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Carl's Jr. wants to open automated location
- nielsbot 11y ago...or maybe charge a little more for your burgers?
- mgo 11y agoWhat a perfect way to price the poorest people of society out of the most valuable resource - food.
- kaonashi 11y agoLost jobs with no basic income will do that just as well.
- farva 11y agoFast food is more of a luxury...if you want the best value on food then go to the grocery store.
- dagw 11y agoif you want the best value on food then go to the grocery store. Assuming your time and transportation has zero cost. And even then you're going to have to be buying pretty massive quantities to get a big enough of a bulk discount to even have a chance to make yourself a burger for anywhere near $1.
- MisterBastahrd 11y agoRice and beans are healthy, filling, cheap, and can be stored dry in large quantities. Nobody HAS to eat a fast food sandwich. The real problem here is that companies want to pay their employees so little in order to enrich their investors that they are reducing their own customer bases.
- uptown 11y ago"Researchers compared access to supermarkets, smaller grocery stores, and convenience stores in largely black, Latino, white and racially integrated neighborhoods in a national sample of more than 65,000 census tracts. Earlier research showed that convenience stores and groceries, which are smaller than supermarkets, stock foods higher in fat, sugar and salt. The study found that living in a poor, mostly black neighborhood presented "a double disadvantage" in supermarket access. Unsurprisingly, poor black neighborhoods had fewer supermarkets than wealthier black neighborhoods." http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/30/science/la-sci-sn-poor-black-neighborhoods-supermarkets-20131029 http://articles.latimes.com/2013/oct/30/science/la-sci-sn-po...
- mywittyname 11y agoThere are reasons dollar menus are so popular at low-end fast food restaurants. In more poor areas of the US, supermarkets are hard to get to. The people in these places really only have access to CVS or corner stores that are high priced and only sell high margin, low quality food like canned ravioli. Plus, a lot of poorer people already work at these places, so it's pretty convenient and cost competitive to the products from CVS.
- tcfunk 11y agoFast food is not the most valuable resource.
- LargeWu 11y agoThink of the damage all this unhealthy food loaded with sugar, saturated fat, and sodium is doing to the community. Heart disease and diabetes are rampant problems among the poor because this kind of food is cheaper (often due to govt. subsidies) and more readily available. Not to mention all the damage we're doing to the planet with the industrial ag practices required to sustain this low priced crap. I'm sorry if I don't lament if the fast food industry is failing.
- maxxxxx 11y agoThey would actually be better off if fast food was more expensive. Cooking for yourself is cheaper and healthier. And it's not hard to do if you have a minimum set of skills.
- nielsbot 11y agoI didn't say double the price. Also, jobs are also a valuable resources for the poorest people.
- mc32 11y agoOn the upside there will be potential for better detecting foodborne illnesses as well as just better food hygiene with fewer human hands. It's a dire time for people who dropped out of school and with few marketable skills. The tattered net that was the McD's job, is not going to be there for long, not that should have ever been a job for proper adults, but soon it will be on its way out. However, I think minimum wage increases are a red herring. Increased minimum wages should buy you better employees who are more productive. Never the less, it's just more automation, possibly base wage increase accelerates adoption, but it's not the reason --were just getting better at automation and it's becoming pervasive. As to people's appetite for automated food production and presentation Japan should allay their fears. After a little trepidation, consumers will grow to like the predictable service.
- yummyfajitas 11y agoHowever, I think minimum wage increases are a red herring. Increased minimum wages should buy you better employees who are more productive. Why would it do that? If your wages were higher than competitors, certainly paying higher wages gives you the best of the existing workers. But a minimum wage doesn't give you higher wages than competitors at all.
- TheBeardKing 11y ago*higher productivity
- mc32 11y agoBecause you're no longer scraping the bottom of the barrel and it gives the worker more in germs of financial stability.
- yummyfajitas 11y agoWhy aren't you scraping the bottom of the barrel anymore? Before a min wage, you are hiring the least valuable workers. After a min wage increase you are still hiring the same low value workers.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 11y agoIt's been done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Automat
- crispyambulance 11y agoYep, and they have a remarkable "retro-future" charm to them. All the automats really do is remove the person at the counter. There's still folks preparing the stuff in the back, there's still people clearing tables and cleaning up. Bringing this back will perhaps reduce headcount in some locations but only by a fraction. There is nothing transformational about this idea. It is merely being used as fodder in arguments against raising the minimum wage. I am sure they would prefer avoiding fitting existing stores with such new technology.
