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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
Scattered, smothered, and covered.
In what world is Cheesecake Factory a fast food restaurant? In restaurant lingo, it’s on the line between casual dining and fine dining, not quick service (e.g. McDonalds) or even fast casual (Chipotle). No one’s looking at replacing those waiters with robots, because those guys make a lot more than minimum wage anyway. They are also revenue generators with their ability to upsell.
But personally, I love using the kiosk at Jack in the Box instead of waiting for the morons both in front of and behind the counter to figure out the very simple task of picking and ordering food.
In some cases, the iPads were coming anyways. I first saw them at at Fridays in Sulphur Springs TX. I flew out of Minneapolis earlier this year and in my terminal most all the restaurants had iPads. It does seem that minimum wage increases will increase the time in which iPads pay for themselves– they may not have paid for themselves at a cheaper restaurant before a minimum wage increase.
The sad thing is that the minimum wage increase prices out people who really need the job– the first time worker who needs to build employment, or someone who needs to maintain a steady employment– they may not be able to maintain if they are knocked down to part time, or if they are told they can’t work the weekends or the overtime.
Remember when filling your car with gas meant pulling into a station to be greeted by a team of youths who would pump the gas and check under the hood? That service is still available at some stations, usually in the better parts of town for a higher cost per gallon. In the future there will still be restaurants where humans serve other humans. They will be posh establishments frequented by the well-to-do and visited occasionally by the less well off for a special night out or to recall the good old days.
Or if you live in New Jersey and Oregon, the legislators decided to protect those jobs and made it illegal to pump your own gas. I can easily see a few states doing the same — making it illegal for anyone but an employee to ring in your food and deliver it to your table.
Hopefully Kansas and Missouri won’t go for such nonsense, or goodbye Fritz’s.
In New Jersey they pump your gas and collect your cash, that’s it. If you want your fluids checked you pay a premium or do it yourself like everywhere else.
In Oregon they never check the fluids and if one of the guys start to wash my windows I feel like I am being a burden.
Here is my problem. I don’t eat at chains (mostly). Living in Portland I don’t really see the point as I can get much better food and I will never run out of new places to try. That being said I would say that 95% of my chain restaurant experiences would be improved by inputting my order into an iPad. The times I have been to the busy places like Applebees or Red Robin or the Cheesecake Factory I usually find the waiter/waitress interaction more annoying then helpful (where is that darn waiter anyway its been 20 minutes since I entered my dining order).
If it is human interaction I am looking for I can get that at a coffee shop or a bar or on Ricochet. Look if this had been a hundred years ago we could be having the same discussion about grocery stores. You used to go to the store and give the grocery your list (“peaches are mighty fine today sir”) and he would assemble it for you (“slipped in a little extra of that prosciutto you like so much on the house”) we don’t complain about self service grocery do we?
There are web site orders available for hamburgers, and subway sandwiches., and pizza (of course), etc. For those stores that don’t have online ordering, try calling ahead and ordering; it works for me with Jamba Juice.
While I don’t mind a little human interaction, it’s not always necessary.
At Home Depot, Wal-Mart, and Target, I will use the self-checkout line if one is available.
Ricochet scores again with information about how under-educated people can be gainfully employed if they are willing to move: If you live in New Jersey and Oregon, the legislators decided to protect those jobs and made it illegal to pump your own gas.
This talk about hiking the minimum wage to some astronomic number always makes me think of two questions that proponents of such an action never address:
Maybe what we need is to invest in a line of liberal BDSM restaurants. We can call it Chains.
The ads literally write themselves. “Eat at a Chain with their minimum wage wait staff? Don’t flog yourself over it! For a decent tip, our wait staff will do that for you!”
(Now accepting the 2014 Ricochet Award for Conversation Derailment.)
When I was in law school, I always thought running a bar called The Books near campus would be a great idea. As in, “Yeah, Mom, I’m hitting The Books every night!” Instead of Happy Hour, it would have Study Hour in the afternoons, etc.
You should run with this!
I was referring to the fact that a human being who is knowledgeable of my preferences will be able to suggest new things on the menu that are compatible with my history. This contributes to satisfying my taste buds plus- most importantly!- brings in more revenue for the restaurant.
Hint: The bar. Bartenders always love to add on to their average sales check and give you better service. :)
If Pandora can do this with music then RoboGaston 5000™ can do this with you order.
I would totally drink there.
I hope they never have robots at the Caprock Cafe in Lubbock. I’d miss the cute waitresses.
8:45 p.m.EST
Just back from my favorite restaurant where my husband and I ordered two chardonnays, two fresh goat cheese/arugula salads, one Tuscan chicken and one salmon with grilled asparagus done precisely the way we like it and the tab was under $70 dollars; somewhat less than my grocery bill at Whole Foods on the occasional evening I choose to eat in.
The bar staff was welcoming and knowledgeable, the music good, and the sports talk stellar.
The Japanese are making cute robots. I think you’d probably have to really be into anime, though. Leave me cold, but maybe I am just being heteronormative.
Seawriter
I assume it’s not coincidence that the area car wash has only cute and cheerful young women (not men) at the incoming cashier booth where they ask if you’d like to add a wax or an interior clean to your wash.
Don’t worry Rob, I imagine you’ll always be able to get a human server at Hooters regardless of minimum wage.
In the physics department we always talked about opening up the h Bar
No. Your percentages of payroll taxes are coming in at 12.8 %. The real number is closer to 16.0%.