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I own several franchised fast food restaurants. This article ignores several key points. Robots are expensive and would need to be custom made for each restaur

I own several franchised fast food restaurants. This article ignores several key points. Robots are expensive and would need to be custom made for each restaurant to replace humans. Also, there would be missing the human touch, making a restaurant visit cold and automated. No more "service" and personal touches. You get what you get. The immediate issue is, who pays for the increased labor cost? You do. And, no, it won't just add a dime to your bill. My labor cost has gone up 150% since I started in this 30 years ago as an investment. All my material costs are also up at least that same amount. The unit cost to you of one of our products was $4 back then. Today it is $8. I now feel I hire better people but I hire fewer of those people and, currently, won't hire teenagers cause they're unreliable but the quality of person I need to run with this light crew is hard to find, more due to the stigma of working fast food than the actual pay (though that's part of it). The customer is price sensitive. The customer likes the human touch. If restaurants go robotic, the most popular restaurants will be those without one, and while the idea of raising pay to $15/hour is great, someone has to pay for that, and that someone is you.

mbfg 11y ago
This is a very sane point of course, and you are right that the consumer, and perhaps the low wage earner (in cases of the McDonald's type restaurants) now loses his extra wage to extra meal costs, so it is self defeating. The problem though is that your costs are not driven up just by wage costs, but by many other things that are not helping the low wage earner. So the self defeating part of the "rising cost past to the consumer" is only a fraction of what makes life miserable for those who are at the bottom. Increasing there pay directly helps them 100%. And so it is still a net win.
- toomanythings2 11y ago
  Those "other things" mean the cost of food, paper, cleaning supplies, etc. that make a restaurant run. Those same materials are made by low wage earners who, if given $15/hour, will drive up the cost of the supplies I use, thus increasing my operating costs.

mbfg 11y ago

This is a very sane point of course, and you are right that the consumer, and perhaps the low wage earner (in cases of the McDonald's type restaurants) now loses his extra wage to extra meal costs, so it is self defeating. The problem though is that your costs are not driven up just by wage costs, but by many other things that are not helping the low wage earner. So the self defeating part of the "rising cost past to the consumer" is only a fraction of what makes life miserable for those who are at the bottom. Increasing there pay directly helps them 100%. And so it is still a net win.

toomanythings2 11y ago
Those "other things" mean the cost of food, paper, cleaning supplies, etc. that make a restaurant run. Those same materials are made by low wage earners who, if given $15/hour, will drive up the cost of the supplies I use, thus increasing my operating costs.