- tremon 11y agoNot only past tense, it's being done: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FEBO
- AndrewDucker 11y agoMy local McDonalds now has giant screens for you to place your order. Most of the time I'm in there they now have counter staff with very little to do. If they can work out a way to automate the making of the burger, or even the transport from the chef to the customer, they'll be able to cut their staff even more.
- switch007 11y agoI hate them. They are unresponsive and slower. I walk past them, go up to the counter, and get a nice greeting and a smile from a human being. Ditto for supermarkets: those machines are even more annoying. I always try to go to a lane with a real person (granted, they're not always smiling and sometimes acknowledge you less than a computer)
- Roboprog 11y agoDepends. If I have one item, in a sealed package w/ legible barcode in my hand, the self serve lane is fine. If I have produce, or a large basket of stuff likely to contain a "processing error" in it somewhere, no way. Go for a real clerk.
- obsurveyor 11y agoSelf checkout is wildly faster for me, even with computers that feel like they're running on hardware from 15 years ago. I can have my basket organized in the same order I'm going to bag it, scan it in, bag it efficiently, pay and leave. The worst part about self checkout are the other people who don't know how to use it, have huge carts(especially at a tiny checkout kiosk that should really have a max item limit) or are just slow. In the case of lines at self checkout, I'll go to an empty lane if the whole store isn't just packed.
- mgkimsal 11y agoself checkout lanes need a "beginner" side and "express" side. :/
- JoeAltmaier 11y ago
- mywittyname 11y agoI'm okay with this. As he says, robots are the best workers. Once companies start investing more in automation, then we as a country can focus on freeing humans from the shackles of performing meager tasks for penance. We can tax these companies a modest amount and give that to unemployed workers. It's really a win/win. The business makes lots more money and the former workers now have a load of free time to do with as they please. They can focus on developing skills for higher paying jobs, or just live out their lives in modest leisure, focusing on raising their family instead of just feeding them.
- GSegbar 11y agoI don't think so. It'd be more cost-effective to let us all starve.
- toomuchtodo 11y agoHence, socialist safety nets. Because the alternative is.... unpleasant for capital/automation owners. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
- chopin 11y agoThis problem could be solved with robots as well. Why not having farming robots alongside with ones which protect them and the products of their labor from the greedy hands of the have-nots? It could be that robots able to kill will overturn the balance to the ones who can afford them even if they are a few. Who would dare to stop them?
- toomuchtodo 11y agoIf you have nothing to lose as a have-not, your options for action are extensive. Even the smallest nation-states can afford and manufacture nuclear weapons now (ie North Korea). I don't foresee this capability getting more expensive or more difficult as time goes on, only cheaper and easier.
- mangeletti 11y agoAnother Idiocracy prediction[1] comes true: 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wW-4LU79qbU
- mangeletti 11y agoFor reference, here are some others: http://www.mandatory.com/2013/08/09/10-things-idiocracy-predicted-would-happen-and-sadly-already/ http://www.mandatory.com/2013/08/09/10-things-idiocracy-pred...
- TheLarch 11y agoTrump is easily halfway between, say, Eisenhower and President Comacho.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- TheLarch 11y agoThat was my first thought!
- Roboprog 11y agoFast food production should be increasingly mechanized. Much of it will regardless of +/- 20% change in wages. At this point, maybe somebody else can insert a better "Culture" reference than I can :-)
- michaelbuckbee 11y agoThis is just the tail end optimizations (aka human effort reductions) that have been happening for a long time in the food business. Fast food in particular, but even most "fast casual" places don't actually make the food in the sense of raw ingredients come in, finished dishes go out. What is delivered to each restaurant are prepackaged, pre portioned food "modules" that are then rapidly assembled: frozen hamburger patties, bags of precut flash frozen fries, bags of precut onions, etc. Which is wildly more efficient than handling everything in house. Similarly, Starbucks switched from barista's who needed some level of skill to the "Mastrena" machines which let you hit buttons to make drinks. 1 - http://www.businessinsider.com/the-company-behind-starbucks-espresso-2014-8 http://www.businessinsider.com/the-company-behind-starbucks-...
- syats 11y ago"Government driving up the cost of labor" is an absurd thing to say for the CEO of a company which is expanding and who, most likely, drives around in a luxury car and owns a private airplane. Rising wages are only a problem for greedy businessmen who won't buckle up for once and pay employees their fair share, sacrificing maybe a year or two of ski-holidays and caviar.
