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Next they'll come for the cooks: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc There are ~487k fast food cooks emplo
by hirundo 7y ago
Next they'll come for the cooks:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKCVol2iWcc
There are ~487k fast food cooks employed at ~$22.6k average wages. That's more than an $11 billion annual incentive to bring robochefs to retail. And that's just fast food, just in the US.
Robo janitors may take a bit longer. Maybe they can design automated kitchens that work like jumbo dish washers. Seal, flood, heat, drain, reopen. The janitors could take the form of underwater scrubbing drones.
Put the kitchen in a shipping container that plugs into the restaurant. When it breaks swap it out for a refurbished one and haul it back to the repair center. With a self-driving truck.
Let customers watch their order being prepared on their phone, micromanaging the bot with special requests.
- Spooky23 7y agoNext they’ll come for the liquidator. The Burger King on the NYS thruway north of nyc went to touchscreen ordering. Everyone refuses to use it and there is one long line going to the one register that remained.
- cbdumas 7y agoReally? I've seen touch screen ordering at McDonalds all over the place and most people seem to have no problem with it. Why do you think people avoid it?
- bluedino 7y agoWe have those and they are slow. I wonder when they’ll put them in the drive through.
- randomdata 7y agoThe ones that McDonalds has here are fairly well implemented. Certainly preferable to dealing with the average cashier not thrilled about the job. But I haven't travelled enough to see what systems are being used in other regions of the world. It seems that what you and others are saying is that they are not all the same.
- bluedino 7y agoCustom orders are really slow to enter
- JetSpiegel 7y agoYou should also have some kind of hash of the order as a simple hex string, or "correct horse battery staple" thing, if you always order the same thing. Or the terminal could read a QR Code.
- shantly 7y agoThe couple I've seen have had bad menus (what? Options? I just want the damn thing like usual, there are options? I don't care, where the hell is the "just buy it like normal" button?) and have suffered from the same jank that every non-Apple touchscreen I've used has, somewhere on the medium-bad side of that spectrum. Feels like HTML+JS running on Android, which is very possibly exactly what it is. Missed touches, animation stutter, stuff like that. They're way worse than just ordering.
- alexmlamb 7y agoI've used the McDonalds one in Canada and it seemed pretty good. I think the "options" button is partially an upsell, since they want to try to advertise extra stuff.
- shantly 7y agoMaybe they're A/B testing or they've changed. The ones I've seen took you through a screen or two of options and such before adding whatever you'd selected to your order, with the "just friggin' add it" button far less obviously placed than it should have been. Also took some thinking to figure out where certain things might be in the menu. [EDIT] My experience is muddling through the process once the first time I saw one just to see what it was like, but it definitely took several times as long as just walking up and ordering (and all I ordered was a coffee), and watching my wife try to use one on a family trip, spend about ~2x as long as it would have taken to just order at the counter, curse at it, give up, walk over and order at the counter.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- noitsnot 7y agoI can beat one customer and cashier most of the time. I'm just one person at lunch and know what I want. A customer will stand up there and make decisions and not have payment ready, etc.
- blisterpeanuts 7y agoThe local Mickey D's put in a couple of tall touch-screen systems that I found surprisingly difficult to figure out. The touch screen was slow to respond -- nothing more frustrating than tapping a glass screen and wondering why nothing happened -- and the decision path didn't make sense. I suspect whoever designed it had one kind of user experience in mind, then it was modified by a different group to change the UX, leaving it worse than before. Anyway, I notice that no one uses it, and I visit frequently (it's so close that I often drop by to get the $0.99 coffee, and now my 14-year-old has started working there).
- jimmaswell 7y agoThe one at mine is a completely smooth experience.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoSame here. His McD's must have cheaped out.
- mike_d 7y agoMy local McD had touch screens with exactly the experience you describe. I got in the habit of repeatedly tapping until I got the button to respond. This last week I noticed the UI had some major improvements and was ultra snappy. I expect they took user feedback and are slow rolling a version 2.0.
- neom 7y agoThe McDs touch screen location in Union Square is the most annoying thing ever, it's very slow, oddly hard to understand, and if you want mostly diet coke with a little root beer on top, you can't order it.
- behringer 7y agoCouldn't figure out how to order a sausage egg and cheese biscuit. After wasting 5 mins navigating around I had to cancel and order from the human. Why put myself through that? If anything goes wrong, the order taker knows how to deal with it. So I just order from the human now.
- pmart123 7y agoPanera has a great touchscreen experience.
