Robots Are Already Replacing Workers in Fast-Food Chains

The McDonald’s kiosks are also intended to give customers greater flexibility in customizing their orders with different buns and toppings for burgers, while reducing the chances for inaccurate orders. Image: McDonald’s Canada

It may be an alarming time for the job market. Despite President-elect Donald Trump's "promise" to create more jobs if he is elected president, it seems his labor secretary may have other ideas.

Also read, McDonald’s expanding table service.

Trump's Labor secretary nominee Andy Puzder, CEO of fast-food chains Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, appears keen on the idea of replacing food service workers with robots. According to Recode, he said that unlike human workers, robots are "always polite, never take a vacation, never show up late" and never discriminates.

His interest is an employee-free restaurant, which is perhaps indicative of his stand against raising the minimum wage as he believes this can reduce employment opportunities.

Regardless, however, the instance of technology replacing food service workers are already here.

According to Eater, some restaurants are already using various forms of machinery to automate their business. A new McDonald's branch is reported to be functioning fully by robots alone, which is an outstanding feat by itself. 

Others use machines to roll rice in nori for years, while Suzuka has robots that assemble thousands of pieces of sushi in an hour. Zume is trying to reinvent the pizza scene with a pie-making machine. Meanwhile, in Shanghai, there's a robot that makes ramen.

One other company, Momentum Machines, is a restaurant concept with a robot that can supposedly flip hundreds of burgers in an hour and has now started to list jobs. Eatsa has locations popping across California and is noted for being a fully automated restaurant.

Meanwhile, in delivery, Starship's ground robot is delivering takeout in London. Marble and Dispatch, Alphabet and Amazon are planning to deliver via drone as well.

According to Business Insider, these are just some of the many opportunities where fast-food workers are starting to be replaced by robots. The more likely scenario is one machine replacing one job at a time. For instance, it can be self-serve ordering and then serving, then delivering, and maybe even cooking.

SOURCE Rhenn Anthony Taquiam, Nature World News