6 ms·

Wendy's plans to replace workers with self-service kiosks

ourmandave 10y ago
When will they catch up with Taco Bell who has order ahead and pay on their phone app?
- baron816 10y ago
  They should use a chatbot so no one has to download an app. I don't want a Wendy's/Taco Bell app on my phone.
  - cmdrfred 10y ago
    Or you know a webpage, why is everyone so scared of the browser?
- pessimizer 10y ago
  Not everyone has a smartphone, or wants to install and give permissions to a different application for every business they might visit.
op00to 10y ago
This is great. I love ordering via kiosk at Wawa convienence stores in the Philanthropic area. No misunderstandings, you can easily see what's available on the menu at that moment, and generally the ordering process moves a lot quicker since there's more parallelism. This is perfect for fast food.
- reustle 10y ago
  Seriously. I ate so many hoagies from wawa in high school that I had my ordering technique down to a science. I went from screen 1 to printing receipt in 10-12 seconds every time. It really threw me off when they'd add/remove a item in menu and things would reflow slightly.
- gambiting 10y ago
  Nearly every McDonald near me(north east UK) has multiple kiosks - so much easier than ordering in person.
transfire 10y ago
The min wage raise is just being used as cover. This was bound to happen eventually regardless.
- reustle 10y ago
  It definitely would have happened regardless, but this sure gave them a good reason to invest more. The straw that broke the camel's back, you could say.
  - pessimizer 10y ago
    One of the benefits of a high minimum wage. Why develop new technology when slaves are cheap?
- commentzorro 10y ago
  Yup. Time to drag out the old, "minimum wage increases is killing jobs. No increases in minimum wages ... No mandated minimum wage" rhetoric.
- mcphage 10y ago
  Definitely. I don't know what the wage would have to be to make human cashiers cost effective vs. kiosks, but I'm guessing it's on the order of pennies per hour.
jbuzbee 10y ago
I recently saw these at several fast-food outlets in New Zealand and Australia. Worked fine and there was less chance of a screwed up order. As the article says, this is a direct consequence of raising the minimum wage higher than the market rate. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction...
- milhous 10y ago
  While everyone's heard the minimum wage-automation argument many times over, wasn't POS kiosks the inevitable next step regardless of wages? Sheetz and Wawa have been doing this for decades in the Northeast US, so why hasn't McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, etc followed suit? Is it due to public pressure, and/or the cost of deploying infrastructure?
  - jbuzbee 10y ago
    The equation is pretty direct. When the cost of an employee is greater than the value the employee brings to the organization, something has to change or else the organization goes out of business. I'm not familiar with Sheetz and Wawa, but maybe these companies felt that the novelty or accuracy of Kiosks brought additional customers in, justifying their expense even with a low labor cost. Other companies may not have felt so. But now that minimum wages are being pushed higher, these companies are going to re-evaluate the cost vs. value equation. When the local Dairy Queen in Fresno, is forced to pay a High School kid a rate of $31,000 a year to hand out soft-serve ice-cream cones, you can bet that the owner is looking at self-serve options... [edit for typo]
  - Torgo 10y ago
    Tax breaks in exchange for bringing jobs to a community? I'm sure government largess focuses into the equation. "Free market", haha. Programs originally meant to help people tying them to pyramid-construction projects.
- intopieces 10y ago
  >As the article says, this is a direct consequence of raising the minimum wage higher than the market rate. And I consider it a resounding success for humanity. Automate everything, we will find work or find Basic Income if we need to. There is no reason we shouldn't push headlong into full automation. The fast-food order taker job is not worth saving.
james_pm 10y ago
This is already happening at McDonald's in Canada. It's a far superior system with larger touchscreens allowing for multiple ordering stations. Staff concentrates on filling orders instead of struggling to take orders where language and noise is a constant problem. For those who want to order with a human, there are a couple of registers for that. It won't be long before talking to a human to order seems old fashioned. This is also a prime example of how speech interfaces are not the solution to everything. Ordering fast food on a touch screen takes seconds vs. talking to a human being. A chat bot would have been terrible in this case, although I'm sure some restaurants will experiment with it (perhaps at the drive thru).
