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The Robot at The Olive Garden
Well, I don’t know if the Olive Garden — a chain of casual Italian restaurants — are going to replace their servers with robots. Or iPads. But it does seem like robotic restaurant help — the literal kind, not the spaced-out human kind — are on the menu.
Why? Well, efficiency of course. But also the push to raise minimum wages across the country.
In a survey conducted by a political group that opposes the wage hikes, employers were awfully forthcoming about their reaction to the higher labor costs. From the Badidea.com site:
In March of 2013, the city of San Jose increased its minimum wage by 25 percent from $8 an hour to $10 an hour, creating the second highest local minimum wage in the state of California. (San Francisco, its neighbor to the north, had the highest at $10.55.)
Result? You’re probably way ahead of this:
Two-thirds of responding businesses raised their prices to adapt to the law’s cost. Roughly 30 percent responded that they had limited future expansion plans in the city as a consequence of the new law, and 12 restaurants had even closed locations in the city in response.
Some of the consequences affected the employees in other ways. For instance, nearly 45 percent of respondents reduced employee hours to adapt to the cost, and 42 percent reduced staff levels—either the number of employees per shift or the overall number of employees at the restaurant.
Another example of a liberal progressive ideal — fairness to the working person, spreading the wealth around — doing the precise opposite.
What will happen, of course, is that restaurants will have an incentive to reduce their exposure for this kind of thing and figure out new ways to enable the customer — through some kind of tablet or talking robot machine — to order food and pay the check without talking to a living, human server.
Which won’t, exactly, be a bad thing. Especially at the Waffle House.
Published in General
I’m looking forward to not having to deal with efferfescent, “Hi how are you guys doing tonight? I’m Tracy and I’ll be your server.”
I say it is time for us to dust off our wooden shoes and prepare to march against the machines.
And I won’t have to worry about whether the waiter washed his hands after using the restroom.
Although I will need to worry whether all the people using John’s touchscreen washed their hands.
Here’s the bad idea about robotic ordering at a decent fast food restaurant – Cheesecake Factory, for example – where my husband and I dined tonight because we eat out every day of the week and don’t always wish to spend $40 on an entrée. Our human waiter who has known us for years barely speaks to us as he knows exactly what we want and how we want it- fresh, no sauce, steamed, not fried, etc.
How does one replace that kind of service?
Ahnold is going to get you.
Raise that minimum wage all you want. It just increases the market for electrical engineers like me.
That is a good question? If we are lucky we will find strange new jobs for them, or at least be able to afford their welfare thanks to our glorious machines. If we are unlucky we will have a growing, resentful, impoverished urban mass that will launch a glorious social revolution. Maybe Marx was right after all. Wouldn’t that be a kick in the teeth.
The first definition of Insanity is well known … doing the same thing but expecting a different result. But the second definition is similar … it’s insane to do something different yourself but expecting others to continue doing what they’ve always done, even after what you’ve done gives you an advantage.
Every action causes an opposite reaction. Other will adjust. They won’t stand still. They’ll adapt to what you’re doing.
I’m comforted in trusting that sooner or later, the high school nerds will hack the robots to have them spill White Zinfandel on all the old ladies. From their cellphones. On YouTube. That’ll change policy …
Marx was a very astute guy. I think the one thing he was most right about was that the economics of the industrial revolution built up resentment and hardships among the masses. He lived during a time of great technological transition, which in fact did see numerous revolutions. The solution to which in all civilized nations was the adoption of increased social welfare paid for by the unprecedented levels of prosperity generated. Today we may be living through such times as well. Hopefully given the lessons of history we can achieve a solution with less violence.
I have remarked before on this website that modern industry has made it possible for our society to be able to afford to give away what in the past represented the overwhelming majority of economic output, namely 3,000 Kcal/day in food. This was the result of 150 years of progress. I wonder what in the future we will be able to afford to give away.
There are some things, however, that never change.
EThompson, just place a fingerprint on the screen and all your specialties will pop up in the auto-memory before you can even speak them. Your index fingerprint will be the chicken salad sandwich and ice tea , pinky finger is cobb salad, vinaigrette on the side. If you’ve been really good this week you can use your thumbprint (mac’n’cheeseburger).
I used Purell for a while, but developed a rash that looked like leprosy. I wasn’t all that popular in restaurants.:-)
But who’ll tell me about the new house chardonnay that I might like because it’s an interesting twist on oak-aged and that I should try the new chicken tacos because the shells are baby bibb lettuce? Y’all can laugh but I appreciate the great job these folks do and they are always tipped 25% plus.
I’m frustrated with the assumption that cheap immigrant labor is necessary; there are consumers perfectly willing to pay for excellent product and service. I am one of them, but I find in many instances there is nowhere to spend my money.
Watch Idiocracy or read The Marching Morons by Kornbluth.
slow start, but it does deliver.
http://mysite.du.edu/~treddell/3780/Kornbluth_The-Marching-Morons.pdf
I would rather see cuts to payroll taxes and other costs of employing someone drop and the minimum wage increase in general. While it does vary a bit based on industry, the cost of an employee can be up to 50% higher than his actual wage or salary. Employees might only care about their pay, but the ones doing the hiring are deeply in tune with the cost of an employee. For this reason technological solutions are already very attractive where they can be implemented. Increases to the minimum wage snowball into much larger costs to the business overall.
