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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, Insightful) by vux984 on Sunday April 01 2018, @06:56AM
"The average food service human is slow and error prone because they Just Don't Care, or have the IQ of a turnip"
Depends. The guy in front of me the other day took forever, accidently cancelled repeatedly, had to start over 4 times, couldn't figure out how to navigate, and finally timed out when trying to pay... and then needed to change their order because they forgot something...
The last time I went into McDs half of the kiosks were out of order.
"Same with grocery stores. I can ring up and bag my own and make sure the 2 liter soda bottle isn't dropped on top of the eggs and bread."
A decent cashier / bagger team is 10x faster than the self checkout. Self checkout may be faster if there are 12 self checkouts, and one trainee cashier with a queue of everyone in the store over 50, but its not that self checkouts are actually better. They've just sabotaged the cashier operations to the point that the self checkouts look good by comparison.
"Just shut up and take my money. Or go away and let me pay a machine"
Yeah, until you see some mold on something in your cart that you missed, or a jug of milk springs a leak, and then its a whole fiasco, as you look around helplessly for a human to help you because the self checkout doesn't a have button for that. Meanwhile the human checkout just calls for a cleanup and a stockperson to fetch a replacement without missing a beat.