- rackad 7y agoFor the past year or so, there are touchscreen monitors in all McDonalds. So they are already replacing slowly employees by machines.
- judge2020 7y agoProblem with my local panera is that half the time there aren't any pagers at the touchscreen station, while there's a 3 foot stack of them at the register. Another problem is that guided access isn't always active on the iPads, meaning you can go to different apps and potentially change settings around. Since most jailbreaks these days are just apps, an attacker could go to safari and download a jailbreak app signed with an enterprise certificate and have a (tethered) exploit potentially stealing anything from panerabread.com passwords to credit cards.
- nitwit005 7y agoThey do have the issue that they run out of baked goods but don't update the state of the ordering system. I assume it is legitimately difficult to keep perfect inventory of the items to make that work, but it does lead to some confusion.
- Mountain_Skies 7y agoSounds like McDonalds is making the same mistake the automobile companies made with their infotainment systems, cutting corners to save on hardware and just being too inexperienced on software. The infotainment systems of the past couple of years have been a huge improvement over those of the past decade so maybe McDonalds and the food service industry in general will just have to go through the same painful process the car companies did.
- cbhl 7y agoWhat I don't understand is why the McDonald's mobile apps are region-locked. If I am an American and I visit Canada or Japan, why do I have to use the register or kiosk? I should be able to use mobile ordering, just like back home.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- jrjdjdhhedh 7y agoHow myopic for you have to be to not just wonder why a mcd app in Japan would not be expected to work in the us but to say that's how it should be? All the complex shit that goes into a company like mcd in a single country and you expect what you're expecting?
- bfung 7y agoDisclaimer: I currently work at a company in the QSR+mobile ordering space It takes a TON of work to get the menus+availability, payments, local tax laws, security/privacy right for specific regions. Menus are not a solved problem - think about the case where a user wants a fillet o'fish, but hold the sauce and the top bun. Is the fillet o'fish the same item in the US as in Japan, even? What about other regional items? etc. Also - McDonald's is run by McDonald's corporate and Franchisee's. Sometimes, corporate has the buying power, but most of the time, it's the individual franchisees that make the buy decision - for even things like mobile apps and ordering. Many times, restaurant brands you see here in the US, when traveling, are owned and operated by completely different sets of corporate beings.
- burgerzzz 7y agoI would avoid it just because of all of the various fingers that have touched it before me.
- noobiemcfoob 7y agoYou mean...like the doorknobs?
- jacobolus 7y agoIf you make doorknobs out of brass, they might still get poop on them, but many types of bacteria and viruses can’t survive. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_copper https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antimicrobial_properties_of_co... Maybe we can start making public touchscreens out of brass...
- noobiemcfoob 7y agoOk, but most doorknobs aren't brass.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- johnisgood 7y agoHow many doorknobs do you typically touch outside of your home a day? Most doors here are automatic. Plus, I would be reluctant to use someone else's keyboard at work, even.
- noobiemcfoob 7y agoBut...why? Do you have an autoimmune disorder? Generally find yourself especially vulnerable to the errant bug? How do you feel when you breath in someone's fart? You're a walking bag of mud expressing discomfort at other bits of mud in the world. One bit in a million might be annoying. One in a billion actually painful.
- Spooky23 7y agoThis may be my old man moment. I used them a couple of times at different places. It’s just too slow, which is magnified by the dark patterns trying to get you to buy meal deals or whatever. I was really surprised, honestly I was expecting the process to be better than the usual.
- p1necone 7y agoWe have those in New Zealand and they were initially awful - slow, hard to navigate/find stuff, actually missing lots of menu items. They seem to have swapped out the system now though and they seem to be relatively usable.
- toomanybeersies 7y agoNew Zealand was the first country to get them, I believe, which is why they had usability problems to start with.
- woutr_be 7y agoHere in Hong Kong, every McDonalds has 3+ touch screens, I hardly see anyone lining up at the counter these days. I for one only use the touch screens.
- hnick 7y agoI used one in HK too, and various other places. One benefit for busy cities is that they are great for allowing tourists to go at their own pace if they struggle with the local language (and often have language options to help them).
- woutr_be 7y agoThat's very true, especially for introverted people like me, who don't like the attention when struggling with a language. It also helps that the devices are pretty responsive, and allow you to order everything. The downside is that I often see older people struggle with it, I guess for them it would be easier to talk to a human.
- WalterBright 7y ago> who don't like the attention when struggling with a language I suppose I am the opposite. I enjoy attempting to order food in a tongue I am learning. But going through the process with a native English speaker, I'd rather just push a button on the kiosk.
