% of customers said they would be less inclined to go to a restaurant that has automated ordering kiosks.
The popular narrative is that kiosks and mobile ordering are here to take jobs and hours away from underpaid cashiers, ultimately saving companies money in the face of rising labor costs — but the data suggests that isn't true. It may be true for some, but most chains are simply reallocating labor behind the scenes. And with such a tight labor market, many chains are struggling to hire and retain customer-facing employees.
Americans don't seem too threatened by automation in general. Nationally, only 21% of responders to MSN's poll believe their job may one day be done by machines. And restaurants like automated ordering for its increased accuracy and efficiency as more chains look towards cashless options.
But for now, a question remains: are kiosks, in fact, better for customers?
Source: Business Insider
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Saturday March 31 2018, @10:55PM
If you limit that kind of ordering to fast food, "fast casual" (Chipotle, Panera Bread, etc.) and anything under or possibly including "Macaroni Grill" type places, that would probably cover a lot of ground still leave plenty of fancy restaurants you could go to staffed by real humans. Not to mention buffets.
I tried to look for some stats on the size of restaurant industry ($799 billion in 2017?) vs. fast food places, and found these hot trends [npd.com]:
You decide whether they are talking about the restaurant industry as a whole. Previous link says full service restaurant visits declined by 2%, while fast food sales are growing [nrn.com]: "Taco Bell (4 percent), McDonald’s (3.9 percent in the U.S.), Wendy’s (3.2 percent) and Burger King (3 percent)".
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]