- spacecowboy_lon 10y ago
  Its all fun and games until some one puts skimmers / malware on the kiosks and appears on Brian Krebs site as the latest hack. I am not putting my CC or DD card anywhere near a conatctless system - I keep a > 3£k balance on my Santander DD to get the good interest rate.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    This guys puts a skimmer on your regular machine, no contactless needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y83ZgzuFBSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y83ZgzuFBSE And the fear of contactless payments is almost funny - someone would need to go to ridiculous length to read a card via PayWave/PayPass(the card won't reply to a non-genuine key, so you would need to have an actual authorized reader or access to one), and the most you can spend is 25 pounds per transaction, and you can only do it 5 times before you have to enter the pin. In the meantime, you can anonymously buy thousands of stolen card numbers online - so why bother with contactless? I will always use it if there is an option to.
    - Bromskloss 10y ago
      How do people use stolen card numbers without getting caught? Simply ordering things to be delivered to your home doesn't seem like something that you would get away with.
spriggan3 10y ago
Happening everywhere in the world, cashiers replaced by automatic cash registers the client need to operate himself in supermarkets, self-service kiosks at MacDo, even in a french bakery I saw one...
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  The more I use the "automatic" checkouts at the grocery store the more I am convinced they are for suckers. They just shift a ton of labor onto me and aren't any faster. Employee intervention is required for many steps (alcohol purchases, system thinks you didn't bag the right item, receipt tape runs out, etc). Soon the machine will start handing you a mop and telling you there's a cleanup in aisle 4.
  - mcphage 10y ago
    > The more I use the "automatic" checkouts at the grocery store the more I am convinced they are for suckers. They just shift a ton of labor onto me and aren't any faster. Many years ago, stores as a whole would have employees who you told what you wanted, and they'd get it for you. When they switched to stores where you collect your own items, many of the same things were true—they were shifting work onto the customer, and weren't faster. However, they allow that work to be done a lot more in parallel (since there are lots of customers picking out their own items), and let customers have a lot more control over what they bought and how much they paid. So overall, they were a plus, and very few stores these days require you to place an order with the people working there.
neillyons 10y ago
Ordering via a machine is quite common in cheaper Japanese restaurants in Japan. I think it is a hygiene law where staff who touch money can't prepare food so the customer pays at a machine and hands the staff the meal tickets.
- nsxwolf 10y ago
  So you touch your money, then you touch the ticket with the hands that touched the money, then they take the ticket and prepare the food with the hand that took the ticket that touched the hand that touched the money?
umeboshi 10y ago
Why is this so groundbreaking? I recall Arby's of all chains, testing this out in 1993-94 in Florida, it was like an airport kiosk touchscreen that you ordered thru.
omilu 10y ago
Japan has had this for ages, a vending machine takes your money, you select what you want, take the printed receipt to the chef and they cook your food. Works great.
wink 10y ago
Fun story. I was at the Madrid airport a while ago and did exactly this: used a kiosk in a McDonald's to order my stuff - hooray for no more language issues (my Spanish is really bad, I was tired, and the kiosk was something new I hadn't seen anywhere). When my order was ready - what did they do? Call out the numbers - in spanish, and not with a very clear/easily recognizable/slow pronunciation. Plan foiled. In the end I did get my meal by asking if I had understood the called out number correctly, but unless you also solve some other problems, this is not as perfect as it sounds ;)
Overtonwindow 10y ago
Unpopular opinion: I've been advocating for order kiosks in fast food establishments for 10 years. Why? Language barriers, and order accuracy. I think having A kiosk for those who wish to order in any language, or to improve accuracy, should be allowed. I hate to see the day that all workers are replaced by kiosks, but I am pulled by the idea of less barriers to ordering.

