With Clamshell grills, the days of flipping burger over like in Johnny Rockets, McDonald’s and others that are into the business of making burger might be very close to an end. In such eateries like Panera, Domino’s, Chili’s Grill and Bar, mobile phones, digital kiosks, tabletops can be seen taking orders from humans. Pizza assembly is even seen been taken over by robots at Silicon Valley.
The new development of robots taking over services that human beings render is seen as being counterweight for the call to raise the wages of workers that are not well paid in the U.S. however, they are some claims that robots are not really out to take over jobs from people, but to help reshape and enhance the work of people that work in serving food.
A study by some economists from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and De Paul University revealed that there were wage hikes witnessed from the year 2000 to the year 2008 as a result of technology improvements that amounted to workers being displaced in places like the kitchens.
More workers were witnessed in restaurants in 2015 than was applicable in 2001 according to the data that National Restaurant Association compiled for Reuters that opposed hikes in minimum wages. There are more chances of automation to be witnessed in restaurant industry as the campaign to increase to $15 per hour the entry level pay which is two times what is mandated by the federal law of U.S.
Restaurant owners have been in the habit of employing workers that they pay low wages more than can be seen in any other industry, and this is why the workers are among the people calling for hikes in minimum wages. Some executives in the fast-food industry have said that the call for pay hikes will cause owners to resort to automation which at the end of the day will cost many people their jobs.
In the meantime, restaurant executives, robotic researchers, consultants, industrial engineers and economists are of the opinion that full automation in restaurant is not something that is as simple as installing automatic tellers as seen in banks or for assembling of car parts.
Although the push for a hike in the wages of workers is putting so, much pressure on operators of restaurants, it does not go to say that revolution of robots in the U.S. restaurants worth $783 billion was anywhere in sight.
Robots may be fast in working and multitasking, they can, however, not work like humans can especially in a place that is cramped, experts said. Burger King in the 1980s thought they could succeed with robots alone when they brought in machines to do the work that humans do in the kitchen which was later shelved when a new management took over.
There have been many unanswered questions about robots such as what the maintenance will entail or what will happen to the restaurant should they cease to work which can anger a customer who has been expecting to be served a hot meal.