- WalterBright 7y agoI use the McD touch screens. It works, but it takes about 30 clicks to buy something. Also, I was flummoxed until I figured out that [Add To Order] actually means "I'm done, I want to pay now". I suppose all this was extensively play-tested, but I have no idea what sort of person play tested it given the result.
- carlmr 7y agoYeah, I also find usability sucks, so I usually go to the register if the line isn't too long.
- all_blue_chucks 7y agoThe end game is to remove all drive throughs and fast food joints, and replace them with drone and/or pneumatic tube food delivery. I'm hoping for the tubes.
- Gorbzel 7y agoUnclear why one needs kiosks when the user's device is much more compelling. While there are some (very good) exceptions, many remain yesteryear's technology and meh to outright garbage UIX. The only reason is to maintain some local control and (when available) human common sense in the equation. Brick & mortar kiosks are the DVD Netflix of fast food.
- jhbadger 7y agoDo you really want dozens of apps on your phone, one for each restaurant you could possibly eat at? I don't.
- likeclockwork 7y agoWiFi web portal you use in the store?
- uuoc 7y agoYes, that would work, but then that does not provide the marketing department with the same level of invasive tracking and push notification as "an app" does. So guess which option gets built....
- stjohnswarts 7y agoMy local mcdonalds has 3 panels and no cashiers at all except drive thru. People use them all the time and this is BFE Texas. Assistance is available of course, via the people who would normally bring out your order,for people who can't use them properly.
- aidenn0 7y agoThat will pass. At one point I could jump to the front of the airline check-in queue because nobody was using the touch-screen check-ins. Now the touch-screens are the only way.
- toomanybeersies 7y agoAnecdotally, McDonald's in Australia and New Zealand have touchscreen ordering and I can't remember the last time I saw someone actually ordering in person. It's so much nicer to be able to take your time, actually view the menu and costs of items, and choose what you want to eat without a line of hungry people waiting behind you.
- dagw 7y agoMost Burger Kings here in Sweden have touchscreen ordering and I hardly see anyone using the register any more. Personally I find it such a far superior experience.
- flukus 7y agoAutomated cooking seems more achievable to me, at least somewhere like McDonalds with fairly standardized items. The inputs and outputs are much more defined and there's much less need for AI. > Maybe they can design automated kitchens that work like jumbo dish washers. Seal, flood, heat, drain, reopen. The robot janitors could take the form of underwater scrubbing drones. Anything that complex would probably go through a chemical wash rather than having a robot get into every corner. Some medical equipment like endoscopes are cleaned this way.
- rangibaby 7y agoWe saved billions of dollars with automation! Why is no one buying our products anymore? Hmm, it must be because they are spending all their money on avocados! I think the only way to go is to do basic income funded by an automation tax. Henry Ford knew that people needed enough money to actually buy his cars and made it happen with high wages.
- LanceH 7y agoIf robo cooks are truly inexpensive, we could feed a lot more people in need for less money.
- test6554 7y agoPeople are a lot like stray cats in that the more you feed them and house them, the more of them you have eventually. At some point, before we are all underwater, we are going to need to have a fertility discussion.
- chillwaves 7y agoLong before you tell people they do not have a right to live, you will want to address consumption. Poor people are not consuming as much as rich.
- mschuster91 7y agoNo, quite the other way around: the wealthier a country gets, the less kids are born as parents don't need as many of them to reproduce successfully. In fact this trend is so strong that countries like Japan or Germany are facing a really massive demographic problem as the working population shrinks over the next decades.
- pmontra 7y agoIMHO the reason is that in rich societies people has many possible activities to perform. They feel that parenting kids is not one of the most attractive ways to spend their time on. Furthermore raising kids cost more in rich countries than in poor ones, so they can't afford as many as their parents or grandparents could.
- castratikron 7y agoRobo janitors are closer than you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3bgMyMQB9U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3bgMyMQB9U
- milesward 7y agoNope, they'll come for the managers first. See Manna by Marshall Brain
- smcleod 7y agoThanks for the recommendation - looks like an interesting read.