When will they catch up with Taco Bell who has order ahead and pay on their phone app?

baron816 10y ago
They should use a chatbot so no one has to download an app. I don't want a Wendy's/Taco Bell app on my phone.
- cmdrfred 10y ago
  Or you know a webpage, why is everyone so scared of the browser?
pessimizer 10y ago
Not everyone has a smartphone, or wants to install and give permissions to a different application for every business they might visit.

This is great. I love ordering via kiosk at Wawa convienence stores in the Philanthropic area. No misunderstandings, you can easily see what's available on the menu at that moment, and generally the ordering process moves a lot quicker since there's more parallelism. This is perfect for fast food.

reustle 10y ago
Seriously. I ate so many hoagies from wawa in high school that I had my ordering technique down to a science. I went from screen 1 to printing receipt in 10-12 seconds every time. It really threw me off when they'd add/remove a item in menu and things would reflow slightly.
gambiting 10y ago
Nearly every McDonald near me(north east UK) has multiple kiosks - so much easier than ordering in person.

transfire 10y ago

The min wage raise is just being used as cover. This was bound to happen eventually regardless.

reustle 10y ago
It definitely would have happened regardless, but this sure gave them a good reason to invest more. The straw that broke the camel's back, you could say.
- pessimizer 10y ago
  One of the benefits of a high minimum wage. Why develop new technology when slaves are cheap?
commentzorro 10y ago
Yup. Time to drag out the old, "minimum wage increases is killing jobs. No increases in minimum wages ... No mandated minimum wage" rhetoric.
mcphage 10y ago
Definitely. I don't know what the wage would have to be to make human cashiers cost effective vs. kiosks, but I'm guessing it's on the order of pennies per hour.

jbuzbee 10y ago

I recently saw these at several fast-food outlets in New Zealand and Australia. Worked fine and there was less chance of a screwed up order. As the article says, this is a direct consequence of raising the minimum wage higher than the market rate. For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction...

milhous 10y ago
While everyone's heard the minimum wage-automation argument many times over, wasn't POS kiosks the inevitable next step regardless of wages? Sheetz and Wawa have been doing this for decades in the Northeast US, so why hasn't McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, etc followed suit? Is it due to public pressure, and/or the cost of deploying infrastructure?
- jbuzbee 10y ago
  The equation is pretty direct. When the cost of an employee is greater than the value the employee brings to the organization, something has to change or else the organization goes out of business. I'm not familiar with Sheetz and Wawa, but maybe these companies felt that the novelty or accuracy of Kiosks brought additional customers in, justifying their expense even with a low labor cost. Other companies may not have felt so. But now that minimum wages are being pushed higher, these companies are going to re-evaluate the cost vs. value equation. When the local Dairy Queen in Fresno, is forced to pay a High School kid a rate of $31,000 a year to hand out soft-serve ice-cream cones, you can bet that the owner is looking at self-serve options... [edit for typo]
- Torgo 10y ago
  Tax breaks in exchange for bringing jobs to a community? I'm sure government largess focuses into the equation. "Free market", haha. Programs originally meant to help people tying them to pyramid-construction projects.
intopieces 10y ago
>As the article says, this is a direct consequence of raising the minimum wage higher than the market rate. And I consider it a resounding success for humanity. Automate everything, we will find work or find Basic Income if we need to. There is no reason we shouldn't push headlong into full automation. The fast-food order taker job is not worth saving.

james_pm 10y ago

This is already happening at McDonald's in Canada. It's a far superior system with larger touchscreens allowing for multiple ordering stations. Staff concentrates on filling orders instead of struggling to take orders where language and noise is a constant problem. For those who want to order with a human, there are a couple of registers for that. It won't be long before talking to a human to order seems old fashioned. This is also a prime example of how speech interfaces are not the solution to everything. Ordering fast food on a touch screen takes seconds vs. talking to a human being. A chat bot would have been terrible in this case, although I'm sure some restaurants will experiment with it (perhaps at the drive thru).

