McDonalds kiosks, unexpected consequences

From the «McInteresting» department:
Title: McDonald's Touchscreen Kiosks, Feared As Job Killers, Created More Jobs Instead
Author: feedback@slashdot.org
Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2024 03:30:00 +0000
Link: https://hardware.slashdot.org/story/24/09/25/220217/mcdonalds-touchscreen-kiosks-feared-as-job-killers-created-more-jobs-instead?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed

An anonymous reader quotes a report from CNN: Some McDonald's franchisees --
which own and operate 95% of McDonald's in the United States -- are now rolling
out kiosks that can take cash and accept change. But even in these locations,
McDonald's is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new "guest
experience lead" jobs that help customers use the kiosks and assist with any
issues. "In theory, kiosks should help save on labor, but in reality,
restaurants have added complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the
labor saved from kiosks is often reallocated for these efforts," said RJ
Hottovy, an analyst who covers the restaurant and retail industries at data
analytics firm Placer.ai. Kiosks "have created a restaurant within a
restaurant." And in some cases, kiosks have even been a flop. Bowling ally
chain Bowlero added kiosks in lanes for customers to order food and drinks, but
they went unused because staff and customers weren't fully trained on using
them. "The unintended consequences have surprised a lot of people," Hottovy
said. Even some of the benefits of kiosks touted by chains -- they upsell
customers by suggesting menu items and speed up orders -- don't always play
out. A recent study from Temple University researchers found that, when a line
forms behind customers using kiosks, they experience more stress when placing
their orders and purchase less food. And some customers take longer to order
tapping around on kiosks and paying than they do telling a cashier they'd like
to order a burger and fries. Not to mention the kiosks can malfunction or break
down. "If kiosks really improved speed of service, order accuracy, and upsell,
they'd be rolled out more extensively across the industry than they are today,"
Hottovy said. Kiosks have also been threatened as a fast-food industry response
to higher minimum wage laws. [...] But the quick-service and fast-casual
segments of the restaurant industry continue to grow. Staffing levels were
nearly 150,000 jobs, or 3%, above pre-pandemic levels, according to the latest
Labor Department data. Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University
who studies the effects of technology on work, said the impacts of kiosks were
similar to other self-service technology such as ATMs and self-checkout
machines in supermarkets. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses.
"The introduction of ATMs did not result in massive technological unemployment
for bank tellers," he said. "Instead, it freed them up from low-value tasks
such as depositing and cashing checks to perform other tasks that created
value." Self-checkout have also not resulted in retail job losses, the report
adds. "In some cases, self-checkout backfired for chains because self-checkout
leads to higher merchandise losses from customer errors and more intentional
shoplifting than when human cashiers are ringing up customers."

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Read more of this story[5] at Slashdot.

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