When you step inside, you’ll notice it’s considerably smaller than a traditional McDonald’s restaurant in the U.S. The features—inside and outside—are geared toward customers who are planning to dine at home or on the go.
The Fort Worth, Texas, location uses technology to minimize human interaction when ordering and picking up food. The restaurant features an “Order Ahead Lane” where customers can receive orders by conveyor belt.
The initiative is part of McDonald’s “Accelerating the Arches” plan, which works to grow and innovate the customer experience. Inside the restaurant, there’s a delivery pick-up room for couriers to retrieve orders quickly and conveniently. There are also kiosks, where customers can place their orders to go, and a pick-up shelf for orders. Outside the restaurant, there are several parking spaces dedicated to curbside order pick-up, as well as designated parking spaces for delivery drivers.
A restaurant crew will remain to help prepare the orders. The removal of tasks such as handling the register and delivering food to the front or drive-thru lanes will help improve the team’s ability to assemble orders. “The technology in this restaurant not only allows us to serve our customers in new, innovative ways, it gives our restaurant team the ability to concentrate more on order speed and accuracy, which makes the experience more enjoyable for everyone,” said one franchise owner.
Social media response indicated people did not universally agree whether this was a positive or negative change: Some people celebrated the innovation as a move towards faster and more accurate orders, but others took a more cynical position and predicted that it would lead to a loss of “millions of jobs.”
The noteworthiness is that this development is a bellwether of current trends and things to come. Other fast food giants like White Castle are flirting similarly with fully replacing outdated human resources with tech. Chipotle is testing whether a robot can make tortilla chips in stores. Sweetgreen is automating salad making. And Starbucks wants its coffee-making equipment to lessen the workload for baristas.
Classroom discussion questions:
- Why is McDonald’s moving in this direction?
- What other automation has been seen in restaurants in the past decade?