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I never in my life have seen prices go down due to a new technology or method implemented. Did prices went down in stores who removed cashiers in favor of self-

• lotsofpulp 3y ago
  As you can see from multitude retail businesses filed with the SEC, the business' profit margins have not gone up, therefore the business's expenses must be rising. Maybe self checkout was worth it, maybe it was not, those details are up to the business' leaders, but any layman can see that profit margins are not rising to infinity for many (most?) businesses, so new technologies obviously do not simply result in increased profit margins for the business, and hence must be necessitated in order to keep the business competitive or offset other rising costs. Now, this might not apply to McDonalds, but McDonalds is also not in the restaurant business. https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/profit-margins https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/MCD/mcdonalds/prof... McDonalds is in the real estate and branding business, which has much more scalability and higher barriers to entry, hence they are probably able to increase profit margins. The actual restaurant operators' (franchisees') profit margins, however, are probably not anywhere near as hot since they operate the non scalable and higher liability part of the business. But their financials are not public, so I cannot link you to them.