spacecowboy_lon 10y ago
Its all fun and games until some one puts skimmers / malware on the kiosks and appears on Brian Krebs site as the latest hack. I am not putting my CC or DD card anywhere near a conatctless system - I keep a > 3£k balance on my Santander DD to get the good interest rate.
- gambiting 10y ago
  This guys puts a skimmer on your regular machine, no contactless needed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y83ZgzuFBSE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y83ZgzuFBSE And the fear of contactless payments is almost funny - someone would need to go to ridiculous length to read a card via PayWave/PayPass(the card won't reply to a non-genuine key, so you would need to have an actual authorized reader or access to one), and the most you can spend is 25 pounds per transaction, and you can only do it 5 times before you have to enter the pin. In the meantime, you can anonymously buy thousands of stolen card numbers online - so why bother with contactless? I will always use it if there is an option to.
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    How do people use stolen card numbers without getting caught? Simply ordering things to be delivered to your home doesn't seem like something that you would get away with.

spriggan3 10y ago

Happening everywhere in the world, cashiers replaced by automatic cash registers the client need to operate himself in supermarkets, self-service kiosks at MacDo, even in a french bakery I saw one...

nsxwolf 10y ago
The more I use the "automatic" checkouts at the grocery store the more I am convinced they are for suckers. They just shift a ton of labor onto me and aren't any faster. Employee intervention is required for many steps (alcohol purchases, system thinks you didn't bag the right item, receipt tape runs out, etc). Soon the machine will start handing you a mop and telling you there's a cleanup in aisle 4.
- mcphage 10y ago
  > The more I use the "automatic" checkouts at the grocery store the more I am convinced they are for suckers. They just shift a ton of labor onto me and aren't any faster. Many years ago, stores as a whole would have employees who you told what you wanted, and they'd get it for you. When they switched to stores where you collect your own items, many of the same things were true—they were shifting work onto the customer, and weren't faster. However, they allow that work to be done a lot more in parallel (since there are lots of customers picking out their own items), and let customers have a lot more control over what they bought and how much they paid. So overall, they were a plus, and very few stores these days require you to place an order with the people working there.

neillyons 10y ago

Ordering via a machine is quite common in cheaper Japanese restaurants in Japan. I think it is a hygiene law where staff who touch money can't prepare food so the customer pays at a machine and hands the staff the meal tickets.

nsxwolf 10y ago
So you touch your money, then you touch the ticket with the hands that touched the money, then they take the ticket and prepare the food with the hand that took the ticket that touched the hand that touched the money?

umeboshi 10y ago

Why is this so groundbreaking? I recall Arby's of all chains, testing this out in 1993-94 in Florida, it was like an airport kiosk touchscreen that you ordered thru.

omilu 10y ago

Japan has had this for ages, a vending machine takes your money, you select what you want, take the printed receipt to the chef and they cook your food. Works great.

wink 10y ago

Fun story. I was at the Madrid airport a while ago and did exactly this: used a kiosk in a McDonald's to order my stuff - hooray for no more language issues (my Spanish is really bad, I was tired, and the kiosk was something new I hadn't seen anywhere). When my order was ready - what did they do? Call out the numbers - in spanish, and not with a very clear/easily recognizable/slow pronunciation. Plan foiled. In the end I did get my meal by asking if I had understood the called out number correctly, but unless you also solve some other problems, this is not as perfect as it sounds ;)

Overtonwindow 10y ago

Unpopular opinion: I've been advocating for order kiosks in fast food establishments for 10 years. Why? Language barriers, and order accuracy. I think having A kiosk for those who wish to order in any language, or to improve accuracy, should be allowed. I hate to see the day that all workers are replaced by kiosks, but I am pulled by the idea of less barriers to ordering.