- triggercut 7y agoLots of interesting operating considerations. A few thoughts, having worked in "Quick Service Restaurants" a long long time ago. Ignoring cost of human labor and a move to equipment maintenance for a moment, one of the key metrics tracked is waste/loss, i.e. from the bins in the kitchen. Amounts of discarded buns, lettuce, tomatoes, burnt or spoiled, past due-date, serve-time etc. it all gets tallied and recorded. If you get sent one box of frozen fries weighing a known amount, that should translate into (x) number of servings +- a fairly narrow distribution curve. If you go through 10 boxes but only sold 9(x) servings then maybe your staff are overfilling, dropping, burning or eating the fries. Either way, they are losing you cash. The cash at the tail end of your otherwise carefully controlled supply chain. Anything that cost effectively eliminates waste will be next.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- bhouston 7y agoRobots are so much high maintenance than just touch panels and voice rec. Thus while it is a good idea the hurtles are much higher to get a positive ROI.
- tozeur 7y agoThink to the future my friend. In time the technology will get better.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoTouch panels seem to be way better than trying to figure out how to speak in "Robot English" instead of just pushing buttons that do what you mean (mostly) without fail. Also some people who take your order are rude and make whats just supposed to be a convenient grab for food into an awful experience.
- cm2187 7y agoSeems to be easily solvable with an app on your phone, you order as you queue and by the time you reach the counter you already paid.
- InitialLastName 7y agoGiven that this is a drivethrough we're discussing, I'd love to not have more things to encourage people to use their phones while operating heavy machinery.
- giancarlostoro 7y agoThe way some of these places do it is you park at a pick up spot (I remember Chick-fil-a doing this). So you order before you go pick up the food. Usually while at a grocery store, or have a friend order for you.
- delfinom 7y agoAs a guy that maintains robots at a factory. They are literally a 1 hour side task once a month. The robot arms basically only needed a rebuild once in 15 years. The tooling is the only thing that goes bad and needs replacing every month and it's designed such that only a small part of the tooling needs replacement.
- habosa 7y agoSan Francisco has some self-cleaning public bathrooms that work like that. Locks between each person and cleans the whole thing including the floors. Pretty cool.
- etrautmann 7y agoExcept when they’re not working, which is every single time I’ve tried one.
- habosa 7y agoOnly been in one, the one on Stanyan street near Waller. Worked fine for me!
- SllX 7y agoHmm. It might have been ten years since I tried to use one of those here, generally I found them to be broken or continuously occupied for absurd lengths of time, I.e. camped in. There’s a reason nobody is advocating for more of these to be installed despite demand for well, public sanitary facilities. I did however use the same model in Palo Alto recently. Turns out they’re not bad if they’re well maintained and charge a small fee (50¢) to use.
- bryanrasmussen 7y agoIf you get robo servers and robo cooks your kitchen janitorial needs go way down. at this rate they will soon need robo customers.
- flarg 7y agoYou're missing a trick I think ... Why not do an IKEA style build-it-yourself burger operation, where food is cooked and deposited into a box with how-to-build-your-burger instructions printed on top. The perfect personalised burger experience! We might even get websites that sell McD hacks that you can add to your self build burger experience! I mean, what is the real MVP for McD? It's sourcing, uni-forming, storing and then cooking food. Assembly doesn't really need to be part of it.
- Traubenfuchs 7y agoIn Austria, for a few shining years, we had "build my burger" where you could use the order terminals to create your perfect burger. For a year I ate a mess of three chicken patties and lots of cheese on a daily basis. Sadly, they got rid of it.
- spacechild1 7y agoThe new terminals have an option to customize your burger, I guess that's pretty much the same thing. Or did they remove it only recently?
- JetSpiegel 7y agoThere's the terminal customization, and no-holds-barred buffet-style Just a Bunch of Food to mixup.
- Traubenfuchs 7y agoYou can customize burgers, yeah, but with "My Burger", you could think up insanities like 3 chicken patties and 5 pieces of cheese.
- legulere 7y agoLike the 1€ Hotdogs at IKEA?
- sjg007 7y agoThis is what fuddruckers basically does.
- sct202 7y agoRobots are great for repetitive tasks that have low variability like industrial parts that are almost exactly identical to spec. But when things aren't exactly to spec, I'm not sure that the robots would be easily able to recover with where the tech is today. Like let's say a slightly customized order, few buns stick together, something falls, tomatos are slightly more mushy than normal, or isn't loaded to the machine exactly right.
- contingencies 7y agoThis is true but predictable failure modes can be designed around.
- joezydeco 7y agoSome parts of the cooking have been automated for a long time. For example, nobody flips burgers anymore. They're placed on a clamshell grill that cooks both sides at the same time and releases when it's done. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mj7_a1Egew https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mj7_a1Egew The next step will be loading the products into the grill and unloading them automatically...and that's already in the works. But robot assembly of sandwiches is a long way off. Humans are way more flexible and efficient here. The key is removing the repetitive tasks from their workload.