Even with rising wages, robot revolution skips restaurants - Reuters
There are many articles written on robots replacing human jobs, and robots being the future of employment. However, this article by Reuters (https://goo.gl/a5GgLV) dated 5 October 2016, gave a good write up on why robot revolution for the US restaurant industry is still years away.
As the title said, "Even with rising wages, robot revolution skips restaurants".
The background is that the US is moving to increase the federal minimum wage. However, from the early evidence and from the ground of the food industry, a full or half robot revolution in the $783 billion U.S. restaurant industry is still years away. Why?
1. Not all orders are identical to the menu. Some customers may want to have more chili, more doneness, less of this and that, and any other specific requests. Hence, a human is still better and is cheaper.
2. The start up cost of a half or full robot restaurant will be too high. Example, a silicon valley startup serving pizzza, Zume Pizza, will have its first robot workforce which costs $3 million to develop, and the company believes it will be able to start new locations for between $750,000 and $1 million. Comparing to Domino's Pizza, the setup cost of a Domino's location is only $250k to $300k.
3. Most of the time, the kitchen in restaurants are small and kitchen staffs need to think on their feet. Robots need more space (higher rental) and are not as flexible and multitasking as a human being.
4. Last but not least, customers like to see people in the kitchen.
In short, technology will most likely replace or greatly reduce jobs that are repetitive, like in the manufacturing line production and banking tellers. As for the food industry, workers are still needed in the kitchen. In fact, more kitchen and delivery workers will be needed when customers are so used to using technology to take their orders, making payment and asking for delivery service just at their fingertips. Customers want good customer service, good hot food, and want them fast. Until the day when AI, Artificial Intelligence, can catch up with human beings, we still need people in the workforce.