Technology will probably replace the vast majority of labor based jobs in a few short decades, but that is another thread.
Health care is a huge cost businesses incur when hiring.
It’s a big benefit, but it’s not necessarily one that everyone wants or needs, and you can’t eat it.
I’m still not sure what the impact of Obamacare will be since the employer mandate keeps getting postponed (until President Obama is out of office?). I assume it will be horrible.
I’ve also heard that onboarding/training a new employee incurs a cost. If those employees don’t last long enough, then the employer is losing money.
If payroll taxes and workman’s comp/unemployment insurance rates went down, employers wouldn’t need a minimum wage hike to raise salaries.
Californians… Have I got this right?
(Right Click to view Larger Image)
Hey! How will you ever get an iPad to “call” an order to the Waffle House fry cook the way the waitress at my local Waffle House can?
I, of one, am NOT going to sit here and leave Waffle House waitresses undefended from drive-by potshots from Hollywood big-shots! [Insert here a pious celebration of the almost extinct ritual of verbally calling orders to cooks to memorize instead of having them printed-out . Place this homage next to the one singing the praises of milkmen.]
I want to order on a touchpad, prepared by the Momentum System and then delivered via train. That way I can get my side order of a bowl of scabs without all the stares (H/T Rob)
Are you kidding? That’s a stored preference. Taking into account the fact that you prefer hot tea on cold days and cold cheesecake on hot days, except when the humidity is over 50% and on Tuesdays when for some reason you typically come in 90 minutes later than other days, and leave within twenty minutes of arriving.
A person will not remember you better than a machine will. The machine will not *like* you, per se, but that’s not what you come to a restaurant for. That’s a whole different retail outlet.
The same thing they’r edoing now. Voting for it.
That may be easier than we would like to admit. Your current regular waiter is in some ways just a walking database of your preferences, once you have been identified. Facial recognition or other system identifies you as you come through the door. Database consulted. Regular order input and preparation begun. If there are variables (such as sometimes you order the chicken, sometimes the fish, you only need to be asked about those, and the database takes care of the rest.
He got pretty much every single thing wrong. The working masses did not become more “resentful”. The poor did not become poorer. They become richer.
By 1929, 60% of American households owned a car. A CAR. In 1929. Today, that sort of auto ownership isn’t even found in most European countries.
The average “poor” person in the US today has a better material life than the average middle class person 30 or 40 years ago.
That’s not the sort of thing that leads to “revolutions”.
As for minimum wage jobs, we have to look at who earns minimum wage. The fact of the matter is that the majority of minimum wage earners do not live in “poor” households, as they usually are 2nd or 3rd wage earners in the household, predominantly young, and predominantly female.
This is why it’s not automatically a good business decision to replace labor with devices. From the business’s [crass] standpoint, the human interface may provide a better opportunity to up-sell the customer – or maybe figure out how to make a more satisfied customer.
1. I do like Olive Garden.
2. While I have taken orders to go from there, I do enjoy sitting at a table with friends, sipping an adult beverage, having a conversation, and looking around at my fellow diners.
3. I don’t mind a bit of friendliness from the wait staff and most seem able to minimize our interaction without being ignorant of the needs of the table.
4. The idea of an air-dropped meal, which I believe is an offer made by some company through Ricochet (gourmet or specialty foods) hasn’t yet appealed to me. It rather strikes me as another means to avoid human contact and this particular age has enough of those opportunities as it is. Avoiding human contact is dehumanizing. I enjoy the company of others, even a chatty Kathy waitress who hopes for a tip. Given the wages paid to wait staff, I am always ready to do 20-percent minimum.
5. Raising the price of dining out is stupid and San Jose and San Francisco will get what they deserve as additional former restaurant people start collecting bennies when they might well be working if not for those cities stupidity.
Those of you who are suggesting EThompson can replace a knowledgeable waiter with stored preferences in a computer are sort of missing the point. The human interaction is valuable simply as human interaction; having someone who is glad to see you and cares about the quality of your meal adds value to the dining experience. And they do care; if you’re eating at the same restaurant every week for a period of years you’re going to make friends with the wait staff. (Although my mind does boggle at the situation where the Cheesecake Factory is the cheap option….)
All that said though; I’m not convinced a majority of dining out experiences fall into that category. Being a bachelor and somewhat lazy, I eat out more often than I ought to, and I can only think of one place where I actually know the guy on the other side of the counter. If the world segregated into many mostly-automated-cheap restaurants and a few personal, cozy but more expensive places I think it’d be better for everyone.
Except for the pimply-faced teenagers who get put out of work, but that’s another question.
Go work for the Federal government as low-level bureaucrats. It is the perfect job for weak minds with low motivation. No judgment is needed in those positions. All they have to do is follow the procedures manual. Likely won’t ask embarrassing questions about bureaucratic stupidity, either.
Seawriter
Applebees has such a table-side device. You can order and pay but a human still brings your order. We typically order from the human and pay via the device because our daughter likes to play with it. Won’t be long (or probably already being done) where you won’t need the device you’ll just sync (like check-in) your phone with the restaurant and order away.