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Oct. 6, 2024 |  By: Paige Gross - Missouri Independent

Data, pilot projects showing food service robots may not threaten jobs

restaurant food

By Paige Gross - Missouri Independent

Though food service workers and economists have long worried about the impact technology would have on the restaurant labor force, pilot programs in several fast-casual restaurants over the last few years have shown it may not have the negative impact they feared, a labor economist says.

Technology plays several roles in food service, but the industry has seen the adoption of touch screens, AI-powered ordering and food prep machines over the last few years. And even more recently, it’s become more likely that a robot is playing a part in your food preparation or delivery.

They may take shape as your bartender, your server or your food delivery driver, but many are like the “collaborative” robots just rolled out in some Chipotle restaurants in California.

The company is testing the Autocado, which splits and prepares avocados to be turned into guacamole by a kitchen crew member, and the Augmented Makeline, which builds bowls and salads autonomously underneath the food line while employees construct burritos, tacos and quesadillas on top. Chipotle said 65% of its mobile orders are for salads or bowls, and the Augmented Makeline’s aim is improving efficiency and digital order accuracy.

The company said it invested in robotics company Vebu and worked with them on the design for the Autocado, and it invested in food service platform Hyphen, which custom made the Augmented Makeline for Chipotle.

“Optimizing our use of these systems and incorporating crew and customer feedback are the next steps in the stage-gate process before determining their broader pilot plans,” Curt Garner, Chipotle’s chief customer and technology officer said in a statement.

The company said the introduction of these robots will not eliminate any jobs, as the crew members are supposed to have a “cobotic relationship” with them. The aim is that crew members will be able to spend more time on either food prep tasks or on providing hospitality to customers.

Ben Zipperer, a low-wage labor market economist at the Economic Policy Institute, said the early fears around automation and robots threatening jobs in the foodservice industry are not being realized. Automation has shown to make workers more productive and effective, he said.

Robots have also been shown to make businesses more efficient and profitable, Zipperer siad, which creates an “offsetting demand factor.” That increased demand and profitability can actually help keep the cost of food for customers more affordable, he added.

When one action is freed up by a robot, the restaurant has more freedom to place workers on other high-demand tasks.

“Either those workers are still going to help produce guacamole, because people want to buy more of it,” Zipperer said of the Chipotle announcement, “or there’s other things that that business is trying to produce but can’t allocate the labor towards, even though they have demand for it.”

Zipperer pointed toward automated food purchasing with the use of touchscreen kiosks, which has been widely adopted in fast food service. In these cases, workers get shifted away from cash registers and toward more back-of-house jobs like food prep or janitorial work.

McDonald’s shows an example of this. The fast food restaurant was one of the earliest adopters of touchscreen kiosks, with thousands of stores using the technology to collect orders by 2015, and screens becoming nearly ubiquitous by 2020.

Last week, the company said the kiosks actually produce extra work for staff, as customers tend to purchase more food than they would at a cash register. The machines have built-in upselling features that cashiers don’t always have time to push with customers, and the introduction of mobile ordering and delivery has created jobs that front-of-house staff are relegated to.

Many fast food CEOs have threatened that raising minimum wages across the U.S. would equate in job loss to autonomous machines and kiosks. And while some franchise owners may take that route, it’s not a trend across the whole country. Jobs at quick-service and fast casual restaurants were up about 150,000 jobs, or 3% above their pre-pandemic levels in August.

As technology takes more of a role in food service production, businesses that want to succeed will find the balance of cost-saving efficiencies and valued work by their employees, Zipperer said.

“As long as there is demand for what that business is producing, that will allow workers to not feel a lot of the negative effects of technology,” he said.