4 ms·

I find it hard to believe that installation + maintenance + unexpected maintenance + still some people to prepare ingredients would be cheaper than cooks. 24 s

by comboy 12y ago

I find it hard to believe that installation + maintenance + unexpected maintenance + still some people to prepare ingredients would be cheaper than cooks. 24 square feet sounds impressive though.

kristopolous 12y ago
but if the aggregate long term (think 24 month) price projection is lower, then price sensitive establishments will take the bait. Have you looked inside a mcdonalds kitchen lately? They've automated quite a bit of it already.
- Karunamon 12y ago
  Everything they can, at least. Still, someone has to load the fryers/grills, assemble the sandwiches (of which there are at least three different basic kinds, and many, many more variations, even some more then in some places), and wrap/package the result. I don't forsee a machine handling the entire process anytime soon. There are too many edge cases. (And I remember quite a bit of expletive-laden rage at the automation we did have when I worked there.. when it breaks, it's annoying. Fry dispenser not loading baskets, things getting stuck in the bun toaster and holding up the whole line, timer buttons on the holding cabinets failing so you can't tell what's been there for how long..)
  - fred_durst 12y ago
    Exactly. McDonald's has never been afraid of automation. If this were really that viable, they would already be doing it.
Karunamon 12y ago
Thinking about the numbers.. the average McDonald's kitchen, at a midsize store when I worked there many moons ago, all by itself, had between 2 and 6 people in it. At full staff, there were two assembly lines with two people each, one guy on the grill, and one guy starting orders by preparing the buns (the initiator). At low times, one guy on the line, one guy on the grill. Assuming a reasonably busy location where there is no such thing as a "slow time" (airport, central metro area, etc), that means you have to pay six people around $8 an hour for 8 hours. Works out to $384/day on kitchen labor, give or take. $2688/week, $139,776/yr. (And that's before taxes, local wage variances and so on - this is a very rough, very conservative estimate) There's no way this thing will cost less than $150k - a shake/ice cream machine costs aroud 50-75k for a much, much more simple set of parts (liquid pumps, an auger, and a compressor). And that's before you get into maintenance costs and the cost of having a single point of failure. Example: One of your kitchen guys gets sick, you can usually call in a replacement, shift someone from elsewhere in the store, or just run one person down and deal with it. The Burgermaker 9000, on the other hand, say the tomato slicer breaks? You're down. Completely and totally. Combine that with the insane time to break even and see even a penny of ROI.. it ain't happening. Not anytime soon.
- shiny 12y ago
  In that case, Seattle's $15/hr minimum wage may help spur innovation in this space.
  - fred_durst 12y ago
    You're still only at $247,715 The reality is that the more the income gap grows between the servers and those served, the less profitable automation becomes. There is a reason low wages jobs are growing, not shrinking in the US.

by comboy 12y ago

I find it hard to believe that installation + maintenance + unexpected maintenance + still some people to prepare ingredients would be cheaper than cooks. 24 square feet sounds impressive though.

kristopolous 12y ago

but if the aggregate long term (think 24 month) price projection is lower, then price sensitive establishments will take the bait. Have you looked inside a mcdonalds kitchen lately? They've automated quite a bit of it already.

Karunamon 12y ago
Everything they can, at least. Still, someone has to load the fryers/grills, assemble the sandwiches (of which there are at least three different basic kinds, and many, many more variations, even some more then in some places), and wrap/package the result. I don't forsee a machine handling the entire process anytime soon. There are too many edge cases. (And I remember quite a bit of expletive-laden rage at the automation we did have when I worked there.. when it breaks, it's annoying. Fry dispenser not loading baskets, things getting stuck in the bun toaster and holding up the whole line, timer buttons on the holding cabinets failing so you can't tell what's been there for how long..)
- fred_durst 12y ago
  Exactly. McDonald's has never been afraid of automation. If this were really that viable, they would already be doing it.

Karunamon 12y ago

Thinking about the numbers.. the average McDonald's kitchen, at a midsize store when I worked there many moons ago, all by itself, had between 2 and 6 people in it. At full staff, there were two assembly lines with two people each, one guy on the grill, and one guy starting orders by preparing the buns (the initiator). At low times, one guy on the line, one guy on the grill. Assuming a reasonably busy location where there is no such thing as a "slow time" (airport, central metro area, etc), that means you have to pay six people around $8 an hour for 8 hours. Works out to $384/day on kitchen labor, give or take. $2688/week, $139,776/yr. (And that's before taxes, local wage variances and so on - this is a very rough, very conservative estimate) There's no way this thing will cost less than $150k - a shake/ice cream machine costs aroud 50-75k for a much, much more simple set of parts (liquid pumps, an auger, and a compressor). And that's before you get into maintenance costs and the cost of having a single point of failure. Example: One of your kitchen guys gets sick, you can usually call in a replacement, shift someone from elsewhere in the store, or just run one person down and deal with it. The Burgermaker 9000, on the other hand, say the tomato slicer breaks? You're down. Completely and totally. Combine that with the insane time to break even and see even a penny of ROI.. it ain't happening. Not anytime soon.

shiny 12y ago
In that case, Seattle's $15/hr minimum wage may help spur innovation in this space.
- fred_durst 12y ago
  You're still only at $247,715 The reality is that the more the income gap grows between the servers and those served, the less profitable automation becomes. There is a reason low wages jobs are growing, not shrinking in the US.