- AndrewUnmuted 11y agoActually, your comment appears to be even less based on reality and observation than the quotation you're railing against. Assuming you're reserving your diatribe for the US, major corporations are simply hoarding and offshoring cash reserves. This is so that they can defer paying the highest corporate income tax in the world, and wait to file all of this cash when the next administration announces a corporate income tax holiday. That will be when the hiring happens and wages get raised in the US.
- Aloha 11y agoa large majority of the Carls Jr locations are franchise - the pay of the CEO of McDonalds or Carls Jr is not really connected. A far larger problem is the market focus on short term performance and a changing regulatory environment (post enron) that criminalizes mistakes - for the last 30 years (since the corporate raider era in the 80's) CEO tenure has been shrinking, and overall risk has (to the CEO) been rising - because of that rising risk (of being sued, fired (for not meeting unrealistic market performance), or even going to jail) - their pay has gone up considerably. I'm not saying any of this is good or right - it just is.
- swalsh 11y agoThis is really a net plus. The vast majority of people working fast food, really don't like it (as a job). They hate the pay, and most hate the work. Technology like this is a blessing in disguise, it frees people from working in places they hate. If you're the kind of person who actually liked a job in fast food, you're a special person... and a fine dining restaurant would probably be even more enjoyable for you. Of course the downside is our society requires you to have a job to participate in the economy, and the bar to getting a job just raised a bit higher. Technology combined with globalization isn't changing the world... it CHANGED the world. In 2016 we're at a crossroads to decide how we deal with it. To me the current "extremist" candidates Bernie vs Trump represent two alternative views... Bernie seems interested in building a society that takes care of its citizens, even if they're not capable of taking care of themselves in the new economy. He advocates not for "Free" college, but rather raising the bar to help people get the NEW minimum education required to participate. Trump says (though its unclear) that the solution to people no longer being able to participate in the new economy is to ratchet back the social (not technological) progress we've made.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoHow does one measure social progress? Without an agreed upon definition of what is forward, how can we label something back?
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoI'll take a stab and say protected classes. You can't refuse service or employment to someone based on race, disability status, and so on, and the rare edge cases of people abusing this statute adds fuel to the "political correctness is ruining this country" fire. Without such protections, people would be cheaper to employ because the deck is further stacked against them. That is how we go back in time.
- Lawtonfogle 11y agoSo is adding more protected classes progress in all cases, are are there certain criteria as to what counts as a protected class? And is this really progress (imagine how protected classes works in certain jobs related to the sex industry), you are basically overriding a persons ability to consent, and even if the action is only something physical, is it really progress for the government to force consent under threat? And maybe we could even break it down. Maybe protected classes for employment is great and maybe protect classes for service aren't. Or maybe protected classes for employment is actually regressive because it is endorsement of all the factors you can discriminate on. For example, orientation isn't a protect class (at least not federally), and thus in many places is legal to discriminate based on. Perhaps progress would be that employment discrimination is only allowed for factors actually relevant to the job, and adding protected classes is a regression from this.
- fuzzieozzie 11y agoObviously a political statement supporting the profitability of his current business model! "This is the problem with Bernie Sanders, and Hillary Clinton, and progressives who push very hard to raise the minimum wage," says Puzder. "Does it really help if Sally makes $3 more an hour if Suzie has no job?" The 'human' question is, will a minimum wage job pay enough to support a person. Obviously this is not considered :(
- masterleep 11y agoThe answer to your 'human' question is that not all humans are the same.
- rwhitman 11y agoHe's right - when the bulk of common minimum wage jobs have been replaced by machines to offset the human resource cost, it's going to decimate low-wage employment. There will eventually be a price point at which the cost of buying and maintaining machines is more expensive than human labor. The problem is those competitive wages are extremely low, measured in pennies an hour. (Mechanical Turk is a great example) Today's minimum wage workers may eventually end up working illegally or flooding "gig economy" 1099 roles - driving their collective value in those markets down to wages less than a dollar an hour. Without a strategy like Basic Income, our cushy Western living standards are going to be at a real crossroads soon. We're about to turn a good chunk of the Western world into Bangladesh
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoThe deception in his argument, though, is that this is happening because of rising minimum wages. If the minimum wage stayed the same, but automation was cheaper regardless (it will be by its very nature, count on it), he'd still be first in line to axe those jobs.
- rwhitman 11y agoAgreed. He clearly has a self-serving business and political agenda underlying his statements. If his business is suffering right now, it's because the American appetite has changed - people either want decent food made with quality ingredients in a friendly higher-touch environment, or dollar value menu quick calories. Much rather see crummy middle-ground fast food chains like Carl's/Hardees, Burger King, Wendy's go under and be replaced with better businesses that respect employee attention to quality and service than have them morph into automats. If fully automated dining becomes a category, I really doubt these lumbering grease factories will be the ones to dominate it anyhow
- CWuestefeld 11y agoThis is easy for you to say, you can easily make the trade-off of higher quality for more money. But is it right for you to force your values onto people with less money, who will feel the pain of that trade-off more sharply? Maybe they'd also prefer to eat in a nicer place, but their circumstances simply don't allow for it. Keeping costs down isn't being miserly, it's helping to deliver a product that is within reach of the less fortunate.
- Eric_WVGG 11y agoBusiness Insider would’ve scored some journalistic points if they had used a real photograph of a janky ass Carl’s Jr burger instead of promotional art.
- Balgair 11y agoThe path: Google's self driving car finally makes it out of dev. hell and a few years pass. Domino's and Pizza Hut plaster some of the cars with glaring vinyl stickers and plop a stoned teenager in the seat because lawyers. More time passes. Someone finally figures out how to make a decent enough pizza via a robot oven. Now you have a self driving car and a self making pizza, the stoned twentysomething is finally taken out of the car to find another job. You pull up you phone and order a pizza, the car is routed while in transit to another place and makes the pizza while delivering other pizzas. Store fronts disappear with their allotment of stoned thirtysomethings. Domino's tries to put in a self making deep-fried chicken wings machine, but so many catch fire and don't know it while driving down a freeway that lawyers evoke their toll. Eventually Pizza Hut puts in malicious code to wreck Domino's cars 'safely'. A literal arms race now pops up. Then the stoned fortysomethings order 2 pizzas from competing companies at the same time. The entertainment from watching heavily armed robots fight for the right to deliver you pizza becomes a major sport. Fin.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoOr you could do it Snow Crash style and hope the delivery guy is late so you can shoot him and take the car. That aside, when you use automation to strip personality from a venue, it puts personality at a premium. Some of the best places to eat in town are those where the staff are friendly and you can chat with each other about your day. No robot could ever do that (as long as you know it's a robot).
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoThat's not how it worked! Read it again.
- rm_-rf_slash 11y agoWhat was I missing? The part where you sign away your life to be anything but a spokesman for Uncle Enzo's CosaNostra Pizza?
- 11y ago
- beachstartup 11y agoback when i used to eat fast food at college, in san diego carl's jr. was the first to offer kiosk-based ordering. it was pretty awesome, except for the standard issues (slow people trying to use it, etc.)
- bitwize 11y agoWelcome to Carl's Jr.! Would you like to try out EXTRA BIG-ASS TACO? Now with more MOLECULES! Carl's Jr.: Fuck you, I'm eating!
- aidenn0 11y agoEatsa just looks like an Automat without the coins, or am I missing something?
- mc32 11y agoAutomats were/are pre prepackaged to go food (read: longish shelf life, things that dont get soggy or taste blah when cold). On the other hand these can have food made to order like any fast food joint, just more streamlined ordering and little interaction if any with staffs.
- JoeAltmaier 11y agoAutomats from the 60's had a full kitchen behind the glass wall. Not to-go food. But a limited menu.
- kilbuz 11y agoYou can build your own bowl (completely customized) at Eatsa using their app. They also win on design and UX. I definitely recommend checking one out, it's really fun.
- PaulHoule 11y agoOne of these plays a role in this sci-fi book: http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Steel-Rat-Born-Series/dp/1441881468 http://www.amazon.com/Stainless-Steel-Rat-Born-Series/dp/144...
- ersii 11y agoLet me just say this, not even Bernie Sanders favorite - Sweden - has legal minimum wages. (In Sweden the Employers and the uhm.. "organized" Unions negotiate collective agreements that have something similar to legal minimum wages - but they're voluntary, not mandated by the state or the county etc)
- cat-dev-null 11y agoCarl's Jr. needs better WiFi first. The few locations I've tried (in Silicon Valley) have WiFi which seems slower than dial-up.