(CNN) – Self-service kiosks from McDonald’s and other fast food chains have threatened to kill jobs since they first set up shop 25 years ago. But no one predicted what actually happened.
In 1999, in one of the first mentions of fast food kiosks, the now-defunct Business Information publication claimed that McDonald’s was working to “develop an electronic order-taking system that could eventually replace some of its human equivalents.” .
Instead, touch-screen kiosks have added work to kitchen staff and have forced customers to order more food than they order at the register. The kiosks show the unintended consequences of technology in fast food and retail, including self-checkout. Chains are experimenting with artificial intelligence in self-service, and the experience with kiosks can serve as a lesson.
Today, instead of replacing workers, companies use kiosks to transfer labor to other tasks, such as fulfilling orders, increasing sales, easily adjusting prices, and streamlining service. (Many chains, such as Subway, Chick-fil-A, and Starbucks, use them little or not at all.)
The kiosks “ensure that sales opportunities,” such as a shake or fries, are suggested to customers when they order, Shake Shack CEO Robert Lynch said on an earnings call last month. “Sometimes it’s not a priority for employees when there are 40 people in line. You try to get through as quickly as possible.” The kiosks also shift employees from behind the register to maintaining the dining area, delivering food to customers or working in the kitchen, he said.
Some McDonald’s franchises – which own and operate 95% of McDonald’s in the United States – are installing kiosks They accept cash and change. But even at these locations, McDonald’s is reassigning cashiers to other roles, including new “chief customer experience” positions that help customers use the kiosks and resolve any problems.
“In theory, kiosks should help save labor, but in reality, restaurants have increased complexity due to mobile ordering and delivery, and the labor saved by kiosks is often reallocated to these efforts.” said RJ Hottovy, an analyst who covers the restaurant and retail sectors at data analytics firm Placer.ai. The kiosks “have created a restaurant within a restaurant.”
And in some cases, the kiosks failed. The “Bowlero” chain installed kiosks on the slopes for customers to order food and drinks, but they were not used because neither the staff nor the customers were well trained to use them.
“The unforeseen consequences have surprised many people,” says Hottovy.
Even some of the benefits of kiosks promoted by chains—suggesting menu items to customers and speeding up ordering—are not always realized. A recent study of Temple University researchers found that when a line forms behind customers using kiosks, they experience more stress when ordering and buy less food. And some customers take longer to order by tapping kiosks and paying than by telling a cashier that they would like to order a hamburger and fries. Not to mention that kiosks can malfunction or break down.
“If kiosks really improved speed of service, order accuracy and sales, they would spread across the industry more than they do today,” says Hottovy.
Kiosks have also come under threat as a fast-food industry response to higher minimum wage laws.
“I told you so,” said former McDonald’s CEO Ed Rensi in 2016 after the company expanded kiosks. “I and others warned that union demands for a much higher minimum wage would force companies with small profit margins to replace full-service employees with costly investments in self-service alternatives.”
California raised the minimum wage this year of the state’s fast food workers by US$4, up to US$20. This sparked the well-known debate that these workers would be replaced by technology, such as self-service kiosks.
But the quick-service and fast-casual segments of the restaurant industry continue to grow. According to the last Department of Labor datathe workforce stood at almost 150,000 jobs, 3%, above pre-pandemic levels.
Christopher Andrews, a sociologist at Drew University who studies the effects of technology on work, said the impacts of the kiosks were similar to those of other self-service technologies, such as ATMs and supermarket self-checkout machines. Both technologies were predicted to cause job losses.
“The introduction of ATMs did not lead to massive technological unemployment for bank tellers,” he said. “On the contrary, it freed them from low-value tasks like depositing and cashing checks to perform other value-creating tasks.”
Self-billing has also not caused job losses in retail. In some cases, the chains have backfired, since self-checking causes more merchandise losses due to customer errors and more intentional theft than when cashiers are the ones who pass the list to customers.
According to Andrews, fast food chains and retailers need to better communicate to consumers and employees the potential benefits of kiosks and self-checkouts.
“I think the most important thing for customers is that they see how this technology provides them with more or better service instead of more unpaid work,” he says. “Otherwise, the public will likely just see it as yet another attempt to reduce labor costs through automation and self-service.”
