Wendy's is installing self-order kiosks so it can get rid of human workers—and it's not alone
Last week Wendy’s announced that it’s going to begin installing automated self-service kiosks this year. Per Fox News in Chicago, this is “because of growing labor costs associated [with] rising minimum wages. California and New York are both raising minimum wages to $15 per hour over the next several years.”
Wendy’s is hardly the first fast food company to present looming automatization as a response to new minimum wage laws. In April White Castle VP Jamie Richardson dangled the possibility in a breathlessly fawning National Review article:
Richardson says that, in a typical year, White Castle hopes to achieve a net profit of between 1 and 2 percent — and if labor costs go up, many restaurants will turn toward labor-cost-cutting automation or business models that don’t require many employees. That means a lot of kids won’t get that first job. After decades of baggage check-in kiosks at airports, ATMs, and self-check-out lines at the supermarket, is it really so hard to imagine automation replacing the kid behind the counter at burger joints?
No, of course it’s not that hard to imagine, and consumers will probably enjoy it for the same reason they enjoy services like Seamless or Taskrabbit: some people are bad at interacting with other humans and relieved when they can outsource that interaction to a machine. Plus, as with online ordering, customers presented with the full menu on a machine may order more.