Domino’s Pizza has recently
introduced a new concept to the fast food world, pizza delivery robots that can
navigate neighborhoods to customers. Automation in fast food restaurants has
been an increasingly attractive idea within this past year. The CEO of Carl’s
Jr. and Hardee’s, Andy Puzder, says that he wants fully automated kitchens in
his restaurants, as he has been an opponent to the recent minimum wage pushes.
He believes automation will become a common thing such as in airports, grocery
stores, essentially any job that requires a low level of skill, if the
government implements minimum wage hikes such as from the movement “Fight for
$15”.
These robots that Domino’s Pizza
has created won’t actually be put into place for a while and will only be able
to be initially used in areas with no traffic, however this is showing a movement
that could become more popular in the years to come. Many employers who employ
primarily minimum wage workers such as fast food restaurants are looking for
alternatives to save money in preparation for a dramatic increase in the
minimum wage. It will be interesting to see if this type of automation and
research into it will become popular within the next few years.
What do you think of this? Do you
think that if there is a dramatic rise in the minimum wage that employers will
look more into these cost minimizing options?
I think it is likely that companies will look into ways to minimize costs if minimum wage increases, but I do not think they will find their solutions through automation. This is especially true in the food industry. With so much emphasis being put on "fresher food" I think it would be a hard sell to customers that their food is being cooked by robots in the back.
ReplyDeleteI agree with Skye, this deception behind these automation robots might cause more trouble in terms of satisfying what the customer wants and how it is prepared. With that being said raising the minimum wage will help with minimizing costs, but might mean less workers will be accepted and that might raise unemployment. So It'll be interesting to see where this idea goes and whether consumers will love it and permanently accept it.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above comments for food preparation and cooking, however I could see the delivery bots being a good way to reduce costs. With a lot of focus being put on self-less drivers and the advancements that have already been made with them, I think it is only a matter of time before businesses use them to further drive costs down as they become more reliable and efficient. I think it will be interesting to see the restaurant business transformation in the future. In my opinion, I think the preparation and cooking of the food to create fresher options will continue to be done by humans, but the delivery of the food I think could easily be done by bots.
ReplyDeleteI personally do not like the idea of a robot cooking my food or delivering it to my house. However, I do see this as a real possibility of happening. Almost all of the major car companies are putting a lot of money into R&D on self driving cars. The problems that comes to my mind is how safe is it for robots to be driving around and if the public would even want robots to deliver food. I can, however, see robots becoming 'chefs' in pizza chains. I feel like creating a pizza, putting it in the oven, and then boxing it up isn't a very hard task for a robot to complete. In all honestly, its probably very simple. I'm not saying that I want this to happen I just believe that companies might think the creation of a pizza is such an easy task that robots can complete it. I think that the age of robot driving and cooking is awhile away, but I do think it could possibly be coming.
ReplyDeleteAs technology continues to advance, fully-automated systems in the economy seem more like a reality rather than a fictional futuristic story. With the ever-increasing possibility of automation, the risk of losing more and more of the lower-skilled jobs continues to increase. I believe that this is going to put more pressure on the education system and the affordability of it as people will need more specialized education in order to acquire skills for new jobs. For now, we might be okay but jobs will definitely be lost due to automation in the possibly-near future.
ReplyDeleteIt will definitely take longer time, as some of you pointed for industries to shift to higher dependence on automation v/s human labor. In the article, Pudzer says this is obvious since making labor expensive and automation cheaper directly points at adapting automation.
ReplyDeleteI can imagine that this change might result in a push for more skilled labor or an alternative way to use our low skilled labor. It is also interesting to see how this change will work out in countries like China and India with high labor populations.
I also wonder if increased minimum wages is the only reason behind this push.
Per Solow model, this is a sustainable way of growth, but how will this newly unemployed wave of labor be employed is an important question.
I think that the automation thing is really cool and I could see a lot of companies using this type of technology in the future. I just read that uber and lyft might be partnering with ford to make cars that drive themselves so these companies wouldn't have to split the profit with the drivers.
